Monday, June 6, 2011

Tribeca Pizza: "Starts strong, ends shitty."

So last week I went and ate pizza with my friend Lew Houston. I have known Lew, not so well, for a long time. When I was thinking about writing this introduction, I was going to say that we had our first real conversation when Lew's old band Party Garbage played an afternoon show with a band I was in with Joe Porter during their three hour layover flying from Austin to somewhere in Europe. It was one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed, and although Lew told me some of them were stressed out about missing the flight, they all seemed pretty casual when they were playing and drinking beers on the roof.

BUT, it turns out I was wrong about that, and I've actually "known" Lew in some capacity for like, fifteen years! As we were walking down Greenwich Street, Lew looked over at my Really Punk Vest and noticed my "Copy and Destroy" patch, which has a picture of a photocopy machine and that text. He said, "you know, Microcosm actually ripped that off from an old patch I used to make."
And my eyes lit up, because I had had that patch, and the Microcosm variant never quite measured up. "It was the same idea, right?" I asked him, "A copy machine and the text 'copy and destroy,' but yours was more crudely done, and it was on this kind of insubstantial red fabric."
And Lew was like, "Yeah, that's it."
"Dude, yes! I used to have that patch. I sewed it on the arm of this awkwardly big men's overcoat I used to wear as an alternative teen. A bunch of the security guards at my high school were like, ex-Panthers or at least purported to be, and we would talk about politics all the time and they would always tell me the red patch on the arm of my black overcoat made me look like a nazi. And I was always like, 'but you don't understand! This is about fanzines!' What was your zine called, anyway? I've been trying to remember the name of the zine of the guy who sent me that patch when I was fifteen for the years."

At this point Lew told me the name of the zine, which I will not reprint here, even though I just googled it and nothing really comes up. Although just for kicks I googled MY old zine next, and found a zine review of one of Lew's less old zine's where the reviewer says it is reminiscent of my old zine which was ripping off Lew's OLDER zine! Basically me and Lew comprise like, a US zine maker oroboros and we will either one day meld into a super man or else I will have to cut off his head for There Can Be Only One.


Our first stop was Tribeca Pizza, which I found promising because it had a pretty classic look to the insides and seemed like it had been there for a really long time. They have a nice outdoor seating area, which seems like a good place to chill and chain smoke newports, which there was a weird like, Tribeca Thug teenager doing when Lew and I arrived. He quickly scurried inside when I told him I was taking a picture of the front of the place for my website, but he was a grandiose specimen of Tribeca thuggery. I remember when I was a teenager there were these rumors about these like, roving gangs of rich kids from Tribeca and the Upper West Side and stuff who would just mob places in big flocks and beat people up because they were bored. The news blamed rap music, but as far as I can tell from historically accurate movies like Crybaby and The Outsiders, rich kids have been mobbing up and beating down folks for fun since at least the dinosaur times.


But the pizza! Though initially promising, this pizza was not very good. When I folded this slice in half, it crunched audibly in a way that portended great things! And my first bite was phenomenal. Good crunch, great ratios, nothing spectacular about the flavors, but nothing to complain about either. And then things started going wrong. As we progressed through the slice, the dough thickened, and what happened when it thickened was not good. It began to have a very crumbly texture. The kind of thing where it seems to come apart in big chunks but then the chunks shatter to dust, like when you're doing demo and you take a sledgehammer to drywall. I've never actually read all of Gravity's Rainbow, but I have read the first 80 pages like, twice, maybe. It takes place throughout Europe during WWII and there is this one scene that is in like, some bombed out city and these two military dudes lose a dog, right? As you can see I remember this book really well. Anyway, they chase the dog to this bombed out building and they are running around the bombed out building looking for the dog. There is something in Pynchon's description that is so incredibly vivid that it created a really crisp image in my minds eye when I read it, and that image has stuck with me. And when I took bites closer to the heel of this slice, all I could picture was that image. In short, this pizza is the texture of two army officers walking through a bombed out building looking for a dog. Also the crust was 'meh' and the dough needed salt.

I think if they got their crust game down pat, these dudes could have a bangin slice, though. Honestly, I know I took great pains to describe the drawbacks but this slice was more good than bad, and eating it was not an altogether unpleasant experience. Like I said, dough problems aside, this slice had decent cheese and sauce and good ratios for about half of it. If the outer edge were as thin as the inner triangle, the slice would've been the bomb.

Rating:


Tribeca Pizza -$2.75
378 Greenwich St (at N. Moore)
New York, NY10013

1 comment:

  1. Can't wait until you get to the Financial District - let the $hit eating begin!

    ReplyDelete