Pepa Vomáčka at 80 – Celebrating Prague’s Legendary “Pábitel”
Josef “Pepa” Vomáčka is a Prague-based bon vivant and “man about town” – a renowned and much-beloved figure across the Czech capital’s cultural scene. Pepa turned 80 this month and Dominik Jůn spoke to several of his friends and associates to mark the occasion:
It is not an exaggeration to say that no Prague gala opening, or premiere, or “večírek” or “vernisáž” is truly considered complete these days without Pepa Vomáčka’s gregarious presence. The man’s resume, not to mention his wealth of knowledge, spans so many fields – from architecture, to the arts, to film, to journalism, to you-name-it – that it is almost impossible to pin down what he really does, not to mention the details of his own remarkable life story. Of course all that forms part of his legend.
Martina Procházková is a journalist and the organiser of the Prague Spirit Festival, a multi-genre cultural festival that has been running for fifteen years. She has known Pepa Vomáčka since childhood through her art curator father Miro Procházka, and told me that she sees Pepa as a kind of adopted father:
... So this is something about Pepa, that he does not keep the good stuff, the good people to himself, but likes to share the love.”
Martina Procházková
“I don’t know what the perfect definition of a legend is, but to me he always was one. Because he is a person who likes people – he knows people from across the art community; he knows people in the architecture community – the more ‘serious’ arts – he knows musicians; he knows actors; and of course people from the modern arts. But I also remember that no matter who he was with, he would say hello to me and would introduce me. So this is something about Pepa, that he does not keep the good stuff, the good people to himself, but likes to share the love.”
Josef Vomáčka was born in Prague in 1945. He studied architecture before ending up working as a lighting technician at Prague’s Barrandov film studios during the Czechoslovak New Wave era. After that, he joined Czech Radio, before being dismissed in the purges that followed the 1968 Soviet invasion. He spent the notorious normalisation years working in a milk factory, including organising tourism trips around the world for staff.
Marek Gregor is a Prague-based journalist who works for the magazine Reflex. He, too, considers Pepa to be a kind of adoptive father:
“He actually worked in the marketing department of a Czech milk company – an old Bolshevik, state-owned company. They were headquartered in Prague 5, and it was called Laktos. And he would proudly tell us that the Jovo yogurt cocktail was named after Jo-sef Vo-máčka. It’s true that he worked in the marketing department of this state company. But I can’t say if it’s true with the Jovo or not.”
Michal Bregant is the director of the Czech National Film Archive. The pair met in the 1990s, while Pepa headed one of his many cultural journals, and soon became friends. “He started telling me fascinating stories from his life, for example, how he invented Jovo, a super-famous milk drink back in the 1970s – Josef Vomáčka, i.e. Jo-Vo.”
Bregant has a very particular way of characterising Pepa’s legend – one based in Czech literature:
“He likes to talk. And he has no secrets to hide. We have this fantastic word that was used by [Czech author] Bohumil Hrabal: pábitel. In Czech this means someone who keeps telling stories and inventing stories. Pepa is not so much inventing stories, but sometimes it is hard to draw the line between his memory and his imagination – hence the pábení element in his presence.”
Marek Gregor echoed this sentiment:
“Pábit means that you are dreaming on the edge of the truth. Or you are creating stories which are kind of truthish, untruthish, but they are cute to listen to.”
After the end of the communist regime, Pepa Vomáčka continued the process of re-establishing himself in Prague’s cultural scene. He headed galleries, produced and curated exhibitions, and rejoined Czech Radio and also Czech Television as a contributor to programmes on film, architecture and the arts. He has also worked as a journalist, editing a number of cultural journals. Oh, and then there’s the architectural tours he organises, not just in Prague, but around the world. Because with Pepa, just like with TV’s Lieutenant Columbo, there’s always “One more thing!”
“Pábit means that you are dreaming on the edge of the truth. Or you are creating stories which are kind of truthish, untruthish, but they are cute to listen to.”
Marek Gregor
Here is a snippet from a 2014 radio programme from Czech Radio’s Vltava station. The presenter introduces Pepa Vomáčka as an expert to talk about Prague’s since-closed early 20th century cinemas, including several from the Zlatý kříž chain:
Pepa: “In fact there were three Zlatý kříž cinemas in Prague. Asides from in Wenceslas Square, which housed fifteen cinemas in the 1930s, there was also one in the region of Na Poříčí and Hybernská, which housed another ten cinemas, including large ones such as Kapitol. But the main Zlatý kříž was in Na Perštýně, this area also housing numerous cinemas – both large ones in today’s sense as well as smaller ‘studio-type’ ones.”
Martina Procházková remembered an example of Pepa’s encyclopaedic knowledge:
“At one of the evenings that I organised in Žitná street in Prague, Pepa gave a talk about the history of that street. I mean you just name any street and he knows if once there was a bar there, and if [1930s starlet] Adina Mandlová lived there with her lover, or if it was an undercover flat – he just knows these things.”
Nadia Rovderová is a photographer, curator, gallerist and artist, who has known Pepa Vomáčka for around twenty years:
“He’s this kind of renaissance personality, and the wide range of his influence is really like a kind of Forrest Gump!”
