Gus Kalaris, the Pittsburgh icon who ran Gus and Yiayia's ice ball cart on the North Side for more than 70 years, has died.
Kalaris took over the cart from his father in 1951, and it sold flavored ice balls, popcorn and peanuts in Allegheny Commons Park every summer since. Kalaris' death was noted Saturday in a social media post by the City of Pittsburgh. He was 92.
Pittsburgh has lost a local legend. For decades Gus Kalaris served up ice balls, popcorn, and smiles at the world renowned Gus & YiaYia’s Cart on the city’s North Side. Join us in sending support and condolences to his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss. pic.twitter.com/AaCaFHkQ8l
— City of Pittsburgh (@Pittsburgh) June 29, 2024
"Without a doubt, Gus touched the hearts and lives of Pittsburghers and tourists who flocked to the cart each year," Mayor Ed Gainey said in his own social media post. "May his memory live on, providing peace to all who knew and loved him."
Kalaris' cart was well enough known that in 2021, a toy-sized version was included in the Carnegie Science Center's Miniature Railroad and Village. In interviews with WESA, he said his father began selling popcorn, peanuts, and flavored ice balls to neighbors in 1934, and he began working with his father when he was 8.
After Gus Kalaris took over the business, he built two versions of the cart — one as a high school woodshop project and later a second cart that he'd used since 1983. He painted the reference to Yiayia — “grandmother” in Greek — on the cart, first for his mother and later for his late wife, Stella, who died in 2016.
For decades, the couple and the ice ball cart lived up to the slogan painted on its side: "On the North Side since your dad was a lad," becoming an iconic orange fixture along West Ohio Street in the park. In an interview in 2021, Kalaris said he was glad to be memorialized in the Science Center display.
“It's like getting the Academy Award or the Lombardi Trophy, you know, that's the top,” he said then. “Who honors an ice ball person vending on the street today, you know?”
Visitation for Kalaris is scheduled for 2 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Calvary United Methodist Church, 971 Beech Ave., North Side, where a Trisagion prayer service will be conducted at 6 p.m.
His funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 985 Providence Blvd., McCandless.
