Closing time: Restless Wind shuts its doors after 40 years

Finch said he is going to move forward with his plans for the building, with or without the name Restless Wind.

"It's a perfect place for a bar in my thinking," Finch said. "We're going to just basically do the same thing we've always done as far as that location. We're going to have a lounge-type club where you can listen to music, sit down, have a drink with your friends—like the clubs we used to go to when we were 20."

According to a conditional use permit submitted to the city, Finch and his partner, Bob Donnelly, the original owner of the Wind, plan to call the new bar Chances R.

The cast of characters slinging drinks has changed a few times over the years, but the bar's patrons said there was never any doubt what they were getting when they headed to the Wind.

One patron, Rodrick Barham, said the Wind was the first place he ever had a drink in San Marcos.

"The Wind is the Wind," Barham said. "It didn't matter if you were in there at 4 in the afternoon or at midnight. It was always dark, and it felt like a bar should feel."

Attempts to reach Jacobs were unsuccessful. He has owned the Restless Wind for nearly a decade. When the last payment for the bar comes due on March 31, Jacobs will still own the name "Restless Wind" but will not have anywhere to serve the drinks.

Kellen Walker, a former bartender at the Wind who remains close with Jacobs, said he could still choose to move the bar to a new location, but "we're all just not sure if that's the move he wants to make right now."