Slice Harvester

Winking Redux

2012-01-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

In a post I made a few weeks ago, I discussed a conversation I had with my family about men winking at women in public and the ways that sort of behavior bolsters the harmful and toxic environment the patriarchy creates for both men and women. My intent in discussing winking was to open up a broader conversation about the nature of personal space in public and what I've perceived as many men's feeling of entitlement to infringe on the personal space of women. My thinking was that this conversation might lead to another conversation about how these small, seemingly insignificant breaches of personal space are part and parcel of a cultural atmosphere that is generally hostile to women. I didn't expect my anecdote would lead to much more than some civil discourse, but I didn't think a small discussion was an unreasonable expectation.

However, what I ended up doing was opening up a conversation with a bunch of crybabies about whether or not it is okay to wink at people. Let me come clean: I winked at someone like two weeks ago, while I was waiting tables at the diner. I was bringing a couple of regulars their check when one of them said to me, "can you actually add two small coffees to go?" I said, "how about instead I just bring you some to go cups for the refills I was about to pour you?" Then I winked, and dropped the check on the table. Someone let Andrea Dworkin know that my feminist ally badge needs to be revoked.

(Trigger warning for discussion of rape below the break.)

Ultimately, whether or not it is okay to wink is not even negligibly important. What I am concerned with is a general reframing of how we look at and see some of these issues. I'm not even asking the herds of dudely dudes who populate the internet to AGREE with me. I am just asking that they (you?) genuinely consider someone else's perspective. That they take one moment off from the "wah wah wah girls don't like me" self-victimization bullshit, that they set aside some of the directionless rage that our culture nurtures in all of its men, and that they listen to another voice. I am just asking to be heard without defensiveness, without resorting to the emotional armor of irony and sarcasm. I am putting myself out here and making myself vulnerable. I am not weaker for that, I can bullshit and posture and walk the man walk with the best of them, but I am tired of that.

Basically, the way I see it, things like street harassment, stalking, rape are falsely considered to be "women's issues." I'm too lazy to look up statistics right now, but something like 99% of reported rapes are committed by men*. As far as I can tell, that makes rape a Men's Issue and I think it's time that men took responsibility for it. And the same goes for street harassment, although that is harder to quantify as a statistic. It's time for men to own up to their behavior, own up to their sense of entitlement and let go of the notion that things are okay the way they are.

Men's feeling of entitlement to the time, attention, generosity and kindness of women contributes to a general atmosphere in which women's inherent human resources (their time, their energy, their patience) are seen as less valuable than those of men and that is so fucked up! If I was constantly reminded of the fact that my humanity was less valuable than other people's because of some factor totally outside of my control I would be hella bummed.

I just think people need to start taking responsibility for themselves and for each other. If I have been too scattered to articulate any of this well, please forgive me. If I have been unclear about anything, please ask questions. If you wanna make fun of me, or brag about how you fuck all the girls and you're never gonna stop or whatever, you just do you, homie. But I have a feeling the compulsion to proclaim it from the mountaintops has more to do with deep-seated anxieties than it does with sexual prowess. If you want to discuss whether or not winking is okay ever (and if so WHEN?!!?!?!?!!) don't bother, though. That is a stupid conversation and I'm sorry I started it.

Here are some things to read:

Stop Telling Women Not To Get Raped from Ebony Magazine

I Want A Twenty-Four Hour Truce In Which There Is No Rape by Andrea Dworkin

Middle School Boys Learn That They Can Stop Rape from the Daily News

I'm More Of A Breast Man And Completely Worthless Human Being, Myself from the Onion

Some Notes On Rape Culture from Racialicious

* And 90% of the survivors are women, and 25% of women are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetimes. All these figures are approximate and from memory so please don't be mad if I am off by a few percentages.

I can't figure out how to black out my website because I am bad at the Internet.

2012-01-18T01:48:00.001-05:00

But pretend I did, okay?

BREAKING NEWS: Mediocre Pizza Parlor ROCKY'S II Is Still Mediocre.

2012-01-11T11:15:00.002-05:00

I just want to remind everyone that Rocky's II, a pizza shop I reviewed in September of 2010, is probably still exactly the same as I said it was then. I wouldn't know because I haven't been back there because why would I go back to a place I didn't totally love? But the real question is this: why am I bothering to mention this right now? There are hundreds of mediocre pizzerias that are probably still mediocre, so why am I singling out Rocky's II?

It's because this weird thing happened the other day. I loaded up my email and it was mostly a handful of Slice Harvester comments. This is something I'm slowly growing accustomed to, but not that strange these days. This stack of comments were all Anonymous and were all for Rocky's II. The first one came in at 5:23 am and simply said "LOVE ROCKY'S PIZZA." That is innocuous enough, I guess. Some drunk dude got on the website and looked up his favorite place and felt compelled to let me know how he felt about it.

The next four of them were all posted between 5:42 and 5:46 am and were ostensibly from 4 different people. One of them, a charming story about a man visiting NYC from Lawrence, Kansas and taking his two sons to Rocky's, is word for word identical to a comment from November of last year that was posted on my Rocky's I review! Just now I googled a couple of the shorter comments and found them, word for word, on menupages.

So now I'm asking Rocky's II to cut it out. You want to try and deceive Yelp or whatever, fine. Go for it. Those website are run by robots, not yumans. But Slice Harvester is not run by a robot. Slice Harvester is run by one weird dude. And I do not let shit like this slip by me. My life up to this point has pretty much been the exercise montage from Wet Hot American Summer. Like, basically I have spent the past 29 years getting trained by Elliott Stabler to be tougher than you. I walk the streets at night. I go where eagles dare.

