Petros Polychronidis, a Greek television presenter, has revealed a previously unknown childhood story about singer Giorgos Mazonakis, recalling how the pair grew up in the same apartment building in Nikaia, near Piraeus.
Polychronidis shared the memory in an Instagram post published as Greece held a farewell ceremony and a public vigil for Mazonakis, who died at the age of 54.
Polychronidis wrote that he lived in the same building as Mazonakis until the singer turned 15, and that he has dozens of fond memories from those childhood years, long before Mazonakis found fame, spent together with the singer and two other childhood friends, Vaso and Maria, on M. Botsari Street in Nikaia. He said he wanted to share just one of those memories.
A Puppet Show for Two Drachmas
According to Polychronidis, in the summer of 1984 a 12-year-old Mazonakis and his friends from the apartment building built a puppet theatre by hand.
That afternoon, Mazonakis used a paper megaphone to call out to the other children in the neighborhood like a town crier, inviting them into the courtyard to watch the show they had prepared, but asking each child to bring two drachmas.
Polychronidis, who was six years old at the time, said he asked Mazonakis naively why they had to pay, since he did not yet understand the concept of a transaction. Mazonakis replied disarmingly that they were going to make art there, addressing him as "Petrako," an affectionate diminutive of his name, and told him that was what grown-ups paid for.
Polychronidis wrote that he understood nothing at the time, but later realized what he called the obvious: that Mazonakis had not become an artist later in life, he said, but had been born one.
"Just Giorgos From the Fourth Floor"
In the full post, Polychronidis wrote that to them, Mazonakis was simply "Giorgos from the fourth floor." He said the two grew up under the same roof in the same courtyard in Nikaia until Mazonakis was 15, and that when the singer began his career, long before he became what Polychronidis described as a beloved artist, they were proud friends and neighbors who enthusiastically followed his first steps performing on the dance floor.
Nikaia is a suburb west of Athens, in the wider Piraeus area, where Mazonakis grew up.
Polychronidis closed his post with a single word: "Bye..."
