The Mission mariachi trumpet player on Friday nights, three venues, since 1988

On Friday nights between 7:30 and 11:00, Don Roberto “Beto” Vargas walks Mission Street with a silver trumpet in a soft case under his arm. He plays a 30-minute set at three different restaurants. He has been doing this every Friday since the autumn of 1988, except for a seven-Friday gap in 2003 when his wife was in the hospital.

The three restaurants are El Trebol on 22nd, La Taqueria on 25th, and a place called Don Pedro’s on 30th that has changed ownership three times since 1988 but has kept the same Friday night booking with Don Beto across all three owners.

He plays solo. He used to play in a mariachi quartet that broke up in 1997 when two of the other members moved back to Mexico. He found that he liked playing alone better. The trumpet, he says, does not need a band; the trumpet brings the band with it.

A set is fifteen songs, three of which are requests. He takes requests in a small spiral notebook before each set. He charges nothing extra. He has, by his own count, played “Las Mañanitas” approximately 4,800 times.

Don Beto is 69. He came to the Mission from Guadalajara in 1981. He worked days as an electrician for the city school district until 2010. He has been retired from that job for sixteen years; the Friday-night trumpet has been his only paid work since.

“A trumpet at a dinner table is not interruption,” he says. “A trumpet at a dinner table is the dinner table. When I am there, the dinner is happening. When I am not, the dinner is just food.”

The trumpet is a Bach Stradivarius 37 he bought used in 1990 for $850. It has been to a repair shop on Folsom Street four times in 35 years. The pads have been replaced twice. The valves are original. He cleans it on Saturday mornings. He says the trumpet, like a horse, knows when it has not been brushed.

He earns between $60 and $200 a night in tips. The restaurants pay him an additional $80 each, $240 total, for the booked set. He grosses about $11,000 a year from Friday nights. His son Manuel, an accountant, has been telling him for twelve years that he should raise the rate. Don Beto has refused. The walks between the three restaurants are part of the act, he says, and he cannot in good conscience charge for the walk.

On the Friday I followed him, he played “Volver, Volver” three times in three different rooms in three different keys. Each time he made eye contact with one particular diner during the high note. Each time, that diner cried. He says he picks the diner during the second verse. He has been wrong about whether they will cry, he says, eight times in 37 years.