Modesto’s longest running nightclub Crocodiles, one of the valley’s first discos, sold
After more than four decades of keeping the party going in the Central Valley, the family behind Modesto’s Crocodiles Nightclub has sold to a new generation who has vowed to keep the good times rolling.
Since first opening in 1978 on Prescott Road, the Modesto nightclub has gone through various names and formats over the years — but has always kept the same location and owner. Jack Phillips and his family have run the club since its inception in Turlock as one of the area’s first discotheques.
Now Phillips and his son Guy, who has managed the club for the past 20 years, are bidding it adieu and have sold to a young Modesto couple who intend to keep the city’s longest continually running dance club going.
“I’ve really enjoyed being in the entertainment business all these years, the people and the music,” said Guy Phillips, who started cleaning mirrors and sweeping floors at the club as a teenager. He’ll be 58 later this month. “I wasn’t ready to let go of it before. But this felt like the right time. I guess I’m a little tired, I like going to bed at 10 p.m. at night now.”
Back in 1976, the elder Phillips started his foray into nightlife with the disco club The Sports Page, at the corner of Geer Road and Monte Vista Avenue in Turlock. The nightspot was an instant hit, and two years later he opened The Sports Page II in Modesto and has owned and operated it since.
Still, the now 86-year-old is about as unlikely a nightclub impresario as there comes. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, heck, he doesn’t even like coffee. Instead, the son and grandson of sheriffs in Oklahoma was a rodeo star in his youth, who then became the manager at chambers of commerce in Wyoming, San Rafael and finally Turlock, before getting into the nightclub business.
“I’m a unique kind of creature,” Jack Phillips said in a phone conversation from his Las Vegas home, where he has lived for the last two decades. “But I’ve never had a drink in my own nightclub and I’ve owned one for 46 years. I’m a pretty straight arrow I guess.”
Owner started in rodeo, then managed Turlock Chamber
He first came to California in 1963 and two years later he moved to Turlock to work at the chamber. Before that he competed in professional rodeo for 16 years, in steer wrestling, earning championships and even being named Rodeo Man of the Year in 1965.
The nightclub business wasn’t on his mind when he was talking with a friend who owned a Turlock country western club and was looking to sell. Jack Phillips knew from his time on the rodeo circuit that cowboy bars could be rough and tumble. So he bought the place, but wanted to change its format and the crowd.
Disco was hot then and only growing hotter. The elder Phillips called disco a “classier kind of music” and liked that people dressed up to dance to it. So he took a chance and made it a discotheque.
He called it The Sports Page, partly because sports memorabilia was a quick and easy way to decorate the club and partly because of its clean-cut connotations.
The reception when it opened in 1976 was “unbelievable,” he said, and they were full almost every night. Soon after imitators started popping up in neighboring Modesto. But instead of letting them steal his dancing thunder, Phillips found a spot in the city to open his own place
.
The location, tucked in the corner of a strip mall just off the corner of Prescott and Briggsmore Avenue, took extensive work to turn into a disco palace. The roof was even reinforced to allow for the club’s signature, inverted lighted ceiling. The completed club was featured in Billboard magazine for its then state-of-the-art lightening and sound.
Modesto discotheque opened to long lines, big crowds
Opening day for The Sports Page II was March 31, 1978. A half-hour after the doors opened, Jack Phillips said they had reached capacity with a line five-people wide stretching out nearly a football field length still waiting.
The Modesto location is twice as large, at just under 10,000 square feet, than their former Turlock club which closed a year after The Sports Page II debuted. They had a great run, with packed houses nightly for a couple years until disco started to abruptly die at the start of the 1980s.
As it was transitioning, the club briefly became a teenage nightspot called Stage I, before becoming The Rock Shop. The Phillips family learned to evolve with the time and music, bringing in live local and sometimes touring rock bands instead.
But rock was never truly the senior Phillips’s passion, so the format changed again a few years later in 1984 when The Rock Shop became The Pavilion. That signaled another shift, this time to Top 40s music.
