Lou’s Pub & Package Store in Birmingham’s Lakeview District was sold Friday to family friend Michael Carpri

Lou’s Pub & Package Store, popular gathering spot in Birmingham’s Lakeview District for 21 years, was sold Friday.

The new owner, Michael Carpri, plans to keep the name and the staff. Carpri took over operation of the pub Friday afternoon.

“I’m planning on keeping everything the exact same – the name, the memorabilia, the prices, the clientele, the staff, everything,” Carpri said.

The pub’s previous owner, Louis Zaden, died of heart failure on Aug. 14, and family members have been running Lou’s since he died. He was 59.

With his booming voice, colorful vocabulary and outgoing personality, the beloved Zaden made his bar a Birmingham institution. Last year, Esquire magazine named it one of the best bars in America.

“I’ve got big shoes to fill, there is no doubt,” Carpri said. “I don’t want to do anything to step on Lou’s legacy. All I can do is continue the customer service and the scolding of the clientele that he performed so well.

Carpri, a friend of the Zaden family, has worked as a bartender at Zydeco and the Blue Monkey.

“A lot of people wanted to buy it, but I was really looking for a person who has a vested interest,” Nick Zaden, Louis Zaden’s brother, said.

The Zadens’ mother, Helen Zaden, still plans to drop by Lou’s on a regular basis, her son said.

“Mom is still going to come down here an hour or two a day, just to meet people and talk to people,” he said.

Lou’s Pub & Package Store, a popular gathering spot in Birmingham’s Lakeview District for 21 years, has been sold, a family member said today.

Michael Carpri, who has worked in the bar business at Zydeco and the Blue Monkey, will take over operation of the pub today, Nick Zaden said. Carpri plans to keep the name and the staff, Zaden added.

The pub’s colorful owner, Louis Zaden, died of heart failure on Aug. 14, and family members have been running Lou’s since his death.

Zaden, who was 59, greeted customers with “Hey, Baby!” and was known for giving customer a hard time — all in fun. The bar was named by Esquire magazine last year as one of the Best Bars in America, and celebrated its 21st anniversary this month.

Lou’s Pub has often been compared to bar in the TV show “Cheers,” where “everybody knows your name.”

We haven’t been to Lou’s as often in recent years, as having a preschooler does put a damper on alcoholic binges. Last time I was there, with my sister, Lou put on a big act of acting hurt, putting his nose up in the air and ignoring me before giving me a big smile.

As the Birmingham Business Journal noted in a 2003 article, Lou’s had a major role in the Lakeview renaissance, which began in the mid-1980s and has expanded in recent years.

An awful lot of people have an empty feeling inside today. Lou is dead. If you’re wondering “Lou, who?”, then you didn’t know him. But for countless people in Birmingham and across the country, Lou was a one-name legend like Madonna or Bono.

His full name was Lou Zaden and he was the owner and proprietor of Lou’s Pub and Package Store in Birmingham’s Lakeview District. For most of his patrons, Lou was a friend. For several others, Lou was family. Lou was found dead in his home Thursday. He was just 59.

Walking into Lou’s Pub felt like walking into the middle of a Broadway show, with Lou always commanding center stage. “HEY BABY!” he’d bellow to regulars and strangers alike. Lou’s Pub was the only place where getting yelled at made you feel welcome.

If you hadn’t stopped by to see Lou in a while, he’d greet you with a gruff “Where the hell YOU been?” or an overly sarcastic “It’s good to see SOME PEOPLE can make time for their friends every once in a while.”

You felt sheepish and ashamed, like you let your best friend down, and in some ways, you had. But after a little while, Lou would calm down and you would be fast friends again. Perhaps Lou’s greatest gift was that he was truly an old-school bartender.

Any idiot can pull a tap or pour a drink, but Lou took time to get to know each and every one of his customers. It wasn’t just the regulars, either. One of my college buddies from D.C. has been to Lou’s two or three times over the past eight years. Every time Sagar walked in, Lou remembered his name, where he was from, and what he was drinking. Same thing for my brother, Marc, from Boston.

It was remarkable, and I’ll never know how Lou did it. But that type of care says so much about a guy who really didn’t have to care. Now, Lou Zaden is dead. He’ll never yell at me again. Right now, I’d trade anything in the world to make that not so. Like I said, there are a lot of people who have an empty feeling inside today.

Louis Joseph Zaden, the cantankerous but beloved owner of Lou’s Pub & Package Store, died early Thursday in his Vestavia Hills home.

Mr. Zaden, whose booming voice, colorful language and outgoing personality made his Lakeview bar a Birmingham institution, was 59.

He apparently died of heart failure, his younger brother Nick Zaden said.

Mr. Zaden opened Lou’s Pub 21 years ago in a building that had sat empty for nearly a decade, and it quickly became a popular after-work gathering spot that helped transform the sleepy Lakeview area into a booming entertainment district that is now teeming with bars and restaurants.

“He made Lakeview what it is,” said Wayne Ellis, who owns O.T.’s restaurant next door. “He was not just a neighbor but a friend.”

Lou’s was closed Thursday, but as news of Mr. Zaden’s death spread Thursday afternoon, his bartenders and dozens of customers gathered on the patio outside to remember the gruff-but-genial character who greeted regulars and newcomers alike with his trademark, “Hey, baby!”

While they cried and hugged one other, many of them also recalled how Mr. Zaden would curse and yell at them if they had not been in his place for a while.

