From the Zola System
alexzola
- Location
- New York, New York, USA
- Birthday
- January 30
- Bio
- I grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in the Zola System, my father’s philosophy of life. He taught my brothers and me the basic life skills: how to run a street hustle, perpetrate a con or recognize when you were being hustled or conned; information we needed so we could feed our families if another Hitler came to power. My father Aron Zola was a Romanian Jew, a holocaust survivor, a black marketeer, a gun runner, a successful entrepreneur, a true citizen of Detroit. When I was 18, I rebelled against the Zola System and moved to New York City. I was fascinated with cultural heroes – Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson and the aesthetic bohemian artist lifestyle that, in my naivete, I thought they lived. Now I see they were working their own hustles on the public, just like the Old Man. Even the Manhattan dating scene runs on the Zola System. To paraphrase Mark Twain, now that the Old Man is dead, I’m shocked how much he learned.
I wrote reviews for SPIN, an unpublished brunch guide for New York City, covered the death penalty, reviewed books for the New York Law Journal and profiled sports stars for the Jewish Forward. I have two crime novels and a bartenders guide to New York City that I am trying to sell. After dabbling in so many genres, I finally realized I’d been running from my subject: my father and the Zola System. The Old Man is gone now and I am his eldest son carrying on as he wanted me to do. This was not supposed to happen.
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “So who does love Chachi
these days? And what would
Grandma
Nussbaum say?”
January 22, 2010 01:36PM - “The way I remember the
snapping turtles, you just fed
them,
never threw the
fish…”
January 22, 2010 01:33PM - “Since I am doing 2-5 in
Scottsdale at the moment, I am
a bit
new to the Sheriff
J…”
January 09, 2010 05:54PM - “As long as Little Man
doesn't do a 'stage' dive from
the
balcony of the
Nectarine…”
December 08, 2009 02:25PM - “I had this very argument
with an ex girlfriend once.
Perhaps
this is one
reason…”
November 08, 2009 12:23PM
Alexzola's Links
- New list
- The Zola System
Busted By Stoli Gold
The following is a true story that occurred a few years back in a now defunct Midtown restaurant. No names have been mentioned because everyone is guilty as hell.
“No.” The suit said. “I asked for a Stoli Gold on the rocks.”
The bartender held up the S… Read full post »
Do You Remember What It Was Like To Be Born?
One
of the songs I don’t like to admit I feel a kinship with is
off of Richard and
Linda Thompson’s 1974 masterpiece
I
Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.
The song entitled, ‘The End of the Rainbow,’ is
ostensibly sung by an adult to a baby lying… Read full post »
The Greatest Bar Gimmick of All Time
The Subway Inn is a modern rarity. It is a dark and
decrepit monument left to the cheap drinking culture that once
inhabited New York City at a time when rents, the economy and
mayoral disgust are killing the other dive bars there were once
part of Old New York. … Read full post »
The New Fascist Excuse: My Injuries Made Me Do It
Mark McGwire came clean.
In a statement released to the AP and a near simultaneous interview with Bob Costas on the MLB Network, McGwire admitted to using steroids for over a decade. This decade includes the ‘epic’ chase of Roger Maris’s single season home run record of 61… Read full post »
Profiled or Potential Suspect?
The car behind me was trying to act non-descript; low lights, dark windows, headlights dim. “Fuck,” I swore. “I can’t believe it.” I knew once I made my left turn onto Hayden Road, the police cruiser behind me was going to pull me over. “Fuck,” I swo… Read full post »
Needed: New York Street Skills
There is something weird happening in New York. The phenomenon is so odd it might not even register; New York’s traffic is on the decline. I’d like to be able to tell you it’s because the city is going Green and trying to do it’s small bit to save the environment… Read full post »
Ohio Experiments on the Condemned - What Else Is New?
The state of Ohio thinks it is taking the country into uncharted execution territory and the media is hopping mad.
Tuesday, Kenneth Biros will be put to death in the Ohio death chamber for the February 1991 murder of Tami Engstrom. The state of Ohio uses lethal/… Read full post »
Sold For $583 K - A True Detroit Story
Times are very tough.
