75 Years at the Tap
Pittsburgh watering hole honors long-running bartender.
April 30, 2007 — -- While you might expect to find a hip 25-year-old behind the bar of your local watering hole, one Pennsylvania bartender defies the thinking that it's a young person's career.
The Pittsburgh institution Cammarata's Café traces its roots back to Prohibition, and so does its owner.
"I have been pouring beer since April 7, 1933," said Angelo Cammarata, 93, in an interview with ABC News. "At the very beginning, we did not have draft beer, we had bottled beer. In my dad's grocery store, we had an ice-cream soda fountain with a counter and that served as our first bar.
The owner, manager and resident psychologist at the West View haunt sold his first beer two weeks after the repeal of Prohibition. Cammarata was 19, and the beer was a 10-cent bottle of Fort Pitt, sold from a makeshift bar in his father's grocery store.
"My dad had to tear down his grocery store within a period of a year and build a big, beautiful, 49-foot-long bar, a dining room and everything," he explained.
Now, 75 years later, Cammarata is the world's longest-serving bartender and a local hero. Serving the residents of this tightknit community for three generations, not only has he filled their glasses but has also filled their lives with friendship and fun.
"My favorite part about being a bartender is all these folks that are in here … seeing them every day, talking with them, enjoying their company, and seeing that they enjoy our bar," said Cammarata at his diamond anniversary celebration April 7. "We're a very neighborhood bar. A lot of good personality here, there's a lot of good friendship. It's not only a matter of serving customers, but you can become well acquainted with them and enjoy them."
So, what's kept him going all these years?
Cammarata attributes his lengthy career and good health to "74 years of being on [his] feet," staying away from heavy drinking and smoking, and a bourbon and coke once a day.
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