Editor's note: Visit our
Faces of Lakewood and Edgewater page, where YourHub.com staff and readers can introduce you to more people -- and a dog -- who make this part of the metro area what it is.
If you're new at the Edgewater Inn, expect handshakes all around. It's the next best currency to cash at the storied pizza joint and watering hole that's sat just off Sheridan Boulevard since founder
Ben DiPietro set up shop in 1953. And if you're not so new - say it's your second time in - bartender
Becca Anderson already knows your name and drink of choice.
"I just like to know people, and I like them to know me," she says. "I respond to 'Becca' a lot better than 'Hey you, bartender.'" That kind of old-fashioned hospitality gives the Inn a kind of small-town permanence and probably goes a long way to explaining why, even after the Inn's dining room expansion three years ago under the founder's son, owner
Dick Di Pietro, people still line up to get in during peak hours.
Well, there's that and the pizza - a huge selection of gourmet house specials the patrons swear by, to the point that you can spot employees of nearby pizza places, sometimes still in uniform, swinging by to pick up their after-work dinner and wash it down with a giant schooner of beer.
"I've been coming here since I was about five years old. Tons of people have been coming for 25 to 30 years," Anderson says.
Kids who have come with their families for the pizza for years have grown up to be regulars at the bar, where they down beers, talk politics and swap stories with the cast of characters - not any particular niche or scene, but a friendly mix of young and old who get along.
Come by often enough and you might join
The Silver Fox and a handful of other colorful nicknames who've become an indispensible part of bar lore.
"That's how we keep 'em straight," says Anderson.
That lore even gets a little otherworldly to hear the staff tell it.
"There's a ghost, here. Our managers won't close by themselves," Anderson says.
Her co-workers back her up on the story. There's disagreement over just who the ghost is, but she insists there's something to it.
"People say they see someone inside at night, but the alarms never go off," Anderson says.
Judging by just how packed 5302 W. 25th Ave. gets any night of the week, though, the spectral guest doesn't seem to scare away business.