Mr. HoJo Risin'

In retrospect, my mom was right.

It was a wild place, and I probably shouldn't have been working there.

Actually, the initial family response to having learned that a Howard Johnson's was coming to Monroeville was a positive one. "Oh boy! Ice cream!"

We never did get around to going there for ice cream, however. Al Monzo's Howard Johnson's hotel replaced the dumpy Monzo's Motel at the corner of Routes 48 and 22 in Monroeville in 1973. I, however, didn't set foot in the place until September, 1979.

My buddy Mike worked there as a busboy, in the Casa di Monzo lounge. This was not your typical HoJo restaurant — not by a long shot. It was, actually, a pretty good restaurant, by hotel lounge standards. Heavy on Italian, of course, and extra-heavy on the red sauce. This is Pittsburgh, after all.

Mike instructed me to ask the hostess for a job. "Look for the redhead with the cleavage." There was no mistaking her, of course, and soon I gave up my Pittsburgh Press paper route in favor of four nights a week of bussing tables.

In addition to being a pretty decent restaurant, every night at 9pm we would roll back the salad bar to reveal the dance floor underneath. Six nights a week a lounge act would take the stage, and my friends, let me tell you — Monzo's hopped. We were busy for dinners, but for dancing, the place would get packed. Fridays and Saturdays were wall to wall, but the other nights were pretty happenin', too.

Once the dining was done for the evening and the dancing had started, we busboys could coast a bit. Often, that meant sneaking over to the coffee shop to steal ice cream and hits of nitrous oxide and gum. (HoJo-brand gum, to be specific, a sickly sweet concoction that is likely responsible for the majority of the cavities in my back molars.)

I've tried to come up with a description for the HoJo clientele, but everything I come up with sounds like a cop-out, so I'll just blurt it out and if it's classist, well, then classist I am. But it always has seemed to me that these were folks who were, well, not nouveau-riche, but more like nouveau-solvent, and they wanted to make sure everybody knew that they were somebody to be reckoned with.

Our patrons were the blue collar sons and daughters of Pittsburgh — with a special emphasis on Italians, but there were more than a few Greeks and your standard Pittsburgh assortment of Slavs and Croats and Poles. The children of the mills. But remember, this is the late 70's. The mills were running strong, night and day, and the unions were strong, too. Our clients were making good money. DAMN good money. And they wanted to flaunt it. Conspicuous consumption was everywhere.

A significant portion of our customers were not, at least to the hired help, nice people. They wanted to flaunt their wealth, and they did that the best way they knew how — by being ignorant to the staff. It wasn't unusual in the least for a customer to snap his fingers and wave a dollar bill at you to get your attention, and then insult you once you got there. I dunno, maybe that sort of attitude was everywhere in that era and I'm a classist — and classless — jerk.

I should also point out that a significant portion of our clientele gave off the impression that, perhaps, they might belong to a particularly notorious Italian social club. (Twenty years later, during my second tour of duty at Monzo's, I was offered a job "busting kneecaps", so I suppose that some of those rumors were true. The guy who offered that gig had taken a liking to me, and told me, "With that face, nobody would ever think that you were going to walk up to them and bust their kneecaps." A proud moment — there I was with three college degrees, working the same job I'd had in high school, and being offered a career in organized crime.)

It was a fun job, though, and lucrative. Probably TOO lucrative for an 17-year-old kid. I had more money than I knew what to do with, which is the primary reason for my extensive record collection. I'd hear a song I liked on the radio, and immediately run out and buy the album, and perhaps a couple MORE albums. A good way to build a collection, I suppose, but considering that most of us have wretched taste in everything at that age, I ended up with some real crap, too. Molly Hatchet, I'm looking in your direction...

But it really WAS a wild place. My mom was right. Monzo's was the scene of, or at least indirectly responsible for, so many "firsts" in my young life that my parents would've camped outside with rifles to stop me from entering the doors of the place had they known what was going on.

It was a wild place, and it got wilder once Monzo opened the Ritz Disco. I suppose a lot of people have an idealized image of what discos were really like. People imagine Studio 54, with beautiful people dripping off the walls. And I suppose that image was reality in some places.

But the reality of disco was that it was, at least in the beginning, a blue-collar, lower-middle-class phenomenon. Remember Saturday Night Fever? That was the true disco crowd, and that was the crowd we pulled in at the Ritz. Dressed to the nines, but rough around the edges. And pull them in we did. For a couple of years, the Ritz was at or near the top of the heap in the stratus of local dance clubs.

One busy Saturday night, I was pulled off bussing duty in the lounge to go park cars for The Ritz. It was a revelation. Instead of being crammed inside a smoke-filled bar, listening to music that I hated, I got to spend the evening outdoors with a couple of crusty buddies, accompanied only by the incessant THUMPTHUMPTHUMP of the heavy disco beat vibrating off the walls. It was amazing, actually. If you remember much about disco, you'll recall that nearly every song had the same tempo (roughly 120 beats/minute). We couldn't hear any of the music but the kick drum. All we heard, five hours straight, was thumpthumpthump.