But there's definitely something I appreciate about the chutzpah of a guy posting the same exact verbatim reviews on multiple websites and expecting it will never catch up to him. This one time when I was 13 or 14 my mom drove me to Connecticut to hang out with this friend of mine from summer camp. We got stoned at her house and were just kind of sitting around wondering what to do and she was like, "have you ever been to Stew Leonard's?" and I was like, "huh?" and she was like, "it's this supermarket where they have all these animatronic vegetables and milk cartons and shit that dance around and it is so weird and come on, let's go." And she stole her mom's car and drove us to Stew Leonard's. Maybe she was older than me and had a learner's permit, but we can all agree that this story is cooler if we weren't allowed to drive at all.

When we got there it was so weird, and I was so stoned and such a little adolescent dude and I was wandering around looking at all this singing produce and I saw this package of fudge that looked delicious. And I picked it up, and I began to eat it. My friend and I continued to stroll and I continued to eat the fudge and eventually the fudge was done, and being a young tough, I surreptitiously stashed the package behind some packets of Stoned Wheat Thins which was really funny to me because I was stoned and so were the crackers. Wooooaaaaaahhh.

As we were leaving, a kindly older gentleman in a security uniform stopped us before the door and asked, "don't you kids have something to pay for?" and I was all, "whuh uh us who me no not me you must be thinking of some other kids who need to pay for stuff, we're just here to see the robots." And the guy was like, "listen son, not only do I have you on tape eating a package of fudge, but..." and he pointed down at my chest, and my eyes followed his finger, and there was fudge all over my Toy Dolls t-shirt.

I looked back up at the security guard, panic stricken, but his eyes were kind and he said, "listen son, you got caught. It's okay. I understand. I was young once. Go get the package of fudge and pay for it, and then leave and don't come back. I don't want to call your parents if I don't have to. I'm giving you a break here. Take it." And so I fetched the package and paid for my fudge and left and I've never been back in a Stew Leonard's since.

So Rocky's II Guy, I need to let you know you've got fudge on your shirt. But like the kindly supermarket security guard of my wayward youth, I understand. You're trying to boost your business and you don't really get how the internet works. It's okay. I'm giving you a chance to pay for your fudge and you don't even have to spend any money! I would just like you to apologize for trying to deceive me and my readership. It doesn't even have to be public, you can email it to me if you like. I don't really think that's too much to ask.

Postscript: Since I posted this yesterday two more fake comments showed up on that review, and no contact from Mr. Rocky's II.

My mother is very proud right now.

2012-01-05T10:25:00.000-05:00

Slice Harvester: MyFoxNY.com

Pizza talk from my kid sister.

2011-12-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

I am in Miami partying with my awesome girlfriend's awesome family and didn't have anything prepared to post today, but then my sister sent me this email, so she'll be the guest contributor this week and then next week it'll be back to me, in New York, maybe talking about pizza but likely just complaining about something I saw on cable that made me hate men. Anyway, here is my sister:

So I was starving when I got off work today, really in the mood for pizza, and you have to remember that I work at the end of the world all the way in West Chelsea and there is literally nothing to eat near me. In fact I eat the same disappointing salad for lunch EVERY DAY.

Anyway, the other day I wanted to order a meatball parm for lunch and I was looking at menu pages and I said to my colleague, "what about 10th Avenue Pizza*? That any good?" and he was like, "absolutely not, that place is gross. Terrible. Really, really bad" and grant you, he's an Irishman and I don't necessarily trust his taste in food or pizza, but the man and I talk about food all day long and he has a real no-bullshit attitude toward it.

So anyway, I walk by this place on 9th ave on my way to the L everyday and it looks OKAY--I like the neon sign a lot--but as with all other food in this area, I don't have very high expectations.

So I go in and I order a slice and a small fountain soda because I'm a sucker for fountain soda. And I plan on drinking my soda by the time the pizza comes out because it's really tiny and that way I can walk with my pizza because I'm a busy damn woman and who has the time to stop smell the roses let alone eat a slice of pizza???

Anyway, I'm rambling, but really it's important because the pizza came out earlier than I expected. I figured it wasn't very hot, and I dressed it up in red pepper and oregano and I was ready to just eat my hunger away and not really take a moment to enjoy it because it's not gonna be good... but it kind looked good. First bite in, I was like, "hot damn, that is one good slice." And then I thought, "what does brother think?" so I went to Slice Harvester and start looking for the review on my iPhone, and really you should have an app for that** because until I realized I could search "slice harvester stella's pizza" on the Internet I was really frustrated.

So anyway, I get to the review and lo and behold it says "Stella's Pizza: This place ain't bad"! And so I stood there, in Stella's pizza, savoring my supremely decent slice and sipping down my tiny fountain cola and read the whole review.***

It was spot on. More spot on than I could even articulate at that moment. My slice was cooked perfectly and when I folded it had that nice crack down its spine! It was an above average, average slice... Does that even make sense? It was almost great.

