Last Week at APEM

A few people have asked me why we are closing and wondered if I was going to say something more formal. At first I was like, “who gives a shit about that? Just make the last bit of gelato, work hard, then bounce.” But okay, sure.

FIRST, let me say, we aren’t leaving New Jersey. We just moved to a new house near Brookdale Park. My dog, Clyde, and I enjoy waking up in the morning to make espresso and feed our goldfish. Plus our previous blog post was about how all the other states were mostly garbage. Unless I’m moving to Spain or Italy, I’m gonna be in Jersey (occasionally in SoCal).

NOW here are most of the reasons why we are closing:

-LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. Our curse was always finding a location whether when we had our previous business in California or back here in Jersey. Jenny and I are driven to near death. This time, we just aren’t willing to go through that again. We have been looking for 2 years now, even before we mentioned anything publicly. We were fully tapped out at the store and for us it was getting stressful with space. Also there were times the store was just dead (like the third week of August every year), and the only thing that could remedy that would be to be in a better location, a higher trafficked area.

-EMPLOYEES. Most of our employees are leaving for college. And we have been interviewing full time employees since spring. While people have kitchen experience, they have the wrong kind. It was better to hire a high school kid with no training than someone with to de-educate. But then how can we expect to grow only hiring high school/college kids with limited hours whom would leave us in a year? There are a lot of flakes with no virtue. What do you expect from a society that almost exclusively exists through abstraction. As a side note, it was cool how many of our high school and college kids turned into decent prep cooks and hospitality staff.

-TECH AND STUFF. I’m old school. I like hanging with people, smoking my tires at stoplights, and eating spaghetti with meatballs. Everything else is loose change. But society gone done made the loose change the whole point. All this tech shit just makes shit worse. And you have all the new food places around here or in the city. Meh. People be making some weird ass shit because they need attention, but is it good? Kardashian style. My heroes growing up were people like Thomas Jefferson and Diogenes. As a result I have an inclination against things that are ever increasingly more complex and where we need to use our own soul LESS. I see it in everyone no matter the age and sometimes in myself. I need to step away from all that.

-MEDIA. I’ve never met more boring and rigid people. Not that I’m a superstar, but I give you what you give me. We remember spending a day with a journalist and his photographer. The photographer and us had a blast making jokes and talking about gelato on the dairy farm in California. The journalist was kind of just there like an alpaca, and the article was mediocre at best. I should have just thrown some gelato at his face. It’s basically the same for every journalist I’ve ever met. I had some editor ask me why we were closing, and I said back, “because the media won’t cover us.” And they reply that ‘oh yeah, a lot of local media is closing up.’ I wanted to say,”YOU, I MEAN, YOU WON’T COVER US!” But it would have been like talking to an alpaca again. Who else is doing gelato and ice cream like us? If I were a boxer with the pace and the creativity that we keep up, most other boxers would have just woken up at the hospital. Look, I don’t think we are the best shit ever. I just do our thing with our mindset and know it’s unique. YES, unique enough for national recognition whether people like it or not. Tell lies since a few have done so already, just write about us. Journalism doesn’t seem like an easy gig, but that doesn’t mean it’s not lacking

-DIGNITAS. Which brings me to my world view. I’m no Carthaginian looking to setup commercial outposts along the coast. I’m also no Hellene singing poems. No, I’m more Roman in how I look at things. I love my sphere here in Montclair/Bloomfield and had no desire to go elsewhere as a relocation point. I’m fiercely loyal to the people who support us. How many times have we made flavors upon request or made someone happy? Do other places do this? To be loved by the people and grow with the people is everything. So it had to be first about moving to a bigger spot here, then expanding wider to other parts of New Jersey. The long lines are nice for financial stability and growth, but it was about a sign that people gave a shit and we weren’t just another useless business taking up space. I don’t get up at 4:00am unless it’s for a sense of duty. As someone with a Roman worldview, you are driven to succeed at the expense of your own health. And that is something I have done. So to save myself, from myself, I choose to retreat to my garden like Cincinnatus and tend to my tomatoes and sing songs to the gods.

Mixing all these things together was just a recipe for disaster. It is so hard to find a good location, annoying to find the right kind of help to propel us (I write this at 6pm on Sunday August 6 after having woken at 4am to make gelato which sold out in 2.5 hours), the media has made me bitter, and I’m just not wired like most people. So to prevent myself from having a stroke, it is better to bow out. There are quite a bit of flavors I didn’t get to, believe it or not, but that’s how it goes. It has been hard to let go since this has been my life since 2007. Well, I’ve always had multiple things going on in life and my mind is always full of ideas, but gelato was my everyday thing. It has taken some time for my ego to let go and to this very moment it is still fighting me. But I guess you could say that over the past two years I’ve seen our culture rot into such a pathetic state that the other things on my mind for years have bubbled to the surface. I could still make gelato since it is like breathing to me, but I don’t have time to sit and compile all the other things in my head. Before gelato I studied to pursue being a diplomat and on that ride I discovered political theory and anthropology. As I traveled in places like China, I hung out with peasants, mayors, businessmen, teachers, and homeless people. I personally think most language is a failure in communication, and I’ve always loved spending time with people and watching their faces, bodies, and their smell as we hang. It is an odd thing, but language is full of lies. Most of us can’t hide anything with our bodies. And today’s technology has, in my observation, split the average person in two. There’s the online which is almost their true self today, and their physical which is a nervous wreck. If true, that is disconcerting and a serious threat to freedom (not that people actually think about freedom anymore). Anyway, the point being is that I’m a curious person about many little things and without serious help at APEM I can’t make gelato and battle with my mind that’s always watching, listening, and wanting time to sit and absorb it all even though I’d love to be making gelato right at this moment.

As for what is in store for Jenny and myself… well, as I like to say,” we aren’t stupid people, thankfully.” We will find our way, because that’s all that matters. I love making gelato and will continue to do so for myself (there’s no way I’m eating all that other shit out there), I am now free to travel to any place on the planet without seasonal constraints, and the things I’ve kept hidden in the shadows about myself can run feral. Also I have never lived through a period of such shitty food. People ask me where to eat and I couldn’t really say. Food is at such a low I’d probably recommend Popeyes. It did dawn on me at one point this summer to review restaurants as a side thing. Maybe if I start to see better places come around. For Jenny, she can focus on the other things she enjoys like traveling and taking up woodworking. Some asked if we’d consider doing something again down the line. Really? Would you even remember us in a year? If so, I am touched because most things drift away with the sands of time. It is very unlikely that would happen. As someone with my worldview, I’d say we did a good thing for how long we did it and that much we can be grateful for. Things should never last forever and an ending/death is a blessing in disguise because it shows you how much a thing really meant. That is how life is supposed to go.

See you around town.

Alex