Mike Vigoda, founder of the legendary Mike’s Place, dies
Originally from Toronto, Canada and a photo/ journalist by profession, the bon vivant Vigoda founded Mike’s place in Jerusalem in 1993 in a Russian Compound cubbyhole.
By GREER FAY CASHMANThe Jerusalem location of Mike's Place(photo credit: Courtesy)
His many friends and musicians around the country and beyond were shocked on Wednesday to learn that Mike Vigoda, the founder of the legendary, North American-style music bar known as Mike’s Place had died by committing suicide the previous evening.Born in Toronto, where he became a photojournalist, Vigoda arrived in Jerusalem in the early 1990s after covering the civil war in what was then Yugoslavia.Seeking a calmer yet soul-elevating form of income, he opened a music bar on Horkanos Street in the capital’s Russian Compound, where he conducted nightly jam sessions.The place was tiny, and many of the customers were under the impression that this was Vigoda’s private living room, which in a sense made it even more attractive. It was packed every night. Vigoda was not much of a businessman, and therefore chose Assaf Ganzman, who was born in Haifa but raised in Jerusalem, to be his business partner.Ganzman had been one of the regulars among the irregular patrons of the bar, who included locals, tourists, Jews, Arabs, multigenerational Jerusalemites and new immigrants from Russia and the United States, plus people who fit into a variety of other categories.They came for both the beer and the music.The founder of popular live music venues Mike's Place, Mike Vigoda, died of an apparent suicide on July, 2020. (Credit: Courtesy)Even with a partner, Vigoda had problems in controlling his finances, and the debts piled up to the extent that he just couldn’t deal with them anymore.In 1995, Vigoda was sitting around the bar with Ganzman and a group of friends, and announced that he was throwing in the towel. He held up the keys to the premises and asked who wanted them.Ganzman was the only one who replied in the affirmative.Although he took over the business, he didn’t change the name. However, he did expand, and took in his brother Gil as a partner.In 2000 Ganzman opened Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv, which in April 2003 made international headlines in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that had taken place during a late-night jam session. Three people were killed and more than 50 wounded.In response to the thousands of goodwill messages and condolences from Israel and abroad, Ganzman decided to carry on.Branches of Mike’s Place, which have experienced changes in venue but not in name, can now be found in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Eilat.Vigoda, who had left Israel some years earlier, returned in 2006, and in 2009, together with a partner, opened another bar in Jerusalem, but it didn’t work out, because the partners frequently quarreled and seldom saw eye to eye on anything. They split up and the business folded.Vigoda then moved to Haifa, and was a frequent customer at Café Tipul, which was then owned by Barak Vaknin. Vigoda wanted to open another enterprise similar to that of Mike’s Place, and thought that the Hadar neighborhood, in which Café Tipul is a fixture, was an ideal location. After negotiating with Vaknin for three months, he finally bought him out in January, and then, after extensive renovations, briefly opened up before he was forced to close in accordance with COVID-19’s lockdown regulations.He opened up again two weeks ago and, according to neighbors, the place was buzzing and Vigoda and his partner Gazit Adler were constantly on hand to keep up the momentum.With things finally going well for him, Vigoda’s friends were at a loss to explain his suicide, other than to surmise that he may have been suffering from depression, which he had hidden under the genial guise of mine host.Even though Mike Vigoda has chosen to leave this world, the café bars that bear his name, and in which his favorite music is played, remain a monument to his vision.
