Mucci's Italian Pizza
A matter of weeks ago, I got a call from Tim Niver asking if I wanted to come to a cleansing. Well. After ascertaining it had nothing to do with juices or high colonics, I said yes. Of course, I headed to the Uptown spot in which Niver and his cohorts Adam Eaton, Laurel Elm, et al, had recently shuttered their go at a deli, called Meyvn.
Before Meyvn, the spot had been Tinto, which moved to points South Minny. Before that, it had been Spill the Wine, an ill-fated wine bar, before that was Phoenix Games, and before that other things. At a very old intersection, it’s an old building with an old basement that has been redeveloped to have a shinier face, as happens to old buildings these days.
Do you believe that buildings can have curses? I get rather irked when someone suggests a restaurant didn't work because the space is cursed. To me, that feels dismissive of all the complexities that can cause a restaurant to close. It feels lazy, like you just need a tight and tidy reason to type before you order your next cheeseburger. If you boil it down to one simple line, you're almost always going to be wrong.
I’ll say it again for the umpteenth time: restaurants are made of people, and all that entails.
That being said, I get that some places are riskier as restaurants. Maybe the landlord has a skewed idea of who will work in a space, and keeps taking the wrong deals. Maybe the space is in an evolving neighborhood in which trying to game the mood becomes harder and harder as you commit to a years long lease. The shifting plates of Uptown have become less and less hospitable to those who build from their own pockets. Opening a restaurant is a vexing game of guess and go and no matter how much experience you have, it makes you question everything you think you know: again and again and again. I don't know, maybe they can be cursed.
So I was not surprised to find, as I walked in the empty and quiet space on Hennepin, Niver’s crew intently listening to a tall, white haired man named Rick Schuster. He and his partner Sandra work with Great Tree Healing and people bring them into spaces that need to have their energy changed or be cleansed of bad spirits. When I joined the group, they were talking about intuition and trusting your feelings. How, when you get an odd feeling, instead of running from it or masking it, to try and pay attention and mark it. To not dimiss the small intangibles, “Anything I say is a possibility, it only becomes a truth for you, when you experience it as real, then it becomes your truth.” Everyone in that room was up for this, they were open and ready.
We headed into the basement of the building, where many of the Meyvn staff had felt ill at ease. Especially in certain corners, which had remained undeveloped and in their original cement and limestone state, there were stories told of small movements of things and random cold spots, water bubbling up from a drain with no apparent cause, dark shadows from under staircases that no one could ignore.
Rick asked the unseen in the room if there was anyone there who wanted to say hi. Sandra said, “I didn’t hear HI, I heard: You dirty bastard.” That was concerning. Laurel pointed out that they were the first to really break up the space and create new barriers where before there had been none. By standing in the room and quietly listening to things we couldn't hear, Rick said he felt about 17 entities or in-betweeners in the space, not including us.
Rick talked about all the negative energy of the trapped entities, and how it permeates upstairs, “it affects the mood, it affects the people’s desires to be here, their attitude. It can affect their tolerance and their struggling with others. Some in-betweeners will go into a bar and stick with someone and as soon as the alcohol starts flowing, they’ll want to create a fight.”
Look, I’m a giggler, but I’m very open to possibility. There are things he said and things that happened in that basement that day that don’t really work for me to just trot them out, you wouldn’t get it if I just wrote it. There was a lot of emotional energy in that space. For some of the crew, it got really personal. Rick’s whole goal was to transform the energy of the space, to find the balance of free flowing energy between the space and the selves. That the group there, seen and unseen, might find a gentler more neutral balance. “Those who are stuck in between, the longer they are here the harder it is to move on, just like humans. But we’re going to help them move on.” He worked through the space, going into dusty corners and shallow closets, spots where he felt heavy sadness and energy, inviting the in-betweeners into his neutral space and showing them the path to move on.
Did he move out the bad juju, cleanse the space and give it another chance as a place where people could gather and have good times? When we all ascended to the upper level, for sure we all felt lighter, for us the energy had shifted a bit. But as we stood in a circle, Rick mentioned that there were still some feelings that had to be let go. He pointed to one guy and mentioned that he was holding on to something. Then he pointed to me, and said I had to let go of something that had happened here.
I suddenly knew exactly what it was, and I told him: When this place was called Spill The Wine, a group of my best gals and I were letting off steam and laughing loudly at a table, right near the door. A man who had been sitting nearby suddenly came over to our table and stood behind Molly. When I greeted him, and asked him who he was, he replied “I’m your worst nightmare” and proceeded to pour his entire glass of water over Molly’s head. He then left and sat back down at his table with his date as if it were nothing. We were all shocked beyond, because: Who does that? Rick listened and then told me that the man was clearly under the influence of an in-betweener who was stuck and unhappy with our unbridled joy, they hated laughter. I have to say, I remember in that moment, that it seemed like that man was not really functioning right, there was something more than ill-mannered about him. Unnnatural.
Rick did not know I was coming or what I did, nor did I introduce myself beyond my first name when I got there. I wasn’t part of the crew, I thought I was there just to observe. But how can I not feel that I was supposed to be a part of that. Niver had not connected that incident to this space, he had just invited me thinking I would get it. Thinking on it more, I can’t help but feel that my amplification of that bad night may have amplified that bad mojo. Did I close Spill The Wine? Of course not, I warned you about boiling it down to one line. But is there something to be said for letting that energy go? Undeniably.
That Niver and his crew were there with open minds, willing to address the possibility of a cursed space was something I've never seen from a restaurant. At that point, they didn't know exactly what the space would become, if it was going to be a Mucci's or not. But they knew they needed to change the energy, change the story on all levels if they could. Even if you don't believe in ghosts, you can respect that.
Rick asked Niver, “What do you choose and desire this place to be? What do you wish for all who enter here to experience?”
Niver replied, “Happiness and joy. Hope. And light.” We all held hands and sealed the deal.
Do I believe in ghosts or in-betweeners? Yes, 100%.
Do I believe in curses? I tend to think we craft our own, which has a flip-side comfort: I truly believe that we have all the power to lift them. But I also believe that spaces can be imbued with energies we don't understand.
Was Rick the ticket to make this place a winner? There are no tickets, but a fresh start is as hopeful and good as it gets.
The freshly cleaned restaurant space will re-open as Trattoria Mucci’s tonight. When you go, I wonder if you’ll feel differently about the space. And if you do, I hope you wonder why.
