PIKES BOOK 2017

Tony
Pike
T O N Y ’ S T A L E S # 2
Frank Zappa came here and I didn’t
know who he was. He looked like he
couldn’t buy a coffee; he looked like
a fucking hobo. A group of people took him
out for lunch and I tagged along. Afterwards,
Frank stood up and said as he’d just flown in
from New York he wanted to go back to the
hotel before the evening so I offered to give
him a lift back. We were driving along and
he turned to me and said that I didn’t know
who he was.
“Course I do, you’re Frank Zappa.” I said.
“Who’s Frank Zappa?”
“You’re Frank Zappa.”
“Who’s Frank Zappa?”
“I just fucking told you, you’re Frank Zappa.”
It could have gone on forever. He thought it
was refreshing to meet someone who wasn’t
on the take from him. We were sitting in the
bar once we’d got back to the hotel and he
asked me whether the fact he’d just spent
$3m impressed me. As I was just working on
this place it really didn’t.
Frank said he had a proposition for me
and ran to Room 1 and came back with a
leather briefcase. He pulled out this Russian
document and all I could understand
were the numbers $2.7m, which was for a
property he’d just bought not far from the
Kremlin. He said with the other $300k he’d
bought a vodka factory and thought we
should make a Pikes Peach Vodka; he had
people making the brews and we could make
it world-famous. Then he asked me if we
could open up Pikes boutique-style hotels
around the world – if he found a property
he’d fly me over to set it up and I’d make
15% off the top.
A while later Frank rang me up saying he’d
found the perfect place for the first Pikes
Hotel franchise. It was Havana, Cuba –
Ernest Hemingway’s old house. He said he’d
told Fidel that I was a nice man and “not to
worry about Gorbachev” as he was on side
too. I told him I’d be straight over; he really
wanted to get on with it.
Then he fucking died on me.
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