People Andy Farantos hardly knows come into G&A Coney Island Hot Dogs on Eastern Avenue and tell him things he loves to hear.
Virtual strangers with a taste for tangy chili on a grilled dog ? Burk?s ever since Esskay left East Baltimore ? offer missing tiles for his family mosaic.
They are much older than the 42-year-old Farantos and often older than the business started by his grandfather in 1927: a hot dog and milkshake joint more famous than any other weiner house in Crabtown except Polack Johnny’s.
[I’m sure there are other frankfurter meccas around town, places I either don’t know or have forgotten. Maybe not. If I’m wrong, please tell me.]
“I had 10 customers who knew absolutely everything about the place, but they all died off,” said Faranto, a 1984 graduate of Dulaney High School and third-generation owner of G&A. “Other people come in that I’ve never met and say, ?I knew your grandfather, I remember when hot dogs were 15 cents apiece.?”
G&A stands for his grandpa Gregory Diacumacos ? not George, for you presumptuous Hellenists ? and a cousin named Alex. After that, it was owned by his father, “Little Jimmy” Farantos, and an uncle, “Big Jimmy” Mexis. The tandem of Jimmys married sisters, one of them Andy’s mom. Young Andy has had the place since 1988.
Like his pappous and his father before him, Andy can line up about a dozen hot dogs along his arm and dress them with chili and mustard and diced onion. Big Jimmy could do more because, hey, “Big Jimmy” had longer arms.
The hot-dogs-on-the-arm trick is one of those things, like the grill in the window, that folks remember from a time when Eastern Avenue was the place to shop on a Saturday afternoon. Back when Stella Foods hung fat salamis and torpedoes of cheese from the ceiling, Kramer?s Candy Store sent the aroma of fresh caramel popcorn out to the sidewalk, and a blind man selling pencils tapped a tin meatloaf pan while chanting for loose change.
Back before 15-minute marvels like Eastpoint Mall ? my ex-wife swears they had real penguins there one Christmas, but she’s a Dundalk girl and has fooled me before ? began mesmerizing people away from the great boulevards of Baltimore with something called free parking.
Thank God there’s still G&A and DiPasquale?s grocery a few blocks around the corner to placate a Baltimorean?s aversion to change. You might as well send everything else to Zannino?s funeral home next door to DiPasquale?s because all the rest of that “once upon a time” ? with Haussner?s at the head of the procession ? seems to be gone.
In an extended family of successful entrepreneurs (there are 55 first cousins from his mother’s side alone, many of them very well-to-do in Williamsburg, Va.), Andy has stood by the Highlandtown hot dog stand, where many of the relatives got their start.
“I’ve had plenty of other opportunities, my relatives ask me all the time to get involved in big restaurants. Some of them own hotels,” he said. “People ask me why I stay. It’s in my heart.”
As indelible as the smooth spots in the green Formica counter top with the spin-around stools.
“If you look closely, you can see where years of people’s elbows have worn away the counter while they sat eating their hot dogs,” Andy said. “In the old days, if you were good when your mom took you shopping on the Avenue, you’d stop in here and get two hot dogs and a soda.”
Back in the old days was just the other day for Bonnie Fitzpatrick, whose 76-year-old grandmother ? Nancy Ratley of Middle River ? sent her down for six hot dogs and two hamburgers, all with chili. Bonnie?s mother, Marlene Ratley, came along for the drive, heading “in town” for the treat.
Those half-dozen Coney Islands are just a few links in a chain four-and-a-half-million hot dogs long, says Andy, who sat down with his dad one night and used memory math to get the total. A couple thousand of them have been served up by waitress Brandy Wilkey in the last three years.
“This was our weekly outing when the family still lived around here,” says Bonnie.
“We’d come down on Saturday to shop Epstein?s and then we’d get our hot dogs and french fries with gravy,” chimes Marlene. “Once a week, my mom still wants her G&A.”
“I could find this place blind,” says Nancy, who eats one right away and puts the rest in the fridge to snack on for a couple days. “You can smell ’em before you see ’em.”
