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KRIKORIAN: U.S. women's water polo able to raise $14,000
By Doug Krikorian Columnist
02/21/2011
Link: http://www.presstelegram.com/sports/ci_17446226

A hangout across the decades for cops, fire fighters, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, iron workers, truck drivers, longshoremen, barbers, accountants, building contractors, government bureaucrats, etc., that historic tavern on Anaheim Street, Joe Jost's, on Saturday morphed into a water polo mecca.

Indeed, the back pool room was turned into a memorabilia shrine for the sport, as various items were auctioned off in what turned out to be a stirringly successful fundraiser for the U.S. women's water polo team that trains at the Joint Forces Military Base in Los Alamitos.

A lot of people like local Re/Max mogul Barry Binder - he wrote out a check for $500 - made generous donations. Four large posters featuring that racy ESPN Magazine water polo team photo also fetched immense sums, with one going for $550.

A percentage of Joe Jost's profit as well as proceeds from the sale of all sorts of things - thousands of raffle tickets, dozens of T-shirts and a lot of Super Mex tacos - resulted in the final take from the affair exceeding $14,000.

The old place was filled to capacity as players from Adam Krikorian's No.1 ranked team posed for pictures, signed autographs, gabbed with the clientele and gave pointers to a lot of wide-eyed young water polo-playing girls brought to the function by their parents.

The bartenders were kept busy by the thirsty and hungry customers, but I'm not sure anyone worked harder than Ken Buck, owner of Joe Jost's.

Why, Buck - a dead ringer for political polemist James Carville - spent the day feverishly busing dishes and beer mugs off the tables in an impressive display of entrepreneurial vigor.

"What a great turnout," cooed Krikorian, who is no relation to me but is the younger brother of the multimillionaire Slingbox founders, Blake and Jason Krikorian. "And what a great day."

It certainly was for water polo Olympian Lauren Wenger, the Wilson High graduate who coordinated the event with Ron (Nacho) Agee, and Mike (The Hammer) DiMarzo.

The latter handled PR duties for it and brought along his parents, Don and Carmen DiMarzo, his girlfriend Judy (The Stater Bros. Stallion) Williamson and his entourage that included the likes of Ricky French, Big Daddy Don Marmion, Brian (Spyder) Binder, Ed Arrocha and Capt. Brad Liebeck.

Of course, the creme de la creme of the local social set showed up, including, among countless others, Susie Atwood, Lydia (Big Hair) Wagner, Dan Gooch, Michael and Angela Castro, Daring Dave Butler, Mark (Pretty Boy) Edmondson, Mike Stovall, Darrelyn Guthner, John (Nature Boy) Narz, Bad Stu Ledsam and Junk Bond Jimmy Werner, along with his faithful companion Gary (Three Emmys) Lakes.

Incidentally, that renowned shutterbug, Mariano Bonilla, the Ansel Adams of Joe Jost's, was everywhere throughout the proceedings, taking hundreds of photographs of people enjoying the festivities on a memorable day when the venerable saloon on Anaheim became the water polo capital of Long Beach.

Elsewhere

Nick Sanchez, on his son, Mark Sanchez, to Phil Trani in regard to all the media reports about the bachelor New York Jets' quarterback being quite a playboy: "Believe half of what you read and nothing what you hear."

A couple of local duffers, Long Beach State and Poly High Hall of Fame athlete Rick Bryson, and Schooner Or Later/Tantalum owner - Kelly's 1/25th owner Dashing Denny Lund, each recently converted hole-in-ones.

Bryson, who carries a three handicap, achieved his miracle on the 157-yard 11th hole at the Hideaway Golf course in La Quinta, while Dashing Denny, who carries a 13 handicap, consummated his implausible shot on the 140-yard 12th hole at Recreation Park in front of sworn witnesses Jerry Scanlan, Jeff Severson and John Kahler.

The most fatigued person in Long Beach Monday had to be long-time NBA security operative, Mike Wixted, the decorated retired LAPD vice detective who began working the NBA All-Star weekend last Thursday evening and didn't complete his chores until late Sunday evening.

He had a variety of grueling duties, including attending a lot of A-list parties and shadowing NBA commissioner David Stern.

Actually saw Wixted last Thursday night at the Jerry West statue unveiling at Staples Center, which turned out to be quite an event, especially the post-ceremony shindig at the Lexus Club.

Introduced the Blonde Sheriff to West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Jerry Buss, Elgin Baylor, Tommy Hawkins and Pat Riley, whom she naturally swooned over, as do all women.

