‘You’ve got to go’: Inside the contentious Angelo’s Pizzeria neighborhood meeting

Residents of Bella Vista gathered inside the Palumbo Recreation Center Wednesday night to grapple with a seemingly intractable problem: What to do about a takeout shop that has gotten seemingly too big for its South Philly-rowhouse britches.

Tensions ran high, with neighbors venting frustration over Angelo’s Pizzeria patrons speeding down family-friendly city streets, using private property to eat (or urinate), and generally creating a nuisance for Bella Vista residents. While some asked questions and contemplated solutions — sometimes only to unearth competing interests with other neighbors — a handful suggested that Angelo’s should leave the neighborhood entirely.

“They have a great product, they do a great job, but we’re the victims of their success,” one man said. “I’m glad for them, but unfortunately, it’s not good for the neighborhood.”

City Councilmember Mark Squilla presided over the meeting between about 75 Bella Vistans and two lawyers representing Angelo’s, the cheesesteak-and-pizza shop with humble roots that has mushroomed into a national phenom. A followup to a meeting held in November, it was the first forum for the neighborhood writ large to air grievances to Angelo’s representatives.

Owner Danny DiGiampietro was out of the country on a long-planned trip; he reached out to The Inquirer afterward to express his frustration at not being able to attend the meeting personally. In his stead were attorneys Peter Kelsen and Evan Lechtman, as well as Angelo’s general manager and partner Jared Braunstein.

One quagmire — who are the pizza shop’s patrons, and who should it serve? — arose time and again. “Have you looked into who the population is that you really do serve?” one woman posed.

“We’re not going to get into discussion of who’s allowed to come buy pizza,” one of Angelo’s attorneys said.

Though the meeting surfaced several possible lines of progress, little, if anything, was resolved by its close. About a dozen Bella Vistans signed up for a joint taskforce to deal with the pizzeria’s impact on the neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of passion, as we know, lot of concerns, but I think that there’s a framework to work together,” Kelsen said. “Closing the location, not so much, but certainly quality-of-life issues.”

As TV news crews rolled tape, the meeting got off to a calm start. Squilla recapped moves made since November: The city installed plastic bollards to daylight the intersection at Ninth and Fitzwater Streets; Angelo’s has placed five trash cans up and down Ninth, emptying them three to four times daily during operating hours; and a loading zone is possibly underway, potentially easing the pains of a delivery truck routinely blocking Fitzwater.

Kelsen stepped up to address to the growing crowd. DiGiampietro, Kelsen said, strongly feels he is a part of the South Philly community. (DiGiampietro grew up spending time in his dad’s pizza shop at Fifth and Watkins.) He finds the alleged behavior of Angelo’s patrons — littering, sitting on neighbors’ stoops and porches, relieving themselves in streets and alleys, etc. — as “unacceptable” as those in the audience, Kelsen said.

“We’re trying to take as many steps as we can to let people know it doesn’t fly,” Kelsen said, outlining measures on the table, including purchasing a pizza box recycler (likely to be placed on the rec center’s property) and establishing a community taskforce to facilitate a formal dialogue between Angelo’s ownership and the community. He also noted DiGiampietro is more than willing to contribute to neighborhood fundraisers and events. “Just ask,” Kelsen said.

Kelsen also laid to rest one suggested solution for Angelo’s hour-plus lines — that the shop open up its upstairs space for seating and bathrooms — explaining that it could not be made ADA-compliant. “Unfortunately, transparently, it just can’t happen,” he said.

Eileen Plato, who operated the landmark Judy’s Cafe at 3rd and Bainbridge for 35 years, wasn’t having it. The 34-year resident of the 700 block of South Ninth asked about the status of a violation Angelo’s received from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections last August, reportedly for failing to obtain a new use permit for 736 S. Ninth St. — in other words, operating under the permit issued to the previous occupant, Sarcone’s Deli, in 2007.

Squilla explained Angelo’s is appealing the violation and doesn’t yet have a set date for a hearing. (Angelo’s attorneys declined to comment further on the violation; Squilla did not immediately reply to a request for more information.)