It was a good place, though, ol' HoJo's, and it holds a lot of good memories. I watched the '79 Pirates fam-a-lee clinch the World Series there, and a few months later I watched the Steelers beat the Rams in the Super Bowl. On my 18th birthday, I was promoted to waiter. That promotion led to my hanging out with a number of older waitresses, who got me into bars and into trouble of varying degrees.

Fast forward 20+ years. I've completed grad school, and have moved to Philly for an internship, with a potential job looming in NYC. My mom gets sick, and I move back to Pittsburgh, where a degree in "Television, Radio and Film" is about as useful as it sounds. A buddy of mine and I make a quick visit into Monzo's (now renamed "The Palace Inn," after Mr. Monzo decided that the HoJo franchise fee wasn't worth the price of admission). We're talking to Mrs. Monzo, who has a vague recollection of my having worked there. She remembers my friend well — it's hard to forget a guy who goes 6'9" and weighs upwards of 350 pounds. We mention that I'm out of work, and Mrs. Monzo — God love her — offers me my high school job back.

Pathetic, but I took it. A few nights later, and I'm hanging the very same goddamn glasses in the very same goddamn overhead racks that I'd done in high school. A real low point, made even lower by the temp job I was also working during the morning. (That's the temp job that is the subject of the popular "I Was Kneed In the Ass by an Evil Leprechaun" blog entry from a while back.)

There's not much to say about my second stint at Monzo's. I waited tables, I dj'd there one night a week for a while, I was snowed in with about 100 contestants in the "Miss Pennsylvania" pageant one St. Patricks Day weekend, and I generally did my best to make the best of the situation. And it wasn't that bad, to be honest. I actually always kind of liked waiting on tables.

(As an aside, that idiotic leprechaun ass-kicking temp job led me to a temp job helping to put Westinghouse out of business, where fortune smiled on me in the form of my future wife. Sometimes you just need to endure a few knees in the arse from a few evil leprechauns to get to the good things that are waiting just around the corner.)

Al Monzo died a couple of years ago. Mrs. Monzo wanted out of the game, but after an extended search for a buyer came up empty, she recently closed the place. The building is still in good shape, but it seems unlikely that anyone will buy it as a hotel. That's a valuable piece of real estate, at the corner of what I once heard described by a PennDOT official as the busiest intersection in Pennsylvania. The Turnpike and I-376 meet up about a tenth of a mile from the front door.

Mr. Monzo was a tenacious battler. His friends called him a "maverick," and his detractors called him a criminal. Either way, nearly every politician in Monroeville, and a number from a broader region, made a path to his door. Various Monroeville councilmen spent the vast majority of their evenings at Monzo's bar, and I can think of one Pittsburgh councilman who likely owes his position to Monzo money.

Al Monzo never bothered with building permits. He would make additions to his building the old fashioned way — he'd rev up one of his backhoes and start digging. Codes and building standards were an afterthought, as we all found out when the Ritz burned down in the mid-80's. (My buddy Frank and I were there that night as patrons, and our friend Chuck, the big guy I mentioned earlier, was bouncing. Frank and I were cheap, poor college students, so we snuck in a case of "Sterling" brand beer and would refill our glasses under the table. Chuck told us that the next day, while sifting through the rubble, they found empty "Sterling" cans all through the smoldering building.)

Mr. Monzo later built a building on Route 48 for Westinghouse which would go on to create some controversy after it was discovered to contain a "penthouse apartment" that was NOT on the building plans. Westinghouse executives used it as their own personal little love nest instead of doing the work that might've kept Westinghouse in existence.

We drove past Monzo's last weekend. I was hoping for a glimpse inside, but the entire parking lot is fenced off. You can't even get close. Sad. I wanted to take some pictures, but it's probably better I didn't. It had gotten a little bit run-down over the past few years. Better to remember it grand and lively and full of the vices that would've put my folks in a mental home, if only they'd known what was going on under that orange roof.

(Post-Gazette article on the Palace Inn closure)

Comments

[Kenn]

Boy we used to go to the Ritz all through the early 80's!

Between The Ritz, Top Charlies, and Dynasty we were busy every night. Funny, kids these days will never know what that was like. Mostly they will never know that the worst you faced in a night out was a beat down by some rival kids... which we often had coming anyway.

Good times. Good times.

[Ryan]

Wow, this was an amazing article to find!

