[img]2747|right|||no_popup[/img]Let there be no mystery why the beloved Roll ‘n Rye Jewish deli (is that like saying a tall giant?) drew its blinds for the final time late yesterday afternoon.
“I am tired,” the revered proprietor Rita Zide said as saddened patrons – many of them fourth generation customers – formed a non-stop line on Saturday and Sunday for one last hug for her and one last bite at the unique tastes of perhaps the favoritest Jewish deli on the Westside.
For two years she wrestled with the idea of closing.
Despite the hopelessly romantic, fiercely loyal lifelong affair thousands have with the Roll ‘n Rye – and it is mutual — ending the deli’s gilded 51-year run was a heartbreaking monster of a decision to settle in her mind.
Loyalty? A few years ago the deli boasted that “at least one-fourth of our customers come every single day and 75 percent come at least once a week.”
Ms. Zide is leaving as she has lived for the last 51 years at the Roll ‘n Rye. On her terms.
Seventeen years old when she went to work in the deli founded by her Polish-born parents, Ms. Zide says that at 68, “I need to take care of myself.”
There it is.
If her health is not perfect, she doesn’t want to risk thinning her chances to live lengthily and vigorously.
“I love this community,” said one of the most courageous women in Los Angeles. That, too, is mutual.
She earned the badge because she has prevailed for half-a-century as an equal in the male monopolized world of wildly competitive commerce. She not only survived but succeeded throughout an era when men treated women with a wink rather than as a peer.
After her parents emigrated from Poland to Chicago, Ms. Zide’s father went into the deli business during the 1940s.
Today is the first day in nearly 70 years that a Zide has not been involved with a Jewish deli.