Exasperated, Plato continued. “I know about crowds, I know about lines, I know about trash pickup. I got the whole thing. I appreciate what you’ve said. It does not address the fact your business model is not neighborhood-friendly,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do about the [customers] unless you change your business model,” she said. “You want the lines, you want the hype. That’s what it’s about.”

For Plato, working with Angelo’s to solve the problem was out of the question. “I don’t want to be in a taskforce. I want a change. I want to walk out of my front door and not have to shoo people off my step, and not have people throwing their trash in my planters, and also peeing in them.”

Plato said she loves Angelo’s predecessor, Sarcone’s Deli, whose family operates its bakery on the same block and are related to DiGiampietro by marriage. The two businesses aren’t equals, she said. “You are not operating as a community member. You’re a thorn in the side and a constant nuisance,” she finished, eliciting a round of applause.

Joel Palmer, a neighbor on the 600 block of Ninth, stood up to ask: “Why are you not on South Street?”

“There’s a 30% vacancy on South Street,” he continued, pointing out possible examples of prime real estate just two blocks north. With any changes to the current store’s footprint out of the question, why not move?, he asked. (Palmer said he suspected Angelo’s would have to fork over a substantially higher rent, cutting into its profits.)

“You cannot fix that location,” Palmer said. “You have to come to Jesus and understand that you can’t stay there. You’ve got to go.”

Reached by phone on Thursday, DiGiampietro disputed that he intentionally creates lines or social media hype. He said that he is as bothered by the crowding and rowdy patrons as the community. “We are not trying to do a nightclub atmosphere there. I cringe at them lines,” he said.

“I’m looking forward to sit down and and work with them,” he said. “I’m open to any and all suggestions, other than, ‘Oh, just pick up and move to South Street.’”

As the meeting went on, many offered support for Angelo’s, followed by a grievance.

“That’s awesome they open up a business, they’re doing really well, but there’s a park right there,” said a dad who lives on Delhi Street. Remarking on Angelo’s customers, often in pickup trucks, who zoom down Fitzwater Street, which intersects with three small, family-filled side streets, he said, “You’re gonna have a kid get hit.” (Squilla proposed a future traffic study, with the hope of installing speed cushions.)

Others took issue with the shortcomings of the plastic bollards at the intersections. “Is there something more permanent than the plastic flex posts?” one man asked. Another neighbor explained that solutions like planters and bike corrals are costly and involved. (It was suggested Angelo’s might spring for those.)

Two attendees chimed in to say they had seen a car illegally parked in the crosswalk, on top of the bollards, as they walked to the meeting. Squilla replied that they should call the Philadelphia Parking Authority to ticket the offender, leading to frustrated murmurs rippling through the audience. “They won’t send anyone out,” one woman shouted. “They tell us to call 911.” Squilla promised to address it.

One man suggested the PPA might patrol the area immediately surrounding Angelo’s more vigilantly. “If you’re patrolling in that area to [ticket], it’s just gonna be pushed down towards me,” said a woman who lives a block or so west of the shop, adding that she and her 6-year-old struggle to enjoy the park across from their house. “There’s pizza boxes everywhere. I can’t sit anywhere with my son because there’s people eating.

“I want the business to grow, but it is not a neighborhood pizza shop,” she continued.

Some neighbors made clear they take issue with the sort of patrons Angelo’s attracts — perhaps the kind that have heard about it from a glowing review by Barstool Sports’ founder Dave Portnoy, a controversial personality whose millions of — largely young, male — followers have a reputation for boorish behavior. (Portnoy has been accused of sexual misconduct, and has a history of racist and sexist comments.)

One man addressed this head-on. “When you look at a lot of the other popular restaurants in the area — Saloon, John’s Water Ice, Kalaya when it was here, Mawn, Sarcone’s when it was here, every restaurant in the Italian Market, I could go on and on — none of those bring people smoking weed in front of children, drinking on the streets in the middle of the day, urinating in people’s planters or wherever they want, and giant heaps of trash all over the place."

