Al Levy & "Oyster Cocktail" (1897)

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   I'd posted a 1941 NEW YORK TIMES obituary of Al Levy, "Inventor of the Oyster Cocktail."  Here is that post, plus a longer 1897 LOS ANGELES TIMES article from ProQuest.  (Overlong, but I'll type the whole public domain article FYI.)

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0208E&L=ads-l&P=R3147


(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)
   OYSTER COCKTAILS
Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File). Los Angeles, Calif.: Jul 29, 1897. p. 5 (1 page)
      _OYSTER COCKTAILS_
_How They Made a Fortune for One Man in_
      _Three Years_
   The story of Al Levy, proprietor of the swell fish and oyster house at Nos. 111, 115 and 117 West Third street, who, in two years and a half in a time of unexampled stringency has built up out of nothing a business that is the wonder and admiration of all who know anything about it, has in it a useful lesson for people who bemoan the dull times and their inability to "get into something."
   Al Levy had, as one might say, been brought up among oysters.  Forten years, in one capacity or another, he had handled the bivalves in the California market in San Francisco and elsewhere.  He came to Los Angeles and for four years served as a waiter in the Vienna Buffet.  At the end of the latter period he one day found himself out of a job and for two weeks cudgeled his brain vainly for something to do.  One night he woke up with an idea and lay awake till morning turning it over and getting it into shape for preaching to his wife, who at first was much amused and afterward inclined seriously to oppose it as something of doubtful respectability.  But he insisted that the business, which was the sale of oyster cocktails from a push-cart on the street, though humble, would be just as honorable as any other, if honorably and honestly conducted, and he resolved to look into it further, and if it promised a living for himself and them--the wife and children--to engage in it at once.
   So, immediately after breakfast, he sallied forth to investigate.  For two or three days he carefully studied the habits and haunts of the sandwich and tamale men, and at length purchased and prepared his cart, and on a certain evening in July took his station at the corner of First and Main streets.  A big, showy new sign on the cart announced "Oyster Cocktail  10 cents."
   He had, he says, a feeling that closely resembled stage fright, for the investment represented close on to $100, and was about all the ready money he had in the world.  To him it was just as momentous a step as the starting of a steamship line to Alaska would be to the capitalist who embarks his all in that kind of business.  It might go, and it might not, it might be a winner, and then, on the other hand, it might be a perfect dead failure.
   But the demand for cocktails soon reassured him.  Before the evening was over he knew his venture was a success.  He could scarcely concoct and pass out the cocktails fast enough and the 10-cent pieces rolled merrily in in a steady stream till midnight, and later.  At 1 o'clock he went home happy to the waiting wife and children.
   This was the beginning.  Fortune continued to smile and soon he was running a small "stand" on Fifth street and delivering cocktails and California oysters in the shell to numerous families during the daytime, and always in the evening after 6 o'clock, selling from the cart at First and Main.  Three months passed, and he had "money to burn."  Then he heard of a new development of the cocktail business in San Francisco.  Somebody there was putting up the cocktails in glass bottles and selling them wholesale to the restaurant soda-fountain and grocery trades.  He prepared himself and went into that.  It was a howling success business being so good that he gave up the push-cart.
   For a few weeks everything went along swimmingly, he was making money hand over fist.  Then, like many another fad, this rage for bottled oyster cocktails began to decline, and eventually he was left with a large stock of useless bottle labels and paking cases on hand and no trade at all.  He stuck to it, hoping against hope for a revival, which never came, till he was almost "busted" again, with less capital than he had when he started the cart which, later, he got out again, furbished up and returned with to First and Main streets.
   But business this time didn't come to him as it had before, the public seemed to have sated its appetite for oyster cocktails.  Then he moved his stand and stock to Third street, into one of the rooms he now occupies.  He rented a small corner in the front part, the rest of the room being occupied by a plumber's shop, and went to selling oyster cocktails there.  For tables he had two board shelves, and room at them for fourteen chairs and it wasn't long till these began to be occupied pretty much all the time.  Finding that many people asked for "stews," he procured a stove, and pretty soon added fish to his menu.  He took more room, and then more, and finally all there was, the plumber moving elsewhere, and then the adjoining store, and later the one next to that, and now he occupies all three, and has the most complete, best equipped and certainly the most famous exclusively oyster, fish and game house in this part of the country.  It is known far and wide by epicures and is patronized by all the bon vivants that can get ot it.
   It has just been remodeled, under the supervision of Architect Edward Neisser, and refurnished and redecorated throughout.  There is a large general dining-room for gentlemen, a smaller one, exquisitely furnished, for parties of from two to a dozen persons.  Every room is nicely furnished, well lighted and decorated, and each is supplied with an electric fan of its own, which keeps the air circulating in the most refreshing manner.  There is, beside the general entrance, one exclusively for ladies and private parties, where lady-shoppers for example, may enter and eat without mixing with the miscellaneous crowd.
   A distinctive feature of the house is that all the oysters handled are shell oysters.  None in bulk or in cases is ever used.  Mr. Levy now supplies all the clubs and hundreds of private families with all the shell oysters they use, delivering either on the half shell or sending a man with them to open them on the spot, as desired.  In the season he sells from 2000 to 25000 of the eastern oysters every day and five times that number of the California oysters, which all old Californians like much better.