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“I instantly knew what it was and where it was from,” he said. “So I emailed my siblings.
“Sure enough, it’s the real thing.”
The owners of Margherita Pizza Cucina on Anderson Avenue were cleaning out the basement when they found the portrait.
“My husband was going to throw it away,” said Abir Abuali. “But I said, ‘No. I’m going to find them.’
“The last thing I’d want if it was me is to have a family photo end up in a Dumpster.”
Abuali took the photo home and cleaned it up. Then she contacted Daily Voice.
The story ran last week – and was shared widely on Facebook.
Eventually, it reached Joe Bace – who, like Abuali, is a former North Bergen resident.
Only now he’s in Charlotte, NC.
“My wife texted it to me after somebody saw it and recognized me,” he said. “It’s really wild.”
Bace was living on 78th Street in North Bergen in the 80s, a dozen or so blocks from where Abuali lived after her family permanently moved to the U.S. from Palestine.
He’d been playing in a popular cover band, the Privates, that gigged in New Jersey (Hitsville, the Dirt Club and more) and New York (CBGBs, Great Gildersleeves, among others).
Family members had come from different parts of the country for his grandmother’s funeral. One brother, who’s now retired in Florida, lived in South Jersey. Another brother had moved to London. Two sisters came from San Diego.
Also posing was Bace’s mother, Beatrice, who died in 2001. Her children are all still alive.
Bace can’t remember the name of the studio, which he said was in the 7000 block of Bergenline Avenue in West New York. He said he brought friends there to show them the photo, which the owner hung in the shop as an advertisement for the business.
Curiously, the building that now houses the pizzeria in Fairview had long ago held a photo studio. Yet no one knows the link between it and the West New York shop.
Abuali had no luck with the previous owners. She even tried the Bergen County Board of Taxation, which helped her find the owners before them.
"It wasn’t theirs, either,” she said.
Daily Voice discovered how it got there: https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/cliffsidepark/neighbors/the-answer-heres-how-north-bergen-family-portrait-turned-up-in-fairview-basement/767677/
Daily Voice also connected Abuali with Bace so they could figure out how to return the portrait to the family.
Now a grandfather, Bace works as a facilities manager at UNC Charlotte, where a gunman killed two people and wounded four others earlier this week.
He’s also in a techno band, The Wavos, that wears kilts and covers New Wave tunes from the 80s – around the time the family photo was taken.
“I really did think it was some kind of scam,” he said. “But then I realized, ‘Facebook is really good for something. It can connect people.
“Small world, huh?”
Margherita Pizza Cucina, in the 300 block of Anderson Avenue between Walker and Cliff streets in Fairview (COURTESY: GoogleMaps)
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