But your post got me thinking. Because truth be told, before I read your opinion I was ready to sing Stella's Pizza's praises, jump on the counter and thank the pizza guys for crafting such a great slice just for my enjoyment. But really, the slice was just good, above average but nothing to go out of my way for. But because my expectations were in the toilet, and because I was so absolutely hungry I was ready to rate that slice a 10 and call it a day. So really, I'm not sure what I'm getting at. I guess just that overall there seems to be two schools of pizza: the absolutely terrible (which I'll absolutely eat in a pinch and which seems to be the majority of the pizza here in our fine city) or the fantastically decent--which almost elevates itself to fantastic due to its rarity and my lack of mental preparation. I guess my question is this: does a truly perfect slice even exist in the five boroughs? Or is it only a myth? It must exist, right? Because how else do we know all the pizza that isn't it? There must be something that sets the standard...****

Oh brother, this has substantially occupied my train ride back to Brooklyn. I hope you have a great time in Miami and give Sampa my love--I called him today, I now have an alarm set to call him every Wednesday at 3. Do you think he'll catch on?*****

Love,
Sister******

Notes:
*She did not hyperlink that thing in her email, but I hyperlinked it here because I can.

**Does anyone want to help me make an iPhone app? Seriously, send me an email. Let's do it.

***The notion of my kid sister being in a pizza parlor, reading a review I wrote of that same pizza parlor, seems like a slight (and technologically advanced) variant on a common theme in mealtime conversation in my family, which is: talking about food from different restaurants that serves the same food as the restaurant we are at. For instance, we had weekly Sunday dinners growing up with my Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Barry at a Chinese Place called Szechuan Empire and we would spend the bulk of the conversation talking about other Chinese food. In this instance, instead of talking about a restaurant we are not at while eating food at a different place, my sister was talking about the restaurant she WAS at, but with someone that wasn't even there with her. Does this make sense to anyone but me (and undoubtedly her)?

****This is the eternal question. I recently revisited the pizza shop on Broadway in Brooklyn around the corner from the Bent Haus (House?) that I have this one really fond memory of eating this perfect slice at. It was Halloween, two-thousand-something and I was wearing this Hulk Hogan costume where the body was for a child and I cut it up and re-assembled it over a pair of long johns and then made this blonde mustache by painting a mustache yellow and gluing it to my face with rubber cement, which meant I was basically huffing paint all night, which was not as insane as the night Sweet Tooth dipped that fake mustache in ether and let me wear it for a while, but it was totally dumb and awesome and I was so young and invincible walking around under the J Train dressed like Hulk Hogan. If I remember right, Kever was dressed like Osama Bin Laden and me and him had this fake wrestling duel where I was defending America. I think Crybaby McArthur played.

Anyway, walking there I was so excited to go to this house show and hang out with all these awesome new punk kids I had met who were all so cool and many of whom were at least moderately friendly and I was just wearing long johns and this stupid polyester children's costume and it was October back when the seasons were how they used to be, so it was COLD. And I walked by this pizza shop and turned around and got a slice from the window. I was slurping down a Ballantine tall can while I ate it and I just remember loving it so much and feeling like life was so full of endless possibilities and that the slice of pizza was just so good and perfect and fuck! Pizza!

Since then at least one of my friends from that night is dead and a lot of the rest of them have drifted out of my life, (or more honestly I've drifted out of their's), and while I feel more like myself than I ever have, more mentally and physically healthy than I ever was when I was slamming a million King Cobra's on my stoop every night, and while I even feel like there is more potential for me to accomplish totally awesome and tangible Specific Actual Goals, I do not have that same boundless, swelling sense of marvel and appreciation for the world that I did back when my eyes were big with wonder at every new sight and sensation, and frankly, I think I have a slightly harsher palate, because the pizza at that place on Broadway where I ate the other day, and where I had that perfect slice, it just wasn't very good. Same pizza man as back then, too.

And the thing is, I have a feeling it was never very good. But that slice in my memory is still perfect and that slice in that moment was still perfect! It was an 8 slice out of 8 slice slice, even though it's actually a 4 slice out of 8 slice slice. You feel me here? I'm talking about what Larry Screamin' Jesus said to me when I was in the park with Kevin Morby two years ago and he was walking around hollering and I waved hi and he came over giddy as a child and said, "Hey Colin! I don't know if you realize this, but every moment we have is a moment that's already passed us by. They're so quick and fleeting we can't even hold them and that might make you feel lost but it's actually beautiful. You and I just had millions of moments together, Colin. Millions of moments in a span of seconds." And he walked off and started berating some guy for sun-bathing.

I guess what I'm saying is that things change from moment to moment and people change and pizza changes, and we probably won't know our perfect slice until we're almost done eating it.

*****Sampa is what we call my Grandpa Sam. He doesn't know how to use the internet so he will never find out that my sister has a weekly alarm to call him unless one of you tells him, so if that happens I'ma bust someone's ass for snitching, aight?

******This is really how she signs her emails to me, I am not even trying to protect her identity.

Still not talking about pizza!

2011-12-14T15:25:00.000-05:00

Who cares? I was never really talking about pizza in the first place, that was just how I tricked all of you into caring what I had to say about other stuff, like Wyclef and making music. Today I want to address all the straight men in the audience. To my other readers, read this over and see if it's worth passing on to a straight man in your life. I am not trying to exclude any of you, but I think we need to have a collective "Dude, seriously."

