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Chili dog, milkshake mecca loses a lovable character

The Coney Island Sandwich Shop, where everybody knows your name, mourns the loss of a mainstay.

By JON WILSON
Published October 16, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - No one shouted across the counter. No one quacked like an Aflac duck.

George P. Barlas, Coney Island Sandwich Shop co-owner, died Tuesday.

The quirky cafe, a joy to its customers, closed in his memory.

The service was Saturday. Coney Island will reopen Monday morning, said Hank Barlas, Mr. Barlas' brother.

It won't be business as usual.

"I've lost my best friend. I've never felt so alone," Hank Barlas said. "Even though I'm married and have a son, it's not the same. He was always there when I needed someone to talk to."

Every morning at 8, Hank Barlas picked up the cafe phone and called his brother at home. We're here and we're open, he'd tell Mr. Barlas. Maybe they'd talk a little business.

On Tuesday, Mr. Barlas didn't answer the ring.

Fighting emphysema and pneumonia, he died in bed in the Euclid house in which he and his brother grew up.

Mr. Barlas was 65.

A constant since 1926, probably the longest-running family restaurant in town, Coney Island offers chili dogs, chili burgers and milkshakes spun on a classic Hamilton mixer.

Customers take casual comfort from booths, stools and a tile counter.

City leaders and laborers have found common ground in the spicy specialties. Everyone smiled at the lunchroom banter George Barlas often initiated.

"He liked to agitate people," said Hank Barlas. "He'd provoke me until I'd do something, and then everybody would sit back and feel sorry for George."

George Barlas delighted in singing Old MacDonald, said Gail Kelley, a server. After the TV insurance commercial grew popular, Mr. Barlas liked to imitate the Aflac duck, she said.

Customers like the cafe's presence, which represents a living piece of old St. Petersburg. It is a relic from the Roaring '20s boom era, a seminal phase in the city's development.

"It's nostalgic and it's traditional. The place is just great," said accountant Richard Ulrich. He and his brother Bob Ulrich, a former St. Petersburg mayor, are regulars.

As mayor from 1987 to 1991, Ulrich often adjourned City Council meetings and led the leaders to lunch at Coney Island, recalled Ron Mason, a council member at the time. At 250 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N, the cafe is four blocks from City Hall.

The Barlas brothers took over Coney Island in 1984 after the death of their father, Peter Barlas, an immigrant from Greece.

They split restaurant chores, with Hank opening and George taking over the later shift.

"Sometimes they'd do the dishes if the dishwasher didn't show up," Kelley said.

There isn't much turnover among the staff. Hank Barlas reflected about that late last week, noting that the cafe doesn't offer much in the way of advancement and benefits.

Kelley has worked there for 13 years. Jerry Lovely has been a cook for 24. Danny Murphy was a dishwasher for 26.

Murphy had a reputation as an eccentric, riding a long-wheeled bicycle widely recognized downtown. He had cancer. But before he died in 2002 at age 45, co-workers and customers treated him to a trip to Graceland, the home of his idol, Elvis Presley.

"It's like a small family here," Lovely said.

Hank Barlas said he wants to keep the cafe going.

"It's going to be a little tough. He's the one who made it go," Barlas said of his brother.

"I used to talk to him so many times a day. I find myself all the time now . . . it's time to call him and I start to go to the phone. I can't call him."

[Last modified October 16, 2005, 01:32:18]