Characters in his story: you

The Village Inn that exists in Balboa Island resident Ken Edward’s head is populated with an uppity South Bayfront resident named Olga Renderklott who has appointed herself the unofficial spokeswoman of the “YES on underground utilities” movement and a female bartender whose alter ego wears a beehive hairdo and goes by the name Trixie Louise.

The real Village Inn, Balboa Island’s only full bar, a red brick tavern on the corner of Marine and Park avenues, has more beer on tap than intrigue, but it’s just as homey, Edwards said.

“It’s really just like a neighborhood bar, and people seem to respond well to that. It’s local and homey,” said Edwards, who has worked part-time as a waiter at the Village Inn for the past three years.

“And there’s a small group of dedicated employees who run it,” he said.

Edwards has turned his workplace into the scene of a serialized soap opera that he’s writing about on his blog, myviasoapopera.blogspot.com.

With its slogan “Fictional story/real place!” the blog, with its references to fictional Balboa Island streets like “Tourmaline” and “Carnelian” and other local landmarks, has become popular with the tavern’s regulars.

Edwards publishes a new entry every few days. A dance-crazed Trixie Louise has fled with a brainwashed cult member after holding the entire bar at gunpoint in Edward’s latest installment. He’s turned a few of his co-workers and bar patrons into regular characters on the blog.

There’s “Meatloaf Man,” based on a real bar patron who always asks if he can order the meatloaf without salt in it, and “Corona Dan,” who always orders Corona beer and asks the prettiest girl at the bar to dance.

“It’s just a lot of fun and good, bad or indifferent, I want him to write about me, too,” said Trudy Hayes, who manages the Village Inn.

The blog started when Hayes’ husband, David, was diagnosed with colon cancer last year. Hayes set up a website for her husband for people to leave get-well-soon messages to her husband.

“She said to send jokes, but he was in the hospital so long, I was running out of jokes,” Edwards said.

When Edwards ran out of jokes, he started writing fictional stories about the Village Inn.

“David and Ken both have great senses of humor, both very witty and funny,” Hayes said.

David Hayes’ cancer is in remission after undergoing chemotherapy and surgery, but Edwards decide to keep the saga of the Village Inn going on his own blog.

Soon, regulars at the tavern were asking him to write them into the script.

“It’s funny, sometimes he’ll come up with things that are similar to real life just by chance. I’ll tell him, ‘You know, this really sounds like so and so,’” said Cindy Corrales, a bartender at the Village Inn who has appeared in several episodes of Edward’s soap opera.

“He’ll say, ‘Wow, you’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll have to go back and change that.’ ”

Reporter BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].