Recently my father and I went to go see his father and take him to a doctor's appointment, take him out out to lunch, get him some groceries, etc. (Status report: the old man is doing just fine.) We went to Whole Foods to buy him some cheese blintzes and ruggelah, and in the car driving over to his house, my dad said, "if I was a single guy I would go to Whole Foods to meet women."
"And why is that?"
"Didn't you notice," he said, "the place was full of single women. Well, maybe not single women, but it was full of women. Some of them had to be single." I hadn't noticed.
"Okay, so, how would you go about meeting these single women, or determining if they're single?" I was only half involved in the conversation because I was reading a NY Times article on my phone.
He shrugged. "I dunno... I would bump carts by accidentally or something." As you can tell, it's been a long time since my dad's been single.
"Don't you think they'd see right through that?" I asked.
"Sure, but if they were interested they'd see through it and know that I was interested and if not they would go about their day and I would go about mine and nothing would really be that different."
"You don't think or care that they might be annoyed by the intrusion?"
"What are you supposed to do, never talk to a stranger because they might be annoyed by the intrusion? I am intruded upon 500 times a day, it happens. We live in a world with other people. Sometimes we have to interact with them."
And so on.

I don't recall exactly how it happened, but somehow we got onto the subject of winking. More specifically whether or not it is inappropriate for a man who is shopping at Whole Foods to wink at a woman he has never met who is shopping at Whole Foods. I posited that yes, it is categorically inappropriate. My father was outraged. "So you're saying that winking at a woman is an aggressive, inappropriate act? You're over-reacting. You're so concerned about fighting sexism that you see it in places where it isn't even there. Winking is benign and if you put it on the same category as saying 'hey baby, nice gams' and whistling like a Looney Tunes wolf, it diminishes the seriousness of those acts by comparing them to something relatively innocuous."
"Look," I began, at this point my phone was away and I was totally paying attention, "I just don't think it's innocuous. Everything has a context, and your hypothetical wink at Whole Foods falls squarely into a continuum of shitty behavior perpetrated by men towards women from the time they reach puberty. It may not be the same thing but it is all interrelated."
"That's ridiculous and you're inventing context that isn't there. A wink is just a wink."
"I just disagree with you there. And I might as well tell you now, you're never going to convince me. I don't think you are a bad person or have any malicious intent, and I appreciate that this conversation is all hypothetical and we're not discussing the fact that you DID wink at a woman in Whole Foods because I don't think you would do that. But the fact of the matter is, I have had conversations with many of the women in my life about being winked at and I know how they feel about it, so no matter how compelling an argument you craft in defense of men's Right to Wink, I am not going to be swayed because it is just conjecture by a man and is meaningless compared to the shared experience and testimony of the countless women I have talked to about this." I should note that I've been paraphrasing this whole time and I most assuredly was NOT that articulate in real life. Luckily, I'm the one recounting the discussion.
"That is crazy." He was shaking his head. "So you're saying that men aren't allowed to have opinions?"
"Of course not! I'm just saying that in this instance we're discussing something that affects women more than men and I'm going to side with the opinion of the people that are affected over someone on the outside conjecturing. Look, I know this isn't an issue because you don't actually go around winking at ladies, but have you ever had a discussion with any women in your life about how they feel when men wink at them?"
He shook his head no. I dialed my mom on speakerphone.

Ring ring ring ring ring "Hello?"
"Hey Ma, I got a a hypothetical situation for you. You're in a Whole Foods shopping for groceries..."
"What am I doing in a Whole Foods, I hate Whole Foods!"
"Ma, come on, lemme finish. You're in a Whole Foods shopping for groceries and you're walking down an aisle and a guy you've never seen before is walking the other way down the aisle and as you pass by he winks at you. How does that make you feel?"
"I would shout 'FUCK YOU!' at the guy" she said, without missing a beat. "I would yell, 'WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE WINKING AT?'"
I looked over and my dad was chuckling. I asked my mom, "Why?"
And she said, "Because a wink is too intimate a gesture to share with a stranger and the implications of a stranger winking at me in a Whole Foods are totally pervy. You wink at your friends. You wink when you're sharing a confidence, when you're both in on a secret. It's just not appropriate to wink at a stranger."

I texted my kid sister the same question. I said, "if you are in a Whole Foods and a man you don't know winks at you, how does that make you feel?"
"Gross," she wrote back almost immediately, followed a few moments later by, "and disgusting."
I showed the texts to my dad and he said, "well I guess I have to reconsider."

The point of all this is not that my dad is some skeezy jerkoff. He's a really nice and respectful guy and I think I got a lot of pretty awesome traits from him. But he is a Male Dude who was raised in America and he had a Male Dude for a father and his brother was a Male Dude and all his friends growing up were other Male Dudes and they were predominantly, maybe almost entirely Straight Male Dudes and they weren't scumbags or anything any more or any less than all Male Dudes in the world are trained to be scumbags from like, the second they hit puberty, a process which is possibly equally (but definitely differently) traumatic to being sexually objectified from the moment one hits puberty, although we'll never really know conclusively since part of that training is to cut ourselves off from our emotions and NEVER EVER EVER NEVER NERVER admit that anything could possibly be traumatizing to us.

The night before going to visit my grandfather I spent the night at my folks' house and I was sitting around eating defrosted pizza and watching cable on their TV at like, 2am, and I saw this show on MTV called "Guy Code" or something which was like, all these shitty comedians talking about why it is imperative that men fuck all the women. Here are some real quotes. I wish I could attribute them to the actual dudes that said them and then we could all get together and crush their nuts with a big piece of wood like Charlotte Gainsbourg does to Willem Defoe in Anti-Christ. (For all the defensive babies out there, I am joking around and I don't actually advocate crushing men's nutsacks because they say idiot shit.) This is on the subject of having friendships with women:

"The only time I'll keep a girl as a friend is if she has a lot of hot friends for me to hook up with."
"You're giving her all the things she's used to giving sex to get, so what the fuck is she gonna fuck you for?"