Told Bill Russell I saw him high jump 6-9 at the Fresno West Coast Relays a long time ago, and he said, "Wow! Not many people remember my track and field accomplishments."

Also told Abdul-Jabbar, whom I had a strained relationship with during his playing days, that I consider him the greatest center in the history of basketball. He actually nodded in appreciation.

Of course, told Ol' Doc Buss his team was in badly need of a mid-season retooling and that Carmelo Anthony would be a nice addition. He didn't disagree with me.

Matti Sandoval, daughter of the lovable and charming Marine director Mark Sandoval, has been coaching the Poly High women's junior varsity soccer team. She herself was an all-Moore League selection in the sport on Poly's 2009 league champions.

Incidentally, her father, once Public Enemy No.1 among local rowers, recently effected an armistice with the group and even his fiercest critics, The First Family Of Rowing, the Van Bloms, John & Joan, have disarmed their rhetorical bombs.

Now if we only can get the water polo advocate, Long Beach State graduate Rich Foster, and the school's athletic director, Vivacious Vic Cegles, to iron out their well-publicized differences growing out of the forced departure of Foster's beloved Shore Aquatics from his alma mater.

Actually, famous 49er booster Rocky Suares is attempting to do so, having arranged an upcoming sitdown at his home between the two iron-willed individuals who passionately believe in the sanctity of their causes.

Please help us raise money for our team to compete for the gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. Come meet the team and coaches. We will have raffle and auction items and the Super Mex truck serving food at the event. All donations are tax deductible. We hope to see you there.

Best Pickled Eggs: Joe Jost's By Willy Blackmore
Sep. 7 2010
Categories: Bars, Best Of L.A.

Every dive has its history, but when it comes to bars in Southern California, it's nearly impossible to top Long Beach's Joe Jost's--one of the oldest continually operating taverns in any state west of the Mississippi.

Jost, a Hungarian immigrant, opened the eponymous business in 1924, running it as a combination barbershop and pool hall that served food--including the famous Special sandwich and pickled eggs--during the dry years of Prohibition. That those eggs, stained yellow with pepper-spiced brine, predated the availability of a nearly frozen schooner of Eastside Old Tap Lager--or, in later years Pabst and now Busch--seems almost impossible, as their spicy, vinegary flavor is matched perfectly with a gigantic beer so cold that small ice floes often appear on the head.

Enjoyed at the bar, the eggs come showered in black pepper, served in a loosely twisted square of deli paper alongside pretzels and a stray pickled pepper or two. And for fans that live a few too many freeway interchanges away, the bartenders will gladly will you send you home with a Mason jar full.

Joe Jost's: 2803 East Anaheim Street, Long Beach, (562) 439-5446.

Look for more "Best of L.A." pieces in our annual Best of L.A. issue, coming Oct. 7th.

Link to article.: http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/best-of-la/best-pickled-eggs-joe-josts/

Bar benefit to celebrate new Web site
By John Canalis
9/16/2008

LONG BEACH - Joe Jost's, one of Long Beach's oldest watering holes, is pouring a new brew online.

The 85-year-old bar, known for its pickled eggs and drafts served at 29 degrees, launched a new Web site Tuesday, www.joejosts.com, that gives viewers a glimpse inside.

But there's more to it. To celebrate the new site, the tavern at 2803 East Anaheim St. plans to host a Saturday fundraiser for the Long Beach City College Athletics Department. All of the sales between 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. will benefit the program.

Computers will be set up in the bar area, allowing customers to explore the new Web site.

"We are very happy with the new site," Ken Buck, grandson of the original owner, said in a press release. "We think it captures the history and laid-back atmosphere of Joe Jost's. I think my grandfather would be proud."

His grandfather, Joe Jost, opened the bar in 1924 inside an old barber shop.

john.canalis@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1273

History, Los Angeles County
Monday, September 15, 2008
Joe Jost's

Peanuts and sausage and beer, oh my!
Joe Jost's of Long Beach, featured in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times (ok, it was their peanut roaster that was the star of the article) has redone their own website and it's too cool for me to describe. They even have a keg cam, so you can see that your beer is chilling properly. Go see, but turn down your speaker volume if you're at work.

I read somewhere that this was the place that Kevin Costner took Whitney Houston to in The Bodyguard. It was definitely in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, Gone in 60 Seconds (the Nicholas Cage version), and a few beer commercials.

