I just stopped in a pizza place for a slice on the way to the PATH train. It was raining out, so rather than risk a soggy slice, I sat down with my plain slice.
And had a flashback. To being 19 years old and eating pizza in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, with Andy and his high school buddies.
I knew Andy from Antioch. I still know him. He's in Seattle, where he's been for almost 20 years now, playing guitar (sometimes as Joe Spleen, which is the name he worked under in the "Scorched Birth" comic book) and working at various web and copywriting jobs. He was an anomaly--a classical guitarist who played attack metal or punk rock blues, an accented poet in the body of a Brooklyn boy weaned on The Warriors and Coney Island.
When I first lived in New York, staying briefly with Andy's family, he and I would go out for "a slice." The first time, I got pizza with some mushrooms and pepperoni. I hadn't yet worked out the traditions or the lexicon. You don't buy a piece of pizza with stuff on it. You just buy "a slice." You don't even have to say it. You can just point. He taught me to sprinkle a little garlic and oregano on it, fold it in half, and walk on down the street to the train.
These days, I've long since given up the garlic salt and I don't eat much pizza. And anyway, I prefer Benny Tudino's slices in Hoboken (and that's where my cousins and I watched the televised OJ Bronco chase years ago). I almost never stop in for a slice alone. But when I do, I always think of Andy, and wonder how a Brooklyn boy handles Seattle pizza.
2 comments:
This reminded me of a funny anecdote regarding pizza and Brooklynites.
My best friend went to med school in Buffalo and was ordering a pizza one evening. She rang up the pizzeria and requested one large pie. The guy on the other end was confused and asked her to repeat herself 2 times, then handed the phone to his manager. The manager gets on the phone with her and in a condescending snip, says: "I'm sorry Ma'am. We make pizza here, not pies!" Barb could not stop laughing over that. She normally has zero Nu-Yawk accent but definitely it came out in rebuttal to that remark.
She got her pizza that evening and yes, it was...eh.
Seattle pizza is abysmal, by and large. As are the bagels.
And forget about pastrami.
There are a few places that do acceptable pizza.
But as bad as Seattle pizza is, I would gladly take one right about now.....
Food, like everything else, is relative.
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