I can’t honestly say Mike Pahos was the second coming of Zorba the Greek. He did, however, singlehandedly invent Santa Barbara’s now-enshrined Greek Festival, paving the way for a multitude of ethnic festivals that have since followed. I never actually saw Pahos dancing around with a table in his mouth. But then, I never saw Pahos jitterbug either, and by Mike’s own reckoning, he was a hell of a jitterbugger. All the girls, he told me, wanted to dance with him back in Chicago, where he grew up. Maybe that was the key to Pahos’s success. He was the guy all the girls wanted to dance with.
And he knew it.
Either way, Mike Pahos had some serious moves. He died this week at age 90 of complications from pneumonia, his brain still sharp and clear. We hadn’t stayed in close touch over the years after he stepped down as County Parks Director in 1994. But Pahos in action was something to behold; as parks czar for 22 years, Pahos routinely put the scheme in the dream and the dream in the scheme. He did the same in the years before, when he was charge of the city’s parks program. Mike Pahos had a habit of making things happen. Many of those things we all will enjoy for decades to come, never wondering how they came to be.