There really was a Joe Jost, too. Read about him on the website; his grandson still runs the place. I've got a sudden craving for liverwurst . . .

Joe Jost, Long Beach’s oldest surviving bar, has a newly redesigned website, with a front page which–wisely–gives you a drinker’s-eye-view of the darkly-wooded bar: schooners at the ready, ancient pennants and “No shirt, no shoes …” sign; and, of course, the jar of famously-pickled eggs and bags of roasted peanuts.

You can almost taste the beer, cold as Valley Forge, and to mark the cyber-occasion, Joe Jost will throw a daylong fundraiser on Saturday, with proceeds going to the Long Beach City College Athletics Department.

Bar owner Ken Buck, grandson of Joe Jost, will be on hand to answer any questions you may have–though if you ask what movies and commercials this place has been featured in, or how cold the beer is, he may just point, or direct you to the new website.

It features a list of the films (from 1981’s True Confessions to 2006’s License to Wed)–plus a beer cam (showing the digital temperature read-out on the cooler); and, elsewhere, a continuous scroll of the bar’s series of girlie calendars, a longtime yearly offering.

There’s also the story of how Marmion’s peanut roaster came to Joe Jost, and a series of excellent photographs of the bar (taxidermy, beer can airplane and all)–and of the food.

And for those Joe’s patrons without a computer (somehow, we think there might be a few such stalwarts, and we salute you) or who’d just like to get a peek at the website, Joe Jost will have a few examples of something on hand Saturday which flies in the face of the bar’s analog nature: a computer.

That’s right: you’ll be able to visit Joe Jost’s website at Joe Jost, with a frosty schooner in hand. It’s almost too much of a good thing. Almost.

Long Beach saloon's 100-year-old peanut roaster is still cooking. The Rube Goldberg-like machine cranks out 400 pounds of goobers a week at Joe Jost's.
Steve Harvey
September 14, 2008

It's like something out of an old Rube Goldberg cartoon, a wacky contraption outfitted with various-sized wheels, leather belts and cross-bars, as well as a catcher bin, a trap door and a 1-hp motor.

The 100-year-old peanut roaster sits in the backroom of Joe Jost's saloon in Long Beach, where it might be mistaken for nothing more than a colorful piece of decor, except the darn thing still works. It turns out 400 pounds of unsalted goobers a week.

"We have people come in for the first time, and they don't know what it is," said owner Ken Buck, grandson of founder Joe Jost. "They ask if it's a popcorn-maker. Or they think it's the water heater."

"Some people say it smells like peanut butter cookies," said his wife, Cathleen, who handles some of the roasting chores.

The antique fits right in at Jost's, an 84-year-old saloon that venerates the past with such old-time touches as brass foot rails, wooden booths, deer heads, a wooden telephone booth that has no telephone and a men's room with a trough.

There's also an ancient barber's sink behind the bar from the early days when Jost offered sandwiches, beer and haircuts. Eventually, health authorities told him they "didn't want him serving alcohol and shaving people with a straight-edge razor," Cathleen Buck said.

Out went the barber chairs, comfortable as they were.

The older Jost customers like things the way they are. They raised a small ruckus, for example, when Ken Buck stopped serving Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. But when he purchased the peanut roaster two decades ago, that was one change "no one griped about," he said.

Truth be told, Buck had a few reservations about the idea.

"He was afraid that people would throw the shells all over the floor," Cathleen Buck said. But even the messiest male patrons have been trained by bartenders to deposit their shells in small discard boxes with surprising regularity.

The belt-driven roaster itself has gone through some changes. It was originally a coffee roaster, proud product of the Milwaukee Gas and Stove Co., when it went into operation in 1907 at W.H. Marmion's general store in Long Beach.

But after World War I, great-grandson Bill Marmion said, "vacuum-packed coffee began to be prevalent. You could go to a store and buy it more cheaply. So he converted it into a peanut roaster."

Oddly enough, the machine wound up at Jost's because of a transient with a sweet tooth.

A young man broke into Marmion's in 1989, stole some gum balls and set the place on fire, unaware that it was a hangout for cops. Police found the intruder a couple of days later, with gum balls still in his pocket.

"There were very few officers who didn't know what we sold at the store," Bill Marmion said. "They knew the gum balls came from us."

But Bill's mother, Ruth, decided it was time to shut down the business.

The Marmions knew Buck and thought that Jost's would make a good home for their roaster. Buck sheathed it in copper and replaced the belts and some other parts.

