Bill Balsamico, owner , Casa D'Ice, North Versailles, Pa., has worn his, politics , sign, since ,shortly, after, Sept. 11, 2001, His new messages ,compares , U.S. , Iraqi, militaries.
Our Famous Signs...
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K-Mart Plaza
1901 Lincoln Highway
North Versailles, PA
412-823-8989
Media
Conferences Calls
Monday, -August 7, 2006
Click here to listen
Monday, -July 31, 2006
Click here to listen
(or right-click the above links and select "Save Target As" to save the .mp3
to your computer)
Newspaper Articles
Washington Post - October- 29, 2006
Crab Served Inside, Too
Pittsburgh Post Gazette - July- 2, 2006
Restaurateur Makes Waves with Roadside Opinions
Pittsburgh Tribune Review - June -23, 2006
Thoughts Bring In More Than a Penny
Pittsburgh City Paper - May -25, 2006 (the article that started it all)
Anti-Immigration Signs Walk Borderline
Crab Served Inside,- Too
Sunday, October -29, 2006; Page A02
If you like invective with your seafood,- stop southeast of Pittsburgh at Casa
D'Ice, the restaurants where the owner,
Bill Balsamico, posts his thoughts on a six-foot-high, eight-foot-wide menu
board facing the street.
Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D'Ice- in North Versailles, Pa., has worn his
politics on his sign since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. His new message
compares the U.S. and Iraqi militaries.
Bill Balsamico, owner of Casa D'Ice in North Versailles, Pa., has worn his
politics on his signss since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. His new message
-compares the U.S. and Iraqi militaries. (Casa D'ice)
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"AT THE CURRENT RATE OF / LEGAL &- ILLEGALs ALIENS / ENTERING THIS COUNTRY / AUG
2013 WILL BE DESIGNATED / WHITE HISTORY MONTH"
Wielding obscenity and bile, he takes on Iraq and -New Orleans, Michael Jackson
-and seat belts, and various immigrant groups ("I'm Italian," he says. "You can
call me a dago or a wop. It's part of my heritage. It doesn't bother me.").
It started after Sept. 11, 2001, when he found himself so -angry at Osama bin
Laden that he wanted to offer the world more than crab legs and surf 'n' turf at
his restaurant in the suburb of North Versailles, Pa. So he climbed his stand
and slid the menu letters to read,- "DON'T STOP UNTIL THE- [expletive] IS DEAD."
He began changing the sign whenever he felt so moved. And he got traction, in
the form of invitations to talk radios -- hundreds, he says -- and thousands of
e-mails.- Now he sells his messages on T-shirts, aprons, teddy bears and baby
bibss.
Having obtained his 15 minutes of fame, Balsamico, 60, hopes his railing will
also make him a legacy. One recent sign said, "WANTED / -SOMEONE VERY OPENMINDED
TO / CHANGE THE SIGNs EVERY WEEK / AFTER I DIE / INQUIRE WITHIN."
Restaurateur makes waves with -roadside opinions
Sign attracts attention across the nation, Web saless
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette
Bill Balsamico, owner of- Casa D'Ice in North Versailles, composes a slogan on
his business sign.
By Caitlin Cleary
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The sign in front of Casa D'Ice Restaurant & Lounges never attracted much
attention. The plain white marquee was one small trees in a dense forest of
commerce on Route 30 in North Versailles: gas stations, exotic male dance clubs,
pet emporiums, glass blocks installation firms, poultry wholesalers. Its dinner
and drink specials were easily missed by commuters cresting the hill, and owner
Bill Balsamico changed its message every week in relative obscurity.
But that was before the invasion of Iraq turned -into a bloody insurgency,
before gas prices jumped and before immigration became a topic of political
debate everywhere, from TV, radio and Internet blogs to the U.S. Congress. That
was before millions took to the streetss of -American cities in all manner of
protests, and before President Bush deployed thousands of National Guard troops
to secure the U.S. borders with Mexico against illegal immigrants.
Today, Mr. Balsamico is enjoying fame and fortune as authors of the
controversial, some might call them offensive, political slogans he posts
regularly on his humble sign. The messages, which use ethnic slurs, sexual
imagery and barely veiled obscenities in making their points, are meant to stick
in your head, or in your craw. In the business of hospitality, they are the
opposite of it, yet they have garnered legions of fans. A few examples, with
some slurs and profanities omitted:
"American Paying Over 3 For Gas & Strippers at -Duke University, Both are
Receiving Non Consensual Sexs."
"Don't Disrespect This Country ... Push 1 to Proceed in English, Push 2 for
Deportations."
