We're Going to Giovanni's

 
There was a television series produced by the BBC named 'Connections'. It demonstrated beautifully that events are rarely linear in nature. "This happened and then that happened as a direct result." Hah! More often than not, it was one accident after another.

In the last episode of this blog-ette, the Lone Ranger had discussed the extensive drinking habits of his parents and concentrated on the legendary Betty B, a prototypical lower-end watering hole frequented by those in the 1940's who had forgotten to charge their smartphones.
 

Here's my Mom, Sophia, on the left with her friend Edna (whose last name is lost) standing before the Betty B. When I was researching these photos, I was able to use tiny clues like this one to uncover the name of the bar. Pretty clever, huh?

But at this point, I didn't know where the Betty B was located, so I flew to Miami (okay, this wasn't the only reason) and examined the old Polk City Directories in the Miami Public Library. No, not the beautiful old library of my youth that smelled of knowledge and a bright, unlimited future. They tore that down and replaced it with a brutalist concrete box.

 
There, in the 1945 Polk, I discovered the address of the place as 700 NE 79th Street and also the name of the owner as Giovanni Venturella. In my tiny but hyperactive brain, this triggered a 'connection' (get it?) with a long buried memory. Just as I could recall the names of bars frequented by my father, Leon, like the Doghouse and Jimmie's Blue Room (I wonder if that's where David Lynch got his ideas), the name 'Giovanni' fired off some long-slumbering neurons. I could recall my parents referring to 'Giovanni's' as in "We're going to Giovanni's".

There in the photos was the proprietor of the Betty B. No, he's not wearing a name tag, only an apron but it's a strong bet that here, direct from Palermo, Italy via Havana, Cuba is gray-eyed, black-haired, 5 ft 4 in, 154 pound Giovanni Venturella who arrived in New York in 1939. 

Are we sure he knew my parents, hmm? Well, this photo is from 1942, so my father was not in the picture yet, but there's my mother's friend Edna on the left and Giovanni Venturella, third from the left. Next to him with his arm around my mother is her friend Charles Gillespie. It is interesting that the soldiers here appear to be wearing no insignia or indication of rank whatsoever. I wonder if this was a wartime thing to keep people from discovering what units are deployed where.

Giovanni lived just a block away on 80th Street. When my parents were married, they lived on 82nd Street, also close by and my father worked at Hayes Gateway Service Station at 8000 Biscayne Boulevard, also two blocks away. Nice tight little grouping, huh? For the visual people among you (I applaud you, by the way) here's the Miami fire map from 1943.

The Red box is Betty B, the Green box is Giovanni's residence, the Orange box is Hayes Gateway Service where my father worked and the Yellow is the apartment where my parent's lived. If there is a lot with no building showing, that means it was an empty lot. There was a great deal of open space in Miami Shores then. That's Little River running along the bottom of the frame.

Nowadays, things are a bit more built up. Many of the original buildings are gone. The boxes and colors are the same. The river is still Little River. My parents' apartment is under a bank.

So, did he change the name of his bar to Giovanni's? No, he moved about a mile west on 79th Street and bought the Fannie Grill at 1015 NW 79th Street and then built a new restaurant building next door at 1005 NW 79th Street: Giovanni's Restaurant! "We're going to Giovanni's". His newspaper ad offered salad and spaghetti for 80 cents. That would be about $9.00 nowadays.
 
The building still stands, even though the neighborhood has... ... changed. The business there is now the Yellow Meat Market. I don't know if there's much call for yellow meat. How hot do you have to get meat to turn it yellow? I'd love to go inside to get a feel for the building, you know, pick up the vibrations in the walls. But I know that once inside I would be murdered two or three times. It's a tough neighborhood now.

It can't be all bad, there's wheelchair access and the barbed wire looks pretty fresh. And with a security camera on every corner, whew! My guess is there's not too much foot traffic.

Giovanni died in 1962, he was 72. The restaurant had a very long run as top players in the bowling leagues. However, there is no record that Giovanni was ever married and I haven't found any reference to a relative at all. But he knew my parents and that's good enough for me and now the magical Internet won't forget him.

If you thought that was the end of the story, oh no... there's more!