She recalled another legend from his time at the Laktos factory:
“The famous publicity he made with a live cow on the rooftop of the Máj department store, the largest store in Czechoslovakia at that time. And he arranged all the production of that. This was something unbelievable at that time, to be so creative. Because the communist-era advertising industry wasn’t that creative. But JoVo was always creative.”
“Jovo” having become Pepa’s nickname, incidentally. Nadia Rovderová also had her take on Pepa the “pábitel”:
“The way he describes his life, you’d think he must be joking or just making it up. But then you check, and maybe 95 or 96 or 97 percent of what he says is true [laughs]!”
Although punished by the communist regime after 1968, Pepa was never a dissident. However, Marek Gregor told me, Pepa was always a man of integrity, before pointing to yet more of his adoptive father’s resume:
“He was the very first editor of the weekly magazine Pro, which was a bit like London’s Time Out magazine. He is also a big literature freak; his house is jam-packed with books. And he is a big lover of the arts, and as a social person he is also helping to organise the contemporary art scene.”
Miro Procházka is a Slovak journalist, art historian and theatre director. He met Pepa during the 1990s while working at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Prague, specifically while on a visit to the Divadlo na zábradlí theatre. Both became instant friends:
The way he describes his life, you’d think he must be joking or just making it up. But then you check, and maybe 95 or 96 or 97 percent of what he says is true [laughs]!”
Nadia Rovderová
“He was always a man of several faces and professions. He ran two or three journals, and was a member of the board of the Association of Czech Journalists (Syndikát novinářů České republiky). He very quickly initiated me into the Prague Bohema, meaning the artistic circles of Prague, and I was immediately a friend of everyone who counted as someone.”
Miro Procházka was soon roped into contributing to some of Pepa’s journals and subsequently became impressed by his colleague’s voluminous knowledge. “He has an incredible encyclopaedic knowledge of things. You might be in Prague in some house, and he will tell you that some famous personality once lived there, and then it was a shop or a cinema, and later a communist club, and now it is something else!”
In 2020, Pepa’s fast-paced life came to a sudden halt as he came down with a severe case of Covid. He spent months in hospital in Paris. But today, Pepa is still going strong at 80. It was time to meet the man. But instead of sitting down for a talk about his life, I asked Pepa to do what he does best – to tell me about the history of one of Prague’s streets. He chose Bartolomějská, and in characteristic style had enough information with him not just for an entire show, but for an entire series!
Pepa: “Surprisingly, what may appear at first glance to be a rather dull-looking street is anything but. At the entrance to the street we see a large palace, which used to house the pre-war Trade Union building. The trade unions were for the fields of mining, manufacturing, farming and also general organisational ones. The palace was designed by architect Alois Dryák (1872-1932) and features statues by Czech sculptor Jaroslav Brůha (1889-1969). After 1948, the building was seized by the communists and the regime turned it into a police station. And with that began a gradual process of turning Bartolomějská into a major centre of the Czech police for all of Czechoslovakia.”
Pepa then expounded on the surprisingly seedy history of the street:
“It was called Benátská because it used to house the most famous brothel in Prague, called Benátky. And the prostitutes became so wealthy that they gradually ended up purchasing the entire left side of the street during the 19th century. Many interesting buildings were there where the women lived and from which they did not conduct their business. And behind these buildings were the walls of the Old Town. Today, only two of these towers survive, and if you are friendly with the police they will take you into the courtyard and show you these medieval structures.”
He may have an opinion on many things. But he prefers to stay on good terms with everyone. He likes to have friends, and this is why he doesn’t want to be critical. He rather wants to enjoy and to immerse into the joy of being present at a particular place.”
Michal Bregant
Given that Pepa knows so much about culture and the arts, his critical voice also carries considerable weight. Yet, according to Nadia Rovderová, Pepa is very careful in how he expresses his opinions:
“I’ve done hundreds of projects here in my gallery. And when he really likes something, he’s willing to really push it through. It doesn’t happen often, but when somebody strikes him, I didn’t push him or ask him, he just decided to do some publicity, and to write some article for Czech Television or Czech Radio – that’s him... But he can also be very tough. When he doesn’t like something, he can say it very loudly, but he won’t write about it.”
Michael Bregant agrees: “He may have an opinion on many things. But he prefers to stay on good terms with everyone. He likes to have friends, and this is why he doesn’t want to be critical. He rather wants to enjoy and to immerse into the joy of being present at a particular place.”
Pepa turned 80 this month, with friends and colleagues organising a major celebration in Prague to mark the occasion. When I asked him to reflect on this milestone, Pepa was characteristically self-deprecating: “I look at it that I was lucky that, despite never being a communist and never having anything to do with them, I was able to live a productive life. I have no money from any of it. And I did everything for the pleasure of it.”
Nadia Rovderová summed up Pepa:
“Pepa Vomáčka is incredibly intelligent, funny, active, and creative; and when you need to know something, when you need to get some information, he knows everything. He knows everything about movies, he knows everything about architecture, and he knows everything about the arts. So whatever you need to know, you ask Pepa!”
Michael Bregant offered a similar assessment:
“There have always been people like him in Czech culture. Those who are able to transfer the knowledge, from, for example, the academic or philosophical environment into something popular. He can speak in a way that is understandable. He can transform complex ideas into something that is digestible. And also the scope of his interests and the genres across which he is able to find his own place, this is very impressive and something you don’t see very often these days. He was never really profiting from this work, but it was rather something that primarily he was passionate about.”