The Pavilion lasted until 1993, when the club settled into its longest incarnation which remains today, Crocodiles Nightclub. The name came from Elton John’s first No. 1 single, the 1972 hit “Crocodile Rock,” and its format was the best music from the 1950s to the 1990s. The format remains today, with contemporary songs mixed with classics. The club courts a more mature crowd with its music and ambiance.
Straight-arrow Jack Phillips attributes his success over the years in his strict rules for employees (they’ve always had uniforms), dress codes for customers (when it first opened that included no jeans, now that means no T-shirts or sports apparel/sweats) and having a nightly cover charge. Focusing on the music and the dancing also helped.
“If you come to dance you come a little more dressed up and you don’t come to fight. They behaved and were wonderful crowds,” he said.
Current Crocodiles format mixes classics, contemporary hits
Over the years the club has seen the likes of Bachman–Turner Overdrive and Blue Öyster Cult perform within its neon-lighted walls. In the early 1980s, right before they hit superstardom, heavy metal band Mötley Crüe came to play. But the senior Phillips didn’t like their attitude and threw them out before they could perform, Guy Phillips said.
The club today remains a snapshot to another era, with its wooden dance floor with inlaid Tivoli lighting and its carnival-like chevron ceiling. The club’s original two-level lighted fountain still runs, too, offering a gurgling accompaniment to the dance beats.
But it’s not the lights or the music that the Phillips will miss as much as the people, both their employees (the longest current staff member has been with them for 28 years) and their customers. The family’s two daughters, Jackie and Laurie, worked at the club over the years, but Guy made it his career. He said he’s proud that many people met their spouses at the club — himself included.
The Phillips are also thrilled to be handing off their legacy to another young couple, Christian and Kasandra Gonzalez. Both in their late 20s, the pair moved to Modesto two years ago. Christian Gonzalez recently received his MBA from San Francisco State University, and also runs a local vending machine business.
But Crocodiles will be his first club, and he said he’s taking a leap of faith like Jack Philips took when he bought the Turlock nightspot.
“When I heard the club was still owned by the original owner of 44 years, that was it. That doesn’t happen a lot. You can tell it’s been well taken care of,” he said.
New owners will keep things the same, then make renovations
The couple doesn’t plan to make any immediate changes. The club’s 30-some staff members will remain on, and Guy Phillips will also assist for about a month to help smooth the transition.
But, in keeping with the location’s history, change will be coming. In the coming year they plan to do some renovations and updating to the interior. There will likely be a musical refresh too, and possibly a name change at some point.
Christian Gonzalez said he’s visited the club several times the past couple of weeks, talking to patrons and asking them what they want moving forward. He said he’s been impressed with the kind of clientele the Phillips family has attracted, and hopes to keep that safe and friendly atmosphere going for another generation.
“I’m getting into it with 44 years of established experience behind it already. We’re coming into the family they’ve established. We want to be a part of that family,” he said.
The last hurrah for the Phillips ownership will be this weekend. They’re inviting current and former clubgoers and employees to come celebrate with them. Crocodiles is currently open Thursday through Sunday nights, and the Gonzalezs will continue that when they open under their ownership July 21.
The Phillips family said they’ve heard from people going back decades since they announced the sale earlier this week. One former doorman plans to come in the tuxedo shirt, red-bow tie uniform he wore when he used to work at the club.
“It’s definitely time to sell it. I’m 86 years old and while I enjoy good health and feel good, I don’t want to try to throw someone out causing a problem anyone,” Jack Phillips said. “I’ve made good friends over those years. Thousands of memories went through my head as I was packing up.”
Now, as the elder Phillips says goodbye to the nightlife, he plans a return to his cowboy roots in his retirement.
“It’s been a good business to be in. I have no regrets,” he said. “But now I’m going to watch ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Mayberry.’”
This story was originally published July 17, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
