Today we’d like to introduce you to Delane Blackstock.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
When we first moved to LA in 2001, we were stunned to find eggplant and blue cheese on a pizza just a few blocks away from Gavin’s mom and dad’s house, where we were living at the time. It was a decidedly not-hip part of town, and the owner, Mike Freeman, was just as out of system as the menu. Mike was a skateboarding pop-art guy who who loved to spoil customers as much as he liked complaining about them. But he had nobody to complain to, because he worked by himself for 14 hours a day. He needed help, Gavin asked for a job, and they became friends.
I weaseled my way into a 3rd job at Zelo, and we one-by-one hired all of our friends to work there as well. Two of ,my other jobs involved ceramics; at the time I was throwing a lot of pots and opening a gallery in Chinatown, Flux, with Lilith Rockett. That part of my life seemed like it would be more fun. Instead, owning a gallery in downtown LA at 22 was uncomfortable and isolating. All I wanted to do was go work at the pizza place with my friends.
But we didn’t to live in LA anymore. Gavin and I decided to move to Portland; we could buy a house in our mid-20’s, ride our bikes everywhere, and it had good food and bands came through it regularly.
We found a very rough pizza place for sale in a strip mall about 18 months after moving there. The next several months were spent on our hands and knees and renting lifts with our friends while crafting a new favorite neighborhood spot.
We opened Dove Vivi on June 15th, 2007, with one employee: my sister. She came in on Thursdays after her desk job. Portland was deep in its anti-deep-dish phase of wood-fired, so we had to attract one customer at a time, and hire one employee at a time in response. It took about three years to stop wondering if we had made the worst mistake of our lives, and to slowly go from working 100 plus hours per week to more like 80. We had a baby in 2009, and we either strapped her on our backs or traded off night and day shifts to keep her at home.
By 2013, my sister and I both had two kids, and she was feeling ready to either take over the 11 tables at the restaurant or find something more for herself. Gavin was wanting to get out of the city, so we took off the Astoria, OR for the next couple years to rehabilitate a compound. I would shore things up every other weekend or so, and Memry, my sister settled into GM.
In 2016, my dad was in the middle of his fishing season in Alaska and his crew quit. I flew up to the Shumigan Islands to join him set netting for salmon, something I had done every summer growing up. Gavin and the girls joined a the end of the summer and all of them asked why we didn’t just move to Alaska. Growing up in Homer, I knew it was a really good place to raise a family, but a hard place to exist as an adult.
We took on the challenge in 2017. Our kids are thriving, my parents are thrilled to have us down the street, and Dove Vivi is still chugging. My sister has been able to maintain the restaurant, which means we get to chat on the phone as much as we want, and I get to visit and envision fun projects. It also means Gavin gets to envision maintenance plans.
We are very grateful to overcome 3rd party delivery, Covid, riots, the paradigm shift of employees vs employers, rising food costs, the laundry mafia, space gas, and Portland’s reticence the mini mall aesthetic. Almost 20 years of restauranting is a blur of challenges and creative solutions, but ultimately each day is a human-scale problem that we get a lot of satisfaction resolving.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Ha, I think I just answered those in the last box.
No, it has not been smooth.
It is impossible to sell the perfect amount of pizza. There is a tipping point after six employees- chaos. But at that point it is easier to do your own laundry.
Delivery services are the worst thing to happen to restaurants and people.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
The making of a thing is still the most satisfying part of every day.
Whether its actually a pizza or salad dressing on the menu, or designing a matchbook to give to customers, it’s just feels good.
We still don’t use an internal POS system because of how good it feels to hand-write a ticket. Also because human hands are better at it than computers.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Portland? I like that It is very accessible by bike, and that here are a lot of independent businesses. The trees and landscaping is really beautiful, and the houses are unique.
I do not like the amount of drugs and addicts on the streets.
Pricing:
- $33.75/ pizza
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dovevivipizza.om
- Instagram: dovevivipizza
- Facebook: dovevivipizza