“If the community has an idea of how we can prevent an F-150 [pickup truck] coming from Bucks County to buy pizza or cheesesteaks, I’d love to hear it,” Kelsen responded. I’m not being sarcastic, I’d love to hear it.” He also offered to utilize Angelo’s and DiGiampietro’s considerable social media following (which has only been bolstered by the owner’s partnership with Hollywood star and Jenkintown native Bradley Cooper) to put customers on notice that they must show respect to Bella Vista.

One 700 block neighbor, on the same side as Angelo’s, spoke up reluctantly. “I love everybody at Angelo’s,” the woman said. She asked that the line of customers waiting to order be consistently directed up the street toward Fitzwater. “It sounds like the Italian Market Festival is outside of our house every weekend, starting Saturday morning through Sunday,” she said, adding that she has discussed the situation with Braunstein and DiGiampietro before. “We’ll be on vacation, and we have to talk to people through the Ring [camera] because people will literally come on our enclosed porch and hang out,” she said.

Kelsen responded that Angelo’s installed a new point-of-sale system — which texts customers when their order is ready — to try to mitigate the line. “You can’t control where people go in a public setting, but the effort has been made by Angelo’s as best they can,” he said. The woman wondered if customers could be prompted, at the end of their transaction, on other places to go while they wait — setting off concerns about sending rowdy patrons deeper into Bella Vista’s residential streets or to the park.

Kelsen repeated that they would use social media to let “acolytes” know “they’re damaging the reputation of Angelo’s” by behaving this way. Squilla asked if neighbors would be open to a “line monitor.” Kelsen said that Angelo’s had previously hired security for the line and had stopped when neighbors said they felt it was inappropriate, but added the restaurant would revisit the practice.

One man — “Anthony, I’ve been here all my life” — spoke up, saying that he had gone to Angelo’s that day. “It was delicious, so I don’t have any prejudice on that issue,” he said, but it was somewhat beside the point. “We’re brainstorming on problems that are not our problem. I like the word partnership. I do like it, but in a way, we’re in this as bystanders. We’re not partners in this. We’re underwriting the business to a certain extent, in that we give people places to eat and act like assholes. The business model doesn’t work anymore, period. The fact that we’re here talking about this, trying to figure this out, is evidence of that. What, are we going to have mounted policemen going up and down the street?”

As the meeting wound down, there was one neighbor who spoke in support of Angelo’s: 12 Steps Down bar owner Danielle Renzulli, who wanted to make sure the crowd knew of the shop’s attempts to direct its burgeoning customer base to suitable venues. “Every Saturday afternoon, probably 75% of the people that come in say, ‘Danny sent us here to wait for our pizza,’” she said. “We joke that we’re Angelo’s living room.” It was perhaps the strongest third-party endorsement of the shop that night.

Several neighbors lingered in the rec center classroom afterward to confer with Councilman Squilla, who hung around until every neighbor dispersed, as did Braunstein and Angelo’s attorneys. Among the neighbors who stayed, a few expressed optimism that a taskforce would bring about meaningful change. Some wondered why it was incumbent on neighbors — and the city — to shoulder the ramifications of a nationally famous restaurant with no seating or bathrooms.

“It shouldn’t be our job,” said Jeffrey Garrett, who had come to the meeting to express his concern about traffic and illegal parking endangering neighborhood kids. “I feel like most of this shouldn’t even really be the city’s job. Like a good neighbor would just take it upon themselves to improve things.”

The sentiment was shared by Plato, who stayed to talk to TV news crews and Squilla. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to bend the knee to them and be in a taskforce.”

Kelsen characterized the meeting as a “starting point to continue to talk — not a beginning, because we’ve already started.”

The last man standing at the end of the nearly two-hour meeting was Squilla, who said the city’s involvement in this was unavoidable, as was the community’s. “To me, it’s a group effort. ... Getting ideas from the community is important. They know what the challenges are.”

Ultimately, he construed the meeting’s turnout as a sign of the commitment to the neighborhood. “If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t be here,” he said.