“That was all for show,” Frankie Juliano, a longtime bartender at Lou’s, said. “You come in, you expect to get cussed out if he hadn’t seen you in a long time, and people loved that. But underneath all that, he was a gentle, caring, loving person.”

After graduating from John Carroll Catholic High School, Mr. Zaden went to work at the old Coalyard restaurant owned by his father, Louis Francis Zaden, and spent the rest of his life in the restaurant and bar business. He opened Lou’s Pub with money he had saved from bartending.

Mr. Zaden also is survived by his mother, Helen Zaden, and another younger brother, Mike Zaden.

Louis Zaden, whose Lou’s Pub & Package Store is a fixture in the Lakeview district, has died, according to co-workers. Zaden was 59.

A bouquet of flowers hung on the door of Lou’s Pub this morning. Mourners gathered outside Lou’s Pub in Lakeview where flowers were put at the entrance after owner Lou Zaden passed away.

The bar, named last year by Esquire Magazine as one of the Best Bars in America, celebrated its 21st anniversary on Aug. 1, 2008.

Mock-acerbic owner of Lou’s Pub helped launch Lakeview renaissance

Louis Zaden has spent all of his life in Birmingham, and, following in his parents’ footsteps, he has spent almost all of it in the restaurant and bar business. The mustachioed, mock-acerbic proprietor of Lou’s Pub & Package Store also has had a major role in the Lakeview renaissance, which began in the mid-1980s and has expanded in recent years.

When he founded the eponymous pub in 1987, “there was no one here except Bombay (Cafe),” Zaden recounts. “The area was run-down, the buildings were vacant and dilapidated. There weren’t even any street lights.” Now, however, the burgeoning entertainment zone is hoppin’. Within the past several years, the district has become home to any number of restaurants and bars. There is the Barking Kudu, the Irish-themed Innisfree Pub, Jim & Nick’s Bar-B-Q & Catering, On Tap Sports Cafe and OT’s Neighborhood Sports Grill, to name just a few of the establishments. They have brought with them a new wave of customers to the benefit of all.

“They’re not my competitors, they’re my neighbors,” Zaden says. “Everyone has something unique. We complement one another. We get some of their business, and they get some of ours.”

A family tradition

Zaden’s “father and mother were in the restaurant and lounge business, and I began helping out when I was six or seven,” he says, “washing dishes, mopping floors, taking out the trash.”

His father opened a drive-in on Southside in the 1950s in the days of car hops; his mother subsequently opened a fast-food restaurant, also on the Southside; and, in 1970, “my father opened the Coalyard Restaurant on Third Avenue South, across from the old Liberty National Insurance building,” he says. “By then I was 21, and my father had a liquor license, and so I began learning the liquor aspect of the business.”

Later, he found himself dabbling in real estate by day and slinging drinks by night at hotel bars throughout Birmingham, where he built up a loyal clientele.

It was then, he says, that “I got to a point in my life and I decided to take a chance and open my own place. “I wanted something unique, a nice neighborhood bar with a relaxed environment.”

He found just such a location in the then-derelict Lakeview District, opening his tiny pub and package store, with just three tables and a lengthy hardwood bar competing with the package shelves – beers, liquors, wines, mixers and cigars – in less than 1,000 square feet of space. A small patio lends the intimate locale a bit more legroom.

Short on space, not clients

Lou’s Pub may be limited in space, but the bar attracts a diverse group, including, Zaden says, “bankers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, reporters.”

They have one thing in common, he says: “They’re all good people.”

Zaden has been in business long enough that, he says, pointing vaguely in the direction of nearby Avondale Park, “I used to sponsor over there, a little league team. Now, those kids are my customers.”

Like any good bartender, Zaden is “a psychologist’s psychologist. I may not have a degree on paper, but I enjoy people, I like talking with people. People are important to me,” he says. “I’ve heard it all: marital woes, financial difficulties, deadlines to meet, big deals that haven’t closed. I could write a book, I really could.”

Perhaps it would be entitled, “We’re All Equal.” After all, he says, “I don’t care how much money you have or what title you have, I try to make people when they come in here feel very important.”

Still, that doesn’t keep Zaden from bantering with his clientele. One greets him warmly, and Zaden barks, “Oh, shut up and drink a beer.”

The customer, who asks not to be identified – “I don’t want my wife to know where I hang out” – grins and does as he’s bid: “That’s just Lou. It’s just part of his shtick, but at least when you walk in the door, you know you’re not invisible.”

Employees like family

Some days, Zaden’s 77-year-old mother can be found working the till. Even among his employees, there is a sense of family. “Most of my employees have been here for years,” he says. That’s due to his labor philosophy.

“You work for your employees, and they work for you,” he says. “One person cannot make things work. It takes a whole team. I always try to think of all of us as being equal. I’m the boss, but they don’t work for me, they work with me. They’re just like my customers. They’re important to me just like my friends are important to me.”

It’s for that reason that Wilma Binder has been with him 15 years.

“He runs the business properly,” she says. “He’s strict, but he’s good to us. I sure don’t want to go work anywhere else.” Besides, “I know almost everyone who comes here, and so it’s like coming home when I come to work.” Zaden still puts in “60 to 70 hours a week because when you run a small business you have to be on the scene.”

Still, that beats the early days. When he opened the bar, “it was over 10 months before I had my first day off,” he says, and it was slow going as he built a clientele. “You crawl before you walk, and I did a lot of crawling.”