To keep alive its connection with the past, he placed a weathered sign above it that proclaims, "Marmion Co./Spices/Peanuts."

"I go in there and get a free peanut once in a while," Bill Marmion said with a smile.

He can recognize the taste because Jost's uses the same type of peanut that Marmion's favored: Virginia-grade, jumbo size and never soaked in brine.

After all these years, the roaster can be crotchety.

"The machine has a mind of its own," Cathleen Buck said. "You have to make friends with the machine."

Roasting can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour because the roaster has no temperature gauge and the gas burners sometimes have to be adjusted. She can usually tell when a batch is ready by the golden color of the contents and the taste of a sample.

"I'm used to handling hot peanuts," she said. "Sometimes I'll hand one right out of the roaster to someone, and they'll let out a little scream. My hands are like oven gloves."

She paused.

"It's a funny thing," she quipped. "I graduated magna cum laude. And I've become a peanut lady."

The return of the barkeeps
Tim Grobaty

THE OLD JOKES ARE THE BEST: Couple of termites are gnawing merrily on the timeworn counter of Joe Jost's. The door swings open and an out-of-town termite is standing there with his little hobo bindle slung over his shoulder and an old stogie stuck in the corner of his mouth. The new termite sez to the others, "Hey, fellas, is the bartender here?"

Is he ever! Long Beach's most venerable beer hall, Joe Jost's, will be crawling with bartenders on Saturday, and they all have a bit of history in common: Each one has "Bartender: Joe Jost's" on his resume.

Most will be there as customers, though, when 40 to 50 behind-the-bar alumni of this town's oldest bar show up between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday to chat about the happy past, reacquaint themselves with old co-workers and loyal customers and maybe share some bar jokes that are a lot better than the one we just sprung on you.

"We put out the word that we were having a bartender reunion a few weeks ago, and word got around, and now we have about 40 who will be showing up on Saturday," says Jost's owner Ken Buck.

The crowd of former nectar directors will range in age from the early 20s to over 80 - the eldest is George Gorman, the father-in-law of former ballplayer Jeff Burroughs - and they'll be coming from as far away as Virginia and Texas.

"They've all been great people," says Buck. Most, he says, weren't bartenders before or after working at Jost's; they just spent a bit of time there making money to see them through school before moving on to careers in fields outside the arena of keg-tapping.

"We have a couple of guys who were here in the 1960s, about a half-dozen from the '70s and the rest from the '80s, '90s and beyond," says Buck.

A couple might take a turn on the working side of the bar, says the boss, but most, he says, haven't done it for a while, and they're just going to be enjoying a couple of Pabsts, a few pickled eggs and a "special" sandwich or two.

Buck has also commissioned commemorative T-shirts for the event and will be giving engraved schooners to the returning heroes.

All the day's proceeds - and half of the current bartenders' tips - will be donated to Cal State Long Beach's athletics programs.

Joe Jost's Is Still a Cut Above Most Bars
Los Angeles Times
Patrick Mott

Joe Jost]'s originally was a barber shop where Joe, then a barber, began serving sandwiches and root beer to his patrons during the Prohibition years. After the repeal of Prohibition, he started serving beer in hefty schooner glasses. But health department regulations forced a choice: Either cut hair or serve food and beer. Joe hung up the shears forever.

Ken Buck opened a second Joe Jost's in 1979 in downtown Long Beach at the corner of Pine Avenue and 5th Street, designed mainly to cater to the lunchtime crowd. While he says it has been successful, there still is an unspoken assumption among most Long Beach natives that when one speaks of Joe Jost's one means the little brown bar just off the corner of Anaheim Street and Temple Avenue. The one with the root beer sign still over the door. The one that will probably be there when [Wally Joyner]'s grandson is knocking them over the right field fence at Fenway.
Matt Lundin dishes up pickled eggs, a Joe Jost's specialty. Twenty-ounce schooners of beer, baseball playoffs are fare for patrons at Joe Jost's in Long Beach.

Cold Beer, Cheap Food, Level Pool Tables-and No Pretense
Los Angeles Times
Patrick Mott

The wooden rail under the aluminum bar has been worn smooth by men who took their sons in for their first public drinks and by the sons who in turn came with their own sons. The booths and tables are dark and wooden and bear carved initials that have been varnished over again and again. The ceiling fans are old and made for function, not show. The walls are cluttered with old photos, foreign bank notes and snapshots of patrons in Joe Jost's T-shirts standing before the Alamo, the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall of China.