The city of Pontiac, Michigan put the Silverdome, the home of the Detroit Lions from 1975-2001, up for sale in 2002. Back when the stadium was built in the early 1970’s, taxpayers laid out $55.7 million for the state of the ar/… Read full post »
Now I Get It
Gambling was an accepted form of communication in the Zola home. If the Old Man said something that was response provoking, say Mondale won’t carry a state in 1984, and one of the families thought otherwise, it was accepted practice to throw $1 or $10 or $20 on the kitchen table/… Read full post »
There is a new social class that is making its way into the fabric of New York City, one that used to be weeded out by the street tax of violence, threatened or real. The time of the urban rube has arrived.
According to Merriman-Webster’s online dictionary, a rube is… Read full post »
The episode began when Tom, our sommelier, opened one of the six bottles of 2001 La Tache we had in house, although not on inventory. La Tache is one of top two, Richebourg being the other, Cru’s in Burgundy. A bottle of this specific Pinot Noir retails for over $400 and… Read full post »
My Bout With H1N1
For 36 hours, I ran a low grade fever, had some chills and no appetite. I fell asleep for 12 hours and felt somewhat right when/… Read full post »
I Blame Lou Reed
I have mentioned alluded to and now will finally come out of the closet with this bold declaration: yes, I have left New York. Currently, I am residing in the wilds of Scottsdale, Arizona while I make the decisions on my apartment, what to write next and how to sell wine to/… Read full post »
This item caught my eye as it came over the newswire. In Western Australia, a family learned about the death of their daughter via Facebook. The police were in the process of contacting the parents of the 16-year old girl. The speed of the internet wins out again. As social ne/… Read full post »
Miguel Cabrera - Asshole of the Month
Your name is Miguel Cabrera. You are a 26 year old baseball player, a first baseman. Your extraordinary talent with a bat has earned you an 8 year $152 million contract. Your team is in the midst of a pennant race. If you win one more game, you will clinch the/… Read full post »
She-Males Invade Gramercy Park
There is a Transvestite/Trans-Sexual night in a Gramercy/Flatiron bar.
Two and a half blocks away from my apartment, at 3:30am on a Sunday, I saw a gaggle of Asian T-girls smoking outside the Gramercy Tavern, one of the best and most popular restaurants in the City. The dichotomy struck me… Read full post »
New Yorkers have been portrayed as a neurotic strange breed in film and television. We move into our elegant cells, close the door and become somewhat secretive. Yes, there are those that come to the city to get away small town where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. The l… Read full post »
Training The Old School Way
Bartending is simple work. Remember your customer’s faces, what they drink and the names of their kids. It has nothing to do with making drinks. Anyone can follow a recipe. There are seven gorillas that are better bartenders than I am. I know. I trained five of them.
I was… Read full post »
Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, the mood in New York is somber. There’s an odd consideration for your neighbor, the guy next to you on the street or the person in front of you in line at the deli. Even the cabbies are staying out of the crosswalk when they stop fo/
… Read full post »Three of my co-workers kept telling me about a bar they found on 11th Street and the West Side Highway.
“It’s great, Alex, just the kind of place you’d like to hang out in. The Rusty Knot is sleazy.”
My interest was piqued. Ever since I/… Read full post »
Drab Expensive Cells
For a city faced with budget cuts due to a bad economy, declining population and the loss of a major tax base on Wall Street, New York is still going through something of a building boom. It seems that every avenue in every district of Manhattan has some sort of a residential/… Read full post »
A bartender is a social director, a matchmaker for his customers personally and professionally.
Gary, my first boss in the business, had a masterful touch when it came to introductions. He was responsible for two marriages and one business partnership. “Remember to always/… Read full post »
New York City poker clubs are an endangered species.
“This joint on 28th Street I was playing in a few weeks ago got raided,” my friend Steve told me “the cops came in, had us leave our chips on the table, questioned the players, detained the dealers and arrested the manager.&n… Read full post »
It was the busiest Tuesday of the year at the Park Avenue Cafe. We did 220 lunches and were expecting 500 people for dinner. I was working an open to close double.
4:30pm. I was trying to clean and re-set the bar for dinner service. Due to the ferocity of the lunch service period,/… Read full post »
On New Year’s Day 2008, my girlfriend and I broke up. I should have seen it coming. I managed to get reservations at a hot New York restaurant for New Year’s Eve and she cancelled with plans to stay home “alone” with a “cold.” Much like the rest o… Read full post »
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