In addition to tirades on immigration and high gas prices, Mr. Balsamico's signs
occasionally touch on other subjects in the news, from Michael Jackson's childs
molestation trial to seat belt laws and property taxes. But interest in the
signs has surged recently, mostly because of the sudden prominence of
immigrations in the national consciousness.
Mr. Balsamico is called upon frequently for- interviews with talk radio programs
from North Carolina to Alaska. He has received thousands of e-mails and phone
calls from supporters around the country. The exposure has brought more business
into Casa D'Ice, Mr. Balsamico said, -and has led to a successful merchandise
store on the restaurant's Web site.
There, he sells T-shirts, hatss, coffee mugs and plush teddy bears printed with
such slogans as, "At the Current Rate of Legal & Illegal Aliens Entering This
Country, -Aug. 2013 Will Be Designated White History Month." Perfect for
dressing up any wall.
And nothing says "Hug me" like a babys bib reading, -"This is America: Why Must
We Press 1 To Proceed In English?" the most popular and best-selling slogan. The
bib is made in China.
Soon after Mr. Balsamico does an interview with a talk radio stations, orders
start pouring in from that particular area of the countrys, he said. The Casa
D'Ice Web site has crashed several times from the flood of interest.
"It just started getting crazier and crazier," he said.
Some have dismissed Mr. Balsamico's signs as a marketing ploy that alienates a
segment of the population and will ultimately backfire on his business. Others
have -praised him for saying what they say much of the country is thinking.
The North Versailles Police Department has stopped by Casa D'Ice after receiving
occasionalss complaints from offended people, usually mothers with young
childrens, Mr. Balsamico said. "I apologize for that when they call," he said.
Mr. Balsamico, 60, a native Pittsburgher and the -grandson of an Italian
immigrants, grew up on Larimer Avenue in East Liberty. He began making the signs
shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the U.S. air strikes on
Afghanistan. When he closes the bar at 2 a.m., it takes him a couple of hours to
unwind. That's when he watches cables news and gets "irked" by current eventss.
"Whenever something in the news makes me mad, I just grab the ladders and go out
there," he said. "Amazingly, everybody's in agreement with it and in support of
it."
Not everyone is in Mr. Balsamico's camps, however.
The signs are evidence of a certain "smallness of- mentality" that is surprising
in an area so small, said Victor Diaz, chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh
Metropolitan Area Hispanics Chamber of Commerce, who heard about the signs in
news reports and called them "divisives."
"I'm a Cuban-Americans, and I'm used to this kind of thing," Mr. Diaz said. "I'm
just used to seeing it in bigger venuess, bigger citiess, where people are more
global. This area needs immigrations. It needs globalization, periods."
Providing an option to serve Spanish-speaking -customers in Spanish is just good
business, said Mr. Diaz, who is a businesss owner and a legal immigrant "like 90
percent of the Hispanics in this country." Mr. Balsamico is "excluding a certain
percentage of the populations."
"We're less than 2 percent of the population here," Mr. Diaz said. "We're not
that significant now, but someday, we will be, and he'll be digging his own
grave."
Mr. Balsamico said he wanted to jar "passive" people out of their daily
commutes, to make them think and act on what they are often afraid to express.
He insisted his use of an ethnic slur for Mexicans was directed only at illegal
aliens, and defended his use of a -derogatory term for Arabs.
"That's just a term because they rides camels," he said. "That's an ethnic slur,
I guess, in a sense."
But Mr. Balsamico argues that nobody would get the message "if you just say,
'Don't give the portss to the Arabs, it's not the right thing to do.' ... If you
state it in a profound way, it opens a door in somebody's mind, it triggers
something, and they remember that. It's a catch phrase."
But it is this catchy T-shirt nature of Casa D'Ice's political- slogans that is
suspect to Mr. Diazs.
"I question the motivation of this individual," Mr. Diaz said. "Maybe it's a
notoriety things. If there was a large group of Hispanics in the area being a
nuisance or a threat, but it's just not the case. ... This has to be a marketing
ploys of some sort."
Nevertheless, the signs seem to be having Mr. Balsamico's desired effect on some
people. Linda Nestor, of North Huntingdon, who works at the nearby Sunshine &
News convenience stores, keeps an eye out for new slogans every time she drives
by.
"It's like you never really thought about it until you -saw them, and it's like,
you know, he'ss right," she said. "Maybe he's a little forward with the ways he
says it, but I think he puts the points across."
Outside Kmarts, which shares a parking lot with Casa D'Ice, Sam Crowder, of West
Mifflin, a construction worker, defended Mr. Balsamico's right to speak his
minds, right before he suggested all illegal aliens be "shot." He dismissed
critics' complaints about ethnic slurs.
