Artist/poet/raconteur/entrepreneur Peggy Tolk-Watkins moved to the Bay Area in 1950 and opened The Tin Angel on Sausalito's waterfront. She acquired the building from Matt Lange, who had converted it to a crab restaurant after twenty-nine years in his launch business. According to her son Ragland, Peggy took the name from a roof ornament her family “rescued” from Georgian-style church building she had lived next to in New York.
PHOTO FROM SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Peggy Told-Watkins, a figure in the human landscape of Sausalito
The Tin Angel quickly became a gathering place for noted jazz musicians and folk singers. Peggy sold the business in 1952 and spent a year traveling in Europe with young Ragland. Scoma’s Restaurant has occupied the property since 1969.
Ever the flamboyant entrepreneur, Peggy returned from Europe and opened her second “Tin Angel" on the Embarcadero. The club hosted folk singers like Odetta but was best known for presenting first-class Traditional Jazz, including groups like Bob Scobey and his Frisco Jazz Band, Turk Murphy, Kid Ory, Muggsy Spanier and others.
In 1954 she partnered with Sally Stanford to open the Fallen Angel at 1144 Pine Street, the site of Sally’s one-time brothel. San Francisco columnist Ralph J. Gleason wrote that Peggy had the knack of “getting interesting people to come to the club regardless of the entertainment of the moment. She was stimulating to talk to herself and that drew interesting people.”
Peggy Tolk-Watkins was also a self-trained artist. Her style has been described as primitive with highly imaginative depiction of animals and flowers. The Historical Society has a copy of one of her paintings, “The Red Reindeer,” in its collection. It is inscribed to Ruth and Albert, i.e., Bay Area artist Ruth Asawa and her husband, Albert Lanier.
A profile in a 2021 Historical Society newsletter states: “Her style has been described as primitive with highly imaginative depiction of animals and flowers.” The Historical Society is honored to own a copy of one of her paintings, “The Red Reindeer.” It is inscribed to Ruth and Albert, i.e., Bay Area artist Ruth Asawa and her husband, Albert Lanier.
In another profile, the Sausalito News wrote in 1960:
“Peggy Tolk-Watkins. a Sausalito artist, who is completely self taught, is currently exhibiting primitive oils at the de Young Museum. Though it is her first public exhibition of works done during the past 14 years, she has gained considerable recognition among local and southern California collectors. Until quite recently painting has been only one of several hobbies sandwiched in between a busy career as a social worker, teacher, writer of children’s books, business woman and housewife.
“She was born and brought up in New York City where she studied photography with Arnold Eagle under a National Youth Administration project winning a third prize for a health poster that was subsequently used by the City of New York. Though she had had no formal art training she began working with underprivileged children as an arts and crafts supervisor primarily in New York’s lower East Side settlement houses. There she directed the children in the construction of stage sets, various craft subjects and painting. During World War II she taught children in all eight war housing projects in Richmond, Calif., under the supervision of Hazel Salmi, former director of the Richmond Art Center. At the end of the war she received a year's work scholarship from Black Mountain College in North Carolina where she studied not art but literature though she conducted painting classes for faculty members' children and organized a children's class at the Negro Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.”
According to foundsf.org, “The and versatile Tolk-Watkins hit the Bay Area like a comet but flamed out in 1973 at the age of 51 after living life full speed. With a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other she loved to discuss (read debate) issues with customers and friends.”
Ragland recalls: “She was prodigiously talented and appreciative of other people’s talent, creative, generous to a fault, funny in an absurdist way, vulnerable, anti-bourgeois, egalitarian. She was an artist (a painting show at the de Young Museum), a poet, and an entrepreneur. She was a figure in the human landscape of Sausalito in her time.”