This is fucked, right? This is on MTV, which is like, the channel that is supposed to be for teenagers. I don't think MTV is actually teaching kids anything substantial or is to blame for shitty Dude Behavior, but I do think that it is certainly reflective of where we are at as a culture, and if nothing else, serves to reinforce shithead belief systems that are learned and taught everywhere else in the culture.

But the point is this: it is really easy for those of us who identify as Male Dudes to sit around and conjecture all day long about what it's like to be a lady and what behavior is appropriate and what behavior isn't but the only way to really figure that out is to just talk to women we know. And that part is easy, but here is the hard part: listen to what they have to say non-judgmentally and internalize it and think about it. Ask your moms and sisters how they feel. Ask your girlfriends or friends, because despite what "the Guy Code" says, I'm am pretty sure most straight dudes still have at least one female friend. And then do some research on your own. The internet is huge! Read a few things on Shakesville or Tiger Beatdown. And when you feel attacked or defensive, instead of getting your back up, take a step back and thinking about what it is you are feeling attacked by? What is it you are defending? Is winking at ladies an integral part of your personality, a kernel of truth at the very core of your being, that you could never give up? Is it your right to continue to be unaware of the weight of the patriarchy on the women in your life and the ways that you are complicit? Just be thoughtful and be open-minded. These are hard things to do, and the ladies in your life may not want to hold your hand all the time, but if you are actually a caring person and you actually want to know, you can educate yourself and these things and people will be willing to talk to you.

And now I have to go because I'm going to be late for work.

Let me tell you about awesome stuff my friends are doing.

2011-12-07T13:26:00.001-05:00

So, since I've gotten all this wild attention from various news media publications and such, I've been slammed with orders to fill and emails to respond to and still working my job and living my life and I haven't done or thought anything about pizza, really. But I promised weekly posts and so this week I'm going to post about awesome things my friends do that some of you, my readers, might be interested in.

Pegacorn Press
Longtime Slice Harvester Pal and Generally Rad Lady, Caroline Paquita has started a small publishing venture called Pegacorn Press, with the help of good old-fashioned gumption and a couple of antiquated printing machines. So far she has put out a couple of issues of her own awesome comic, Womanimalistic, a compilation of apocalyptic visions, Future Tense, and a fucking AWESOME calendar. There's a package deal where you can get all three of these wonderful publications for a mere $18.00! What a bargain! Seriously, this shit is so rad. This is the third year she has made her calendar and it gets better and better. No home is complete without one.

Buy some comics.

Imaginary Space
My longtime friend Noah Apple Mayers has started a SCHOOL. That's right! A school for teaching children. He and I performed puppet shows together with our performance troupe, Puppet State Players. Once an eight-year-old was being a jerk and trying to snatch my puppets while I was performing and I told him he could play with them if he would quit acting like a little dickhead and he started crying. Noah didn't get mad at me, but he did comfort the kid because he could see that little homie was just acting out because he was sad and all he needed was some positive reinforcement and attention. Noah's school seems really incredible. The class schedule seems amazing, with an "Explorer's Club" for visiting exotic locales right here in NYC, a tinkering class, and a cooking class on the roster so far. I don't know if many SH readers have children who homeschool, but this seems like a really great opportunity to provide your brat with enriching experiences, socializing with other brats, and awesome EDUTAINMENT for ROCK BOTTOM PRICES.

Enroll your kid.

Shellshag!
Awesome local rockers Shellshag have a NEW RECORD coming out and it is a record I have been dreaming of for years. FUCK SOCIETY, Vol. 1 is their first collection of covers, and it is out next month. One of the most charming things about Shellshag, arguably the most charming band, is the totally inclusive party atmosphere they create at their shows, and an integral part of that atmosphere is their huge repertoire of awesome covers, most of which are collected here. Honestly, this record is worth the twelve bucks JUST for the cover of Fuck and Run, which you can file along with the Raincoats' Lola as a coveted Cover That is Better Than the Original. Liz Phair aside, these rad dudes also cover a bunch of 80s pop (INXS, When In Rome), a bunch of punk bands half of you have never heard of (Shotwell, Hickey), and a slew of other awesome shit. The final song (and title track) on the LP is an original recording of a song Shellshag has been covering for awhile now, Fuck Society, by Chattanooga's infamous AK77, a project spearheaded by a guy named Andy who I wish I had known better when he was around. The last time I saw him was a few years ago in Chattanooga when my friend Marcia and I pulled up outside Tom Foote's house looking to see if anyone I knew was on the porch. Andy came screaming out the backyard "YOU HAVE A CAR?! NOT VERY PUNK TO HAVE A CAR, BUT YOU MUST TAKE ME TO SUPERMARKET." And we spent the next hour digging through dumpsters behind the Food Lion trying to find flowers to pretty up the house. Andy was a strange and enigmatic dude and this record is a fitting tribute.

Preorder the record.

Dave Hill
I said on twitter that Dave Hill was a better writer than I'll ever be, and I don't know if that's true, but that's how I feel whenever I read his amazing columns. I do not gamble or even really follow sports, but Dave's insightful, emotionally honest prose resonates with me so hard. I think at least three out of the four columns thus far have brought me to tears. This dude is for real.

Read the columns.

Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel's facebook page is my favorite thing on the internet. He posts pictures of himself with these totally vague "inspirational messages" and it they are so awesome! Like, when the earthquake hit Japan last year, he posted a picture of himself with no shirt on staring wistfully towards the sea! I don't know what trajectory takes you from weird experimental theater in New York City to Too Fast Too Furious, but I wanna jump on that train ASAP. Next stop, a Guy Ritchie directed Slice Harvester Movie starring me as Me and Ricky Gervais as the Pizza. Vin Diesel will be my mentor/trainer. Anyway, dude has the awesomest facebook page I've ever seen.

Feel the hope.

Da Vinci Pizza: "And now the end is here, and so I face the final curtain..."

2011-11-29T13:05:00.001-05:00

So this is it. I don't even know where to begin. Let me just say, that though this is the Last Official Manhattan Pizzeria Review, it will not be the last post on Slice Harvester. I still have plenty of recapping and decision-making to do, and plus I want to keep this thing going at least until the last zine comes out in February so there's that, too. Anyway, I might as well just start this thing. You should probably open up this link in a new tab and listen to that Green Day prom song while you read this review.

I met Christina Sparhawk a little less than two years ago, just shy of six months from starting this project. I was lonely and sad and needed someone to share my heart like the last slice so I went to a Witch-Matchmaker and she set us up. When we first met, Christina handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and said, "if you're in a bad mood, call this number and ask for Manoff. Take it out on him." I didn't know her too well at the time and thought maybe she was a dominatrix or something and he was one of her johns and this was part of their thing. Turns out she was working as a hostess at a Burger Restaurant and this guy Manoff had been consistently stiffing her delivery guy on tips and just generally being a dick on the phone and she felt he needed some vengeance. At this point, I knew I was in love.

It's easy to write about smashing the state or how much I hate bro-dog frat culture masculinity or offing pigs or whatever, but how do you write about being in love in a way that doesn't suck? Do I rhapsodize about my girlfriend's beauty? (She is the most beautiful woman in the world.) Do I talk about how awesome and tough she is? (The other day some dude in a suit winked at her on the sidewalk and she punched him.) Do we discuss how talented and creative she is? (At everything.) Do I mention the ways we care for each other? (I honestly think she saved my life.) I don't know. This stuff is harder to talk about than all the hard stuff I talk about.

So I'll leave it to the poets. Go ask Yeats or Richard Brautigan what it's like to be in love, because all I can tell you is that I am honestly happy for the first time in my life and I can attribute a huge portion of that happiness to the truth of caring and being cared for. The fact is that we live in such a Sick Fucking Society that the simple act of honestly loving and being loved is transcendent and radical. Like I said last week, people are so alienated from themselves, from their own emotions and from each other that forging genuine human connections is NOT the go to means of interacting.

The other day I was talking to my friend Jamel who panhandles outside the supermarket in my neighborhood. In the summer we eat King Kones and talk about vampires because we both love vampires, but there was something in the air on that humid, too-warm Autumn evening, standing on the street watching the sun set, and we got to talking about life. Jamel told me, "the other day, I saw a guy drop a $100 bill. I picked it up and handed it back to him and you know what? He didn't give me shit." I scowled. "And you know what else, Colin? I don't care. Maybe he just got paid, maybe he had to spend the whole hundred on Thanksgiving dinner for his family or Christmas gifts for his kids. For a few minutes I thought that maybe he only had the $100 and he was would come back and give me something after he made change, but he never did." I was shaking my head pretty vigorously at this point, rolling us cigarettes. "And I still don't regret giving him that money back, although I could obviously use a hundred dollars. Because I did the right thing, and if more people did the right thing more of the time, instead of doing the easy thing, or the selfish thing, the world would be in a lot less trouble than it is today." He asked me if Christina, whom he had met the week before, was my girlfriend, and when I told him she was he said, "you better make sure to hold on to her. She's a keeper."

So me and Christina ate at Da Vinci Pizza last week, for my final review. As we first approached, my heart seized up because I mistook Da Vinci for Pranzo Pizza, where I had eaten the prior week with awesome newspaperman Aaron Rutkoff. And I thought for a second that maybe I had fucked everything up and hadn't done my research and Da Vinci had closed and my girlfriend was gonna hate me and everything was fucked and oh my god oh my god oh my god. Well, I was wrong. The fronts of Da Vinci and Pranzo may look similar but their interiors and their pizza are worlds apart.

This place looked and felt like a real pizzeria (check out Rob Bennet's photos accompanying the WSJ article about me [what?!] for evidence). And the pizza here, unlike the pizza at Pranzo, was real delicious pizza.

I was a little bit turned off by the fact that this slice of pizza was sitting on a piece of aluminum foil. But I am open minded, right? And it looked and smelled good. I lifted the slice, and it drooped a little more than is ideal, but I still had a good feeling. And I wasn't wrong! This slice had delicious ingredients. The cheese tasted great, the sauce was on the sweeter side, but didn't taste synthetic and was totally delicious. The dough was expertly made, though perhaps not cooked as much as I would have liked, and the whole slice had GREAT ratios.

Tina said, "it's got that youth fair taste that I like," and called it "carnival pizza." Now, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this assessment with a small distinction. Traditionally I have discussed a disgusting type of pizza I love, which I've always called "roller rink pizza" because it reminds me of this pizza I ate at this roller rink in Queens at my parents' best friends' kid's birthday party when I was like, 8 that for some reason I remember really vividly. That sort of pizza is objectively bad, but I admit to loving it anyway. This slice, while superficially similar to this sort of pizza, is neither disgusting, nor objectively bad. I think the similarities lie in a certain amount of fluffiness in the cheese and the dough. But this dough was soft and supple without being rubbery, and the cheese, while bountiful, was not over whelming.

