Eating fish and chips thru a cardboard diver's mask was big fun when I was a kid. Ivar would sometimes make a around of the dining room.
Ivar had an aquarium when he started. This is one of my favorite stories about him:
"After Pat the Seal, Oscar the Octopus was the aquarium's most popular critter. It was generally hoped that he would also be the most horrifying. Ivar parodied his customers' fearsome ideas about Oscar by staging a wrestling match between the Octopus and an over-the-hill prizefighter name Two Ton Tony. The match, of course, got international press coverage as well as the attention of the local Humane Society when word got out that Oscar had died. The society ceased complaining when it was revealed that the prizefighter had been wrestling not Oscar but an already kaput substitute whose grimacing trainers -- Ivar included -- seemed to be restraining the frightening eight-armed pugilist when they were actually animating it with underwater thrashing. "
Ivar was a folk singer and sang sometimes out front to get people in the door.
You probably couldn't get a permit or insurance to do some of the things he did now days. After Ivar died in '85, from what I've heard, the family was offered a higher price from a big corporation but turned it down. His heirs insisted on local ownership and 4 long time employees went together and bought the business, which I think is lucky for locals that appreciate what Ivars means to this area.
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"I didn't care what she didn't 'low--I would boogie-woogie anyhow" John Lee Hooker
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