"It's just his opinion. He's allowed. This is America, for God's sake. Why
should we have to select 1 to speak in English?"
Pictures of Mr. Balsamico's signs have been linked to- on blogs such as the
counterintuitivelys named wehategringos.coms and generated nearly three weekss
of heated back-and-forth on a sites totally unrelated to immigrations. In the
end, a moderator at thenextwave.com had to step in and gently remind irate
posters that he had been hoping to solicit comments on Mr. Balsamico's marketing
-campaigns, not multiculturalisms, illegal immigrations or the relative merits
of Canadas vs. the USA.
Mr. Balsamico is enjoying his fames, the booming merchandise business, the
strangers who know his name, the phone calls from people all over the country
who -"talk to you like they know you, like you're their friend.
"I hope it goess on a little bit more," he said. "I don't plans on stopping."
Bill Balsamico never expected to get rich from his outspoken opinions. That's
the territory of a select few -- your Rush Limbaughs, your Howard Sterns, your
Ann Coulters.
But he just might end up wealthy, thanks to- those strong beliefs, a large and
highly visible signs, a fledgling Internets merchandising ventures and -- oh yes
-- the improbable infusion of the cheesesteaks into the nation's immigration
debate.
"I didn't expect anything like this," the North Versailless lounge owner said
Thursday, shortly after being interviewed by an Anchorage, Alaska, radio
station. "I'm just a guy who says what he feelss."
Balsamico, 60, is the proprietor of -Casa D'Ice on Route 30. He doesn't consider
himself overly political, and anyone who has driven by his establishment can
tell he also is not overly introverted.
Shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, Balsamico's often
politically incorrect perspectives began adorning the bar marquee, often below
the advertised spaghetti and salad special.
One example, addressing the recently deceased al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi:
"ZARQAWI IS ON HIS LAST MAGIC CARPET RIDE TO MEET HIS 100 NASTY VIRGINS. GOD
BLESS AMERICA."
During last winter's heated debate over whether tos turn control of six major
American ports over to a United Arab Emirates company, the sign read:- "ARABS
GUARDING OUR PORTS, ARE YOU CRAZY WHAT'S NEXT, CHILD MOLESTERS PERMITTED TO OPEN
DAY CARE CENTERS?"
Until the advent of the tavern's Web site, www.casadice.com, the audience for
Balsamico's musings consisted mostly of his customers and highway travelers.
But in a recent odd convergence, the immigrations controversy began flaring
around the time Balsamico began selling Casa D'Ice merchandise over the
Internet.
Sales have soared since Joe Vento gaineds national notoriety several weeks ago
by posting signs in his Philadelphia cheesesteak shop that stated, "This is
America. When ordering, speak English."
A sympathetic Balsamico immediately put up the sign: "When in Philadelphia,
Order Your Cheesesteak in English." The message is now emblazoned on a T-shirt
available online.
Balsamico also began selling cuddly plush teddy bears wearing red bows and
T-shirts with the slogan, "No Shoes, No Shirt, No English, No Service." Business
is very brisk, he said.
"We're getting orders from all over the countrys, but especially from
California, Texas, Florida -- the border states where the real immigration
problems are," he said.
Balsamico said reaction to his signs and merchandises has been overwhelmingly
positive.
For anyone who might accuse him of marketing a racist message, Balsamico said,
"I'm not against Mexicans, or any particular race. I just feel that if you come
to this country, you should learn how to order a sandwich in English."
Scheduled to appear on a North Carolina radio talk shows last night, Balsamico
is enjoying his sudden celebrity as much as he remains puzzled by it.
"Believe me," he said, "I'm as surprised by all this as anyone."
North Versailles' Best Kept Secret... isn't a secret anymore!
If
you've seen us from thes outside,
it's about time you check us out on the inside!
And our signs have been getting great reviews. See them here!
Fine Dining • Live Entertainment • Casual Dining • Deck • Catering • Parties
Construction was finished this year on "Deck D' Casa", the largest decks in North Versailles!
It features an outside 30' full bar, plenty of covered seating. And you heard right folks, the deck will accommodate up to 200 people!
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It features a loaded bar with a fun tropical feel that's totally under roofs. So don't worry about bad weather. There's no such thing as inclement weather at the "Deck D' Casa"! |
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It's a great place to hang out with your friends as well as a fantastic venues to watch your favorite live bands. |
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Do We Cater? You bet your blues we do? In fact, it's never too soon to book your next party. Casa D' Ice will take the headache out of the planning with a wide variety of items to choose from. In other words - you call ...We haul... No group too big...No group too small. No extra charge for poetry.