All told, this slice was totally satisfying, although not mind-blowing. But it was good, and I am happy to end on a positive note. I wouldn't go out of my way for this slice, but I stand behind it. I will eat here next time I am planning on spending an afternoon reading a book and riding the ferry back and forth. As we finished eating Christina let out a huge belch, smiled and said, "that was a burp of satisfaction."

Rating:

Da Vinci Pizza - $2.50
44 Water St (Hanover Sq & Cointies Slip)
New York, NY 10004

Pranzo Pizza: "Swing and a miss."

2011-11-23T12:08:00.001-05:00

Pranzo Pizza is a nice little place. When I got there, they were in the midst of their Wall Street Automoton Lunch Rush Spectacular and it reminded me of my life a few years ago. When I was in my early 20s and first making my decision to No Retreat/No Surrender/No Gods/No Masters the square world and never work in an office in my life, I would sometimes have moments of doubt, sitting in my dingy apartment eating dumpstered bagels for the third day in a row because I didn't know where to dumpster any good produce yet and I refused to work more than four or five days a month because, well, because CrimethINC. And when I had those doubts, I had a simple solution: I'd go to Grand Central Station at 4:30 or so, and sit on a bench there until 6:30 or so, and watch dudes in suits that cost four times my rent frantically run to catch trains and it would make me feel better about my own decision, because I could position myself in a position of superiority to those clowns. The frantic hustle of the Pranzo lunch rush brought back memories of dudes with briefcases hauling ass down marble corridors to get home to Briarcliff Manor or wherever.

But don't worry! I'm a grownup now, and I have a much more nuanced perspective on the world. My friend Kimya Dawson, who has been a Slice Harvester supporter since, literally, day one, has a song on her new record where she articulates this sentiment quite succinctly: "Just because someone does not look like me / doesn't mean they are a clone or a sheep. / Maybe they like their job and they're living their dream, / and they love their friends and their family. / Some people thrive between nine and five, / and feel like they're choking if their neck's not tied. / .... / Some people feel enslaved when they have a boss, / some people without one feel totally lost."

I think one huge drawback to the Culture of Opposition that is so compelling to so many alienated teenagers is that we feel turned away and excluded from the culture at large and so try and create our own culture that ends up parroting the lack of inclusivity and dogma of the culture we are fighting against. At this point in my life, I have friends that work in offices and friends that are working artists, friends that are FDNY and friends that are itinerant farm workers. Some of the people that work in offices are kinder, gentler, more compassionate people than some of the artists! Shit, I don't even hate ALL COPS anymore! Like, capitalism as it exists in the West today is incredibly alienating, and I've felt alienated by the priorities and values of our culture since as long as I can remember. I feel like it robs us of our personhood and asks us to dehumanize each other and that is what I'm fighting against. But in fighting so hard against a culture that wanted to dehumanize me and wanted me to dehumanize other people, I ended up losing sight of the humanity of over half the population! Like, honestly, on 9/11 I felt a mixture of grief and triumph. Real talk. And I am still processing about that. But those towers were a symbol of a culture I despised and I would be lying if I said part of me didn't feel a sense of glib satisfaction that some of the wind had been taken out of the American Empire's sails. I thought, perhaps naively, that the experience, though terribly tragic, might at least teach us some collective humility.

But even though I felt that way, when I went to a Leftover Crack show a few weeks later and Sturgeon was making jokes about the people that died, I was appalled. Because whoever those people were, whatever heinous shit they might have been up to, their deaths are a tragedy. Murder is never something to celebrate. We are fighting against people that celebrate death, and part of the struggle is not to become them. (At heart, our battle is like that Tales from Earthsea anime movie, but without dragons.) And then the war started, and people started shit-talking all soldiers. And I thought about my friends growing up who had enlisted in like, '98 or '99 as a way to go to college hopefully, or to get out of their neighborhoods, and how it looked like there was no chance of a war ever again. And suddenly they would come home on leave and just sit at the bar slamming shots and not talking, biding their time until they could get back to war, because they had become so unaccustomed to civilian life, and I didn't want to say "fuck all soldiers" because I wanted to help my friends and the people like them.

I will wrap up all this shortly, but let me just say clearly, I am not espousing some totally unrealistic hippy dippy doctrine of Loving Everybody. I am not telling protestors to humanize cops who are beating them up. If a cop is shooting tear gas at you, smash his fucking face in with a fire extinguisher if that's what you need to do. Seriously. But I also know and have known some really decent cops (none of whom are NYPD, unless you count Benson and Stabler, but I don't technically KNOW them even if it feels like I do), who are generally interested in harm reduction and maintaining people's comfort and safety. I think the point I'm making will sort of be lost on most of my non-punk readers because perhaps they don't automatically hate cops. I guess all I'm really saying is that people are people and some people do shitty stuff and are still good people and some people are shitty people but they do good stuff. I don't know, this isn't even about pizza anymore and I feel like I've probably alienated half my readership. Ce la vie. I just want to have a dialogue.

