Kalisa Moore and her La Ida Cafe are one of the few authentic things left on Cannery Row.

Photo by Randy Tunnell

A tourist hunkers down and aims her camera through the window. Dissatisfied with the view she moves to her left and clicks. She moves nearer to the window and clicks again, obviously getting a closer view of Kalisa Moore, the universally acknowledged Queen of Cannery Row.

Inside the cafe, known simply as "Kalisa''s" to anybody that''s been around, the walls are covered with an almost surreal mix of Cannery Row memorabilia, Middle Eastern statuary and stuff that defies easy identification. Go upstairs, just to the left of the front door, where belly dancers, musicians and audiences gather each Friday, and the mix of art turns more toward a blend of ''60s style avant-eclecticism. This cafe, where Kalisa has held court since 1958, is a fitting royal chamber for someone who has nurtured workers, artists, tourists and bohemians of one ilk or another for nearly 45 years.

It also seems a strange place to find Kalisa. She was born 77 years ago in Latvia to a German mother who, during World War II, accepted a Third Reich offer to bring the family home--but the deal they thought they were getting isn''t the one they got. Instead of being relocated in Germany, they wound up in German-occupied Poland, where they were ensconced in a house that had been confiscated by the Nazis.

A young teenager during the war years, Kalisa--along with most German youngsters--was a member of Hitler Youth. Kalisa remembers that she was part of a singing troupe that performed for soldiers in the hospitals.

She also remembers an outing when, by chance, her group met Adolf Hitler. She shook his hand and says she was "mesmerized" by him.

"We were so young," says Kalisa. "We didn''t know what was going on. I saw the trains going by with all those people and I wondered where they were going."

She also remembers walking home from school and seeing some of her friends, wearing yellow stars, walking in the gutter. And when she asked them to walk on the sidewalk with her, they refused. "I thought they didn''t like me," she says softly. "They were trying to protect me."

As the Reich unraveled, her family fled Germany. She saw the fiery rain of death in Dresden and the advancing phalanx of Russian troops. Nearly 50 years later, she draws a deep breath, chokes and her warm eyes swim in tears. But she holds it together. Barely.

"I saw people dying right and left," she manages. "People were fleeing the communists and where could they go? They just got slaughtered."

There''s more than a hint of anger as she softly utters, "That''s why I say, ''Why war?''"

After the war, Kalisa met and married an American serviceman who was posted to Fort Ord in 1955. That brought the young couple to Monterey. At that time, Cannery Row was still Ocean View Boulevard, decrepit and beginning to crumble after the busted sardine boom.

Kalisa opened her first restaurant near Fisherman''s Wharf. Building inspectors shut it down.

Looking for a new location, Kalisa found a trashed, former boardinghouse that was sitting vacant. A sign in the window said the rent was an outrageous $600 a month. Undeterred, Kalisa contacted the landlord--and walked away with a $125-per-month lease, provided she took care of all restoration and maintenance of the building.

With the help of her father and family, in 1957 Kalisa began the arduous task of cleaning out and remodeling the place to make it a presentable restaurant. She opened in 1958, the same year that the City of Monterey changed the name of Ocean View Boulevard to Cannery Row.

It was the kind of place where the chef--Kalisa--insisted on fresh produce and wasn''t above making furtive meals with smuggled Kobe beef. The kind of place where if a patron asked for something special, Kalisa would ask what they wanted. A place for locals and a place for the multi-cultural service personnel stationed at DLI and the Naval Postgraduate School, too. A place where singing competitions would ring through the night in many languages. Where jazz musicians would play after their gigs at the infant Monterey Jazz Festival.

Encouraged by his friend Dennis Murphy, John Steinbeck, depressed by the changes he saw in Monterey during his Travels With Charley tour in 1960, visited the restaurant and met Kalisa. He wouldn''t give her his address, but he did give her the address to his lawyers, just in case she wanted to get in touch. It wasn''t until after Steinbeck''s death that Kalisa found out he had been sincere.

In planning the first Steinbeck Birthday Party on Cannery Row in 1970, Kalisa wanted to produce a play that included excerpts from Steinbeck''s writings. Wanting to keep things legal, she contacted the lawyers--who told her Steinbeck had instructed them to forward any mail from Kalisa to him.

The play went on, and the parties have been an annual event on the Row ever since.

By the late ''60s and through the ''70s, Cannery Row shifted into a gathering place for the bohemian and hippie crowd. Wine and belly dancing would flow until closing time--then the heartiest revelers would buy jugs of wine, and go upstairs, where the private party would continue until...whenever.

Today, the cafe serves a more modest menu. But the belly dancing continues on Friday nights, and the crowd is as diverse as ever, with young bohemians who are making memories rubbing shoulders with old bohemians who are reliving theirs. "Every day, everywhere I go," says Kalisa, "people come up to me and say they have a connection to this place. It''s been my living applause and it makes me feel very nice."

Over the last couple of years, the restaurant has gone through some turbulent financial times, and Kalisa has undergone hospitalization for diabetes-related problems. But now she''s back at the helm of the cafe, back at work implementing ideas to promote her beloved Cannery Row.

As a tribute to their Queen and friend, organizers on the Row are producing a benefit party at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Saturday. There will be food from the Portola Cafe, tours of Doc Ricketts'' lab, music by Along Came Betty and Larry Hosford, and, of course, belly dancing. But make no mistake. This is no going-away, sympathy party.

"This is my life," says Kalisa. "What else is there to do? I want to stay around for a while."

For details on Saturday night''s party, see Hot Picks pg. 30.