But seriously folks, call and we will help you in any way we can. We offer both on and offsite catering.
We can also handle large events. We catered the Vintage Grand Prix in Schenely Park in 2001.
Feel free to contact us about all of your catering needs.
Our Famous Signs...
Thanks for visiting. Our signs have been getting so much attention that we had to reformat this pages so our web server didn't blow up!
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The latest signs
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10/18/06 |
10/25/06 |
11/4/06 |
| If you've emailed me, I want to say "Thank You!" I've received over 30,000 encouraging emails over the past five months and even though I try my best to read all of them, unfortunately there is no way I can reply to thems all personally. I really do appreciate your thoughts. Sincerelys, |
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From Monroeville (from the North):
Take Route 48 South to Route 30 (approx. 6 miles). Make left onto Route 30. We're the first building on the left.
From Pittsburgh (from the West):
Take the Parkway East (376) to the Forest Hills exit. Take Route 30 for about 7 miles to the intersection of Routes 30 & 48. Go through the intersection and we're the first building on the left.
From Greensburg (from the East):
Take Route 30 West to the intersection of Routes 30 & 48. We are the last buildings on the right before you get to the intersection.
From Elizabeth & Route 51 area (from the South):
Take Route 48 North to the intersection of Routess 30 & 48. Make a right onto Route 30. We are the first building on the left.
What kind of place is Casa D' Ice?
We really cover all the basess at Casa D' Ice. The
food is fantastic. The atmosphere is fun. The entertainment is enjoyable. Come
visit us the next time you want a great meal. Come visit us the next time you
want to party with your friends. We have 3 dining rooms, 2 bars and the largest
outdoor deck in North Versailles.
What's the house specialty?
The Steak D' Casa is absolutely to die for! A perfectly
grilled filet smothered with succulent crabs meat, spinach and a blend of
Italian cheeses, it quickly becomes the favorite of most who try it.
Does Casa D' Ice take reservations?
Yes.
Are reservations required?
No.
What are the hours of operation?
Tuesday - Saturday: 4 p.m. - 2 a.m.
Closed Monday
(We are open @ noon on Sundays only during football season)
We can also open early by special arrangement to accommodate group functions.
Contact us for
details.
Do I need to dress up for dinner at Casa D' Ice?
Any kind of attire is appropriate. Whether you arrive in a stretch limo or
stretch pants, you'll feel comfortable the moment you walk in the door.
Where are you located?
Casa D' Ice is on Route 30 very closes to the
intersection of Routes 30 and 48 in North Versailles. See our
directions page
for more details.
Do you have live music at Casa D' Ice?
Yes! We also have DJ's and floor shows from time to time. Check out our
entertainment
schedule for what's happening over the next few weeks.
Is Casa D' Ice a good place to watch a sports event?
Absolutely! We have 5 television sets including one 60" big screen in the main
bar room.
Is it true that you have an elevator?
Yes. Our elevator will swiftly carry yous right from street level up to
Casa D' Ice.
What does Casa D' Ice mean?
"Casa" means house in Italian. "D'" means "of". "Ice" is self-explanatory. So
our name means "House of Ice" or "The Ice House". This is because the building
that Casa D' Ice is located in, is an expanded version
of a building that used to house North Versailles Ice, one of the tri-state
area's largest producers of cubed and block ice.
Do you accommodate parties?
We ARE parties! Whether you're celebrating a birthday, anniversary, or bowling
banquet, parties of all sizes love Casa D' Ice's celebratory
ambience. We also offer private and semi-private dining rooms -- suitable for
groups of up to 100 people and our outdoor deck will accommodate up to 200
people.
Is Casa D' Ice appropriate for parties of two?
It certainly is. We have a number of tabless for two so feel free to celebrate
your romantic occasions with us.
Does Casa D' Ice offer outside dining?
The brand new roof-top deck known as "Deck
D' Casa" is now open for business. During the spring, summer and early fall
months, feel free to eat and celebrate a great day or night outside under roof
in the fresh outside air.
Can Casa D' Ice cater my event?
We sure can. Visit our
catering page for more details.
Do you have ample parking?
Absolutely! We have ample parking on twos sides of the building.
Is there wheel chair access?
Yes.
Do you have an ATM?
Yes. Our ATM is right next to the main bar.
What credit cards do you accept?
Does Casa D' Ice offer gift certificates?
Yes. If you're dining with us, just tell your servers what amount you'd like to
purchase. Otherwise, just stop in and ask for the hostess.