Al Monzo gave me my first real job in the early nineties... And it wasn't a little one either. I was only 15 years old when I started working on demolishing what was the club Ritz and started building what would become Club Dallas and Than Club Vegas. I was wondering how I could get a job like this so young, but after my parents stopped by to inquire- I learned that Al had started working in construction as a teenager and respected how hard I was working at a young age.
At this point I was crazy for sound systems, and I made sure to install the biggest baddest audio system I could dream up at the time in the place. Even now almost 20 years later - The job I did is resume worthy! I wish they had digital camera's back then. The few disposable camera shots I took of it didn't develop correctly... My mind holds the clear images.
Really, I do have to say Al was good to me while I was busting my chops installing all that stuff. He gave me the master keys to the place, and with those master keys I was able to see many places in all of the buildings that normal people did not. Let me tell you, those private pent houses and suites... were as grand as all the stories you have heard. I never really saw a bad side to him like some of the stories I've heard over the years. Just a tough guy that made it happen no matter what the adversity he faced. Maybe it was just that I caught him later in his years, but I will attribute some of my no-nonsense business approach to him.
Maybe it was because a lot of times people would ask him if I was his grand son, he liked that... or whatever. But I was able to sit along side him in his office while he dealt with many contractors and suppliers for the hotel. I learned enough about business to know I wanted to run my own someday.
For me, there were a ton of firsts at the Palace Inn as well, and much of it was very fun at the time. After all, how many times does the boss let you drive his Cadillac when he knows you don't have drivers license because your only 15? Now almost 20 years since then, I'm living with my own family on the west coast- here I'm thinking about it. I really miss the place- or more importantly the guy who made it. It was truly a unique opportunity for many people over many years, and had a profound effect on me.

[Dan]

I only recently discovered this post. I enjoyed it tremendously. I wanted to share some of my rememberences of Monzos. I also started as a bus boy but it was early 80's. My main job on a busy Sat night was running booze from the service bar to the chef and food from the chefs to the service bartender, who would then share with the other bartenders. We use to take a cut each way so we ended up stuffed and hammered at the same time.
Speaking of the service bar: It leaked badly and we would have a pool of nasty bacteria filled water but the end of the night. And the little window we would throw dishes thru to get to the dish tank. Or for a quick escape when there was something nasty that needed cleaned up.
The UNIFORMS; Guys white pressed shirt girls short skirts and open shirts. How wonderful for us just thru puberty boys!!
The Ritz was a total another animal. I started as a bar back when it reopened after the fire. This was a big promotion. Besides getting ice and washing glasses for a couple thousand people a night our big responsibilities were getting Perrier for the DJ and putting dry ice in the fog machine. Every time Pseu Pseu pseudo came on it meant quit washing glasses and sprint to the freezer and grab the dry ice fight thru the crowd and shove in the machine before the song was over. I have never forgiven Phil Collins!! One particular night I am putting the ice in and there is a bag on the floor by the dry ice machine. I pick it up It is full of cash. More than I could guess. The bouncer comes over and explains the system. The money is dropped off. The coke is put in its place deal done!!
I rose to the position of head service bartender. No pay raise but it meant I got to make the waitresses drinks plus what I sold. I can remember ringing up $4000 on a Sat. at a time when a Long Island Ice tea cost $5. Unbelievable how much money Al was making.
Oh the memories of Monzo's I can remember the laundry cart at the end of the night. We would grab an unsuspecting waitress and put her in the cart and run as fast as we could around the Casa di monzo!! We always wanted to put Daisy in there but was afraid.
After dinner we had to sweep the dance floor and spread the dance powder. Kardazz was one of the bands. They tortured me and the other busser by playing silly music while we swept. We got revenge but taking the leader singer off stage on New Years eve and putting him in the laundry cart and running him up to the front desk. We got out of the restaurant and here comes Al to check on things. He never said a word and kept on walking.
There was a seedy side to the place. I got the Sunday morning shift one year. I though the only perk was that I could stay in the hotel over night if it wasn't filled. My first Sunday I was told you open at 9:30. This is stupid. Who is coming to the bar that early?? Suddenly by 10:15 it looked like they were filming Godfater 12. All the bookies from Pgh showed up to set the lines. I made more money on Sunday mornings then I did in the Ritz on a Sat. Night. Hey how about something for the kid for the holidays." I am embarrassed to say what I walked with that day.
Lastly, am I the only one who noticed George, Al's maintenance man, worked odd hours?? We would be throwing garbage away at 3 or 4 a.m. and there would be George moving dirt in the back parking lot. All the time. I guess he had trouble getting it level but I always expected them to find Jimmy Hoffas' body when the tore down the hotel. I miss that place. It was a great place to work and helped become who I am.

[Jamie]

I also just discovered this and I gotta tell you that your stories bring back a lot of memories. I am Al's great nephew and spent some time there growing up. I just have to thank you for this article, it brings back some good memories. 1 memory was when I was a kid was playing hide and seek through out the entire hotel with my cousins, which if you could imagine was unbelievable as a child. Another memory was when I was a little older going up to the penthouse seeing the 16 foot radio control helicoptors hanging from the ceiling or however big it was. He was actually pretty cool to hang out with as I got older. I also started in construction like my uncle, and I would stop in to get a beer and hang out with him for a little while after working in pittsburgh. He used to get so mad when I would pay for my own drinks and food and I would always tell him that I wasn't there for any handouts just to hang out with him. He would always just turn his head and try not to laugh but it was hard for him not to, especially when I told him he charged to much. Anyway thank you for bringing back some good memories.