Obituary of Joseph J. Palozzi

Palozzi, Joseph J. Rochester: March 11, 2017 Separating the myths from reality is a difficult job when it comes to Joe Palozzi. Java Joe, as he was better known, died Saturday of cancer. He was 68. In recent years he could be found piloting his big coffee bean roaster in the coffeehouse that goes by the name The Best Coffee at the Market, at the Rochester Public Market, curtly informing anyone who inquired about dark roast coffee that, “We don’t burn our beans.” With an obscenity right in the middle of that sentence. Colorful adjectives were a staple of Mr. Palozzi’s grammar. Look back four decades, and Mr. Palozzi — alongside his oversized personality — shows up as one of the primal figures on Rochester’s independent coffeehouse scene. “Most of his stories are pretty crazy, he was a pretty rough character,” said longtime friend Whitey Proietti, owner of the Webster restaurant Proietti's. They’d known each other since they were 5 years old. Mr. Palozzi left Aquinas Institute — “We both got thrown out at about the same time,” Proietti said — and went on to graduate from Eastridge High School in 1966. “He gave them a fictional address because he didn’t want to go to Franklin,” Proietti added. “That’s the kind of stuff he did.” Mr. Palozzi then studied court stenography in New York City. That’s where he got the idea of hot dog carts. “Java was the first person to ever put a hot dog cart on the streets of Rochester,” Proietti said. That was in 1970. “I went with him to New York City to pick it up. He had it at Main and State. The first day we had it on the street, there were no regulations, no one ever did it before. The health board didn’t know what it was supposed to do. They city wanted him to get a permit, but they didn’t know what kind of permit.” In 1974, Mr. Palozzi opened Café Primo in Pittsford’s Schoen Place, which he claimed had the first espresso machine in the area. He sold the business and moved to Hawaii in 1978 to grow coffee beans. So he always said. But life for indie coffee souls was tough in the Maxwell House world of the day, leading to one of the prime Palozzi legends. He was also growing pot. Until Hawaii authorities figured out what was really growing down on that hillside, and suggested he leave the state. Immediately. Mr. Palozzi’s son, Joey, confirmed that story, adding that he later met some of his father’s partners in the scheme. “They never quite got out of the trade,” he said. “That's how he got into growing coffee, he was growing pot,” said Proietti. “It was easier to grow it between the coffee trees, because you couldn’t see it.” es of work that would draw less attention from the authorities. He moved to Italy, where he sold insurance to American servicemen. Returning to America, Mr. Palozzi ran a golf course in Florida. Then, back to Rochester, it was all coffee. He fired up the roaster, resurrected Café Primo, and in 1992 opened Java Joe’s Café, next to the Eastman Theatre on Gibbs Street. Mr. Palozzi catered to the Eastman School of Music crowd, curating a Bohemian atmosphere of art, poetry readings and live jazz. He was an enthusiastic music aficionado, the blues in particular, and was a longtime friend of legendary drummer Steve Gadd, also an Eastridge graduate. A social gadfly with loudly expressed opinions on most subjects, including golf, cigars and politics, as a sometimes restaurateur Mr. Palozzi also took cooking very seriously. And he took his vodka seriously, until a handful of health issues caught up to him. About 10 years ago, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and appeared to be near death. But the subsequent operation revealed the trouble to be an infection that had traveled from a root-canal problem to his brain. Mr. Palozzi also showed good timing when it came to health issues, experiencing a heart attack while in a hospital waiting room to address another illness. Horse racing was yet another of Mr. Palozzi’s passions. After he was diagnosed with cancer last year, he made it a point to attend all three Triple Crown races, as well as an important race in Italy. “Kind of a bucket-list thing,” Joey Palozzi said. “He said, ‘Why not see these things?’” Mr. Palozzi sold his share of Java Joe’s to friend and partner Mike Calabrese in 1997; the place retains its relaxed atmosphere to this day. “He used to say he loved being in business,” Calabrese said. “He just couldn’t stand his employees or customers.” “Which is totally not true,” said friend Elizabeth Lyons, who sat with Calabrese in the Gibbs Street coffee shop on Sunday morning, reminiscing about their friend. “I’ve always felt,” Calabrese said, his words halting as laughter at old stories turned to tears. “I’ve always felt like I was just taking care of this place for him. I still feel that way. It’s really his cafe.” Tax issues and business partnerships gone sour dogged Mr. Palozzi, who nevertheless always found a way to re-emerge on the local coffee scene in some manner. By the mid-2000s, Java Joe’s was an anchor of the Rochester Public Market. It moved along the storefronts there over the next decade — morphing into Java Joe’s Next Generation Café when he added food. The final stop of Java’s at the Market Coffee Roasters, as he called his business, was in the coffeehouse that goes by the name The Best Coffee at the Market. There, up until the last few months when illness caught up to him, Mr. Palozzi could be seen at the roaster, prodding steaming beans with a wood paddle, before packaging them for sale. He also serviced a handful of businesses around the city, including Good Luck, 2Vine and Max at Eastman Place. Mr. Palozzi died of lung cancer, his passing coming one year to the day of his diagnosis, said Calabrese. Palozzi died peacefully, surrounded by friends, at Hildebrandt Hospice Care Center in Greece. The story of his life was never written. In part, Calabrese said, smiling again, because Palozzi couldn’t decide on the title between, “How the Coffee Industry Passed Me By” or “Java Joe’s Book of Love and Money.” Mr. Palozzi, twice divorced, is survived by his son Joey, a grandson, and sister, Patricia Polvino of Rochester. Rather than services of any kind, Joey Palozzi says his father’s friends are talking of throwing a party. Joey Palozzi started living with his father after Mr. Palozzi returned from Hawaii, and continues the intensely indie business that he learned from his father. He is the co-founder of City of Saints Coffee Roasters, with locations in New York City, Brooklyn and Hoboken, NJ. Throughout his career at the coffee roaster, Mr. Palozzi was extremely vocal in his criticism of the corporate coffee business. “The big guys are ruining it,” he told the Democrat and Chronicle back in 1995. “They burn it all. It all tastes the same.”