This slice was a bummer and a disappointment. The ingredients were decent enough quality, but the construction and preparation of the slice seemed so hasty it was all lost. The middle of the slice had like, a sinkhole in it that just drooped and fell out from under me when I picked it up and folded it. And the slice was already too thin to begin with. I couldn't really make out any sauce flavor, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it was weighed down with so much cheese. And the cheese didn't taste bad, in didn't taste like anything in fact, but there was too much of it. If there had been less cheese and the same amount or slightly more sauce, the sauce could've provided the flavor the cheese lacked. And if the crust had been prepared properly and didn't fall to shreds when I lifted it, there might have been a sound foundation up which to rest a decent slice. To top all of it off, this slice was thrown in the oven and removed so quickly, the crust never even browned. Nothing on this slice crunched. And the whole pizza parlor smelled like butter. Ultimately though, while this slice had flaws, it wasn't inedible and was certainly passable. In an ideal world, this slice would be the worst pizza gets, but in the world we live in, it probably falls dead center on the Spectrum of Pizza Awesomeness.

Rating:

Pranzo Pizza - $2.30
34 Water St (Coenties Slip & Broad St)
New York, NY 10004

Big Al's Chicago Style Pizza: "Almost didn't make the cut."

2011-11-16T11:47:00.001-05:00

I have to admit something: I have never been to Chicago. Which means I have never had Chicago style pizza. I don't even actually know what it is. I've talked for minutes at a time about how much better the New York slice is than a Chicago Pie. "I MAY AS WELL EAT LASAGNA!" I've shouted in bars over Cock Sparrer songs blaring too loud from the soundsystem. But the truth is, I am just good at being a windbag and a blowhard. It's just like all the books I've never read and movies I've never seen that I find myself pretending I have because it seems easier than finding something else to talk about.

Either way, I still KNOW New York pizza is better, even if I've never had the pie in Chi-Town. And that's why I almost didn't even go to Big Al's Chicago Style Pizza on Thames St right around the corner from OWS. Because I review New York slices and I figured they didn't have one. Because why would a regular New York pizza parlor go through all the effort of calling itself Big Al's Chicago Style Pizza if they were just gonna sell regular slices?

Then the comments and emails started coming in. "What about Big Al's?" "When you gonna go to Big Al's" "I'M A COP YOU IDIOT" "Did you skip Big Al's?" And I called Big Al's and I said, "yeah, do you guys sell slices" and I could see the pizzaman's look of disgust and perplexion (I just made this word up!) as he said, "yeah...." but was clearly thinking "who is this moron?"

So I went. And I'm glad I did.

Big Al's definitely gets the "Best Slice Near OWS" award, which is actually something a lot of people have been asking about. This slice has a thin but adequate crust, nice pungent cheese, ample grease and a pretty good sauce. The ratios are spot on. There is just enough salt. And in the words of Mr. Paul Lukas, "everything coheres nicely." This slice is A-Okay. Totally alright. Wildly above average. It was prepared well and I like that.

At one point while we were sitting there, this worker accidentally jostled Paul while mopping up some spilled soda. He apologized, and Paul was like, "it's cool man, what's going on over there?"
And the guy is like, "This lady, she takes one sip of her soda and then just turns it over into the garbage bag. The worst part is, she was looking me right in the eyes when she did it. By the time I got around here with the mop it was running all over the floor."
"People are animals." I interjected. "I work at a diner in Brooklyn. We got this garbage can in the bathroom that has one of those foot pedals to open the top, and every day I clean up piles of sullied paper towels from the top of the lid. From people too lazy to press a fucking button with their foot."
"Animals..." the guy muttered, as he stepped away to continue mopping.

Me and Paul talked a while and then parted ways, but as soon as I walked out the door I had to piss so bad I felt like I was gonna explode, but didn't remember seeing a bathroom in Big Al's. I went back inside, found the guy I'd been talking to, leaned over conspiratorially, "You got a bathroom in this place?" I murmured. He slipped me a key and pointed to a door, "take a left. First door on your right."

I walked out into the corridor of an office tower and quickly found the bathroom. Now, as you know, my second favorite thing besides reviewing pizza is reviewing pizzeria bathrooms. Well this one was a gem!

Easily the most claustrophobic restroom I have ever been inside. I felt like I was in a Kafka courthouse can in here! It's worlds away from the spacious and romantic two-seater at 42nd Street Restaurant, but equally charming, in it's own cramped way. Also, second to the Worcester, MA diner bathroom that was totally clean of graffiti except that someone had written VAN HALAN over two of the walls, this back wall, behind the toilet, vandalized with TOILETS! and an anarchy symbol may be my favorite bathroom graffiti.

Rating:

Bathroom Rating:

Big Al's Chicago Style Pizza - $2.50
9 Thames St (Trinity & Broadway)
New York, NY 10006

Pizza Italia: "This could've been better but it was pretty good."

2011-11-09T13:31:00.000-05:00

A while ago I ate pizza with this guy Paul Lukas. Hopefully in a few months or years I can say, "my friend Paul Lukas," but for now we are just people who know each other and maybe there is reciprocal admiration, but maybe I just admire him and that's fine. Let me tell you about my future friend Paul. See, way back in the hinteryears of the mid-90s there used to be this store on E 7th St call See Hear and it only sold zines. And they would sell ANY zine ever. I bought my first issues of Cometbus and Punk Planet there (I bought my first issue of MRR at Tower Records, though). I looked at my first (and only) NAMBLA bulletin there at the ripe old age of 14. I was constantly befuddled by the black man who would come in and buy all the Neo-Nazi newspapers that were for sale. Later I almost got arrested right outside for drinking a 40 in the middle of the 7th St but the cop seemed more concerned with the fact that my handrolled cigarette might have been weed than with the fact that I was underage drinking in public. Go figure!

Among the many zines I devoured as a teenager in the 90s, one of my consistent favorites was this zine called Beer Frame, which I never actually bought at See Hear and would buy at St. Marks Books, now that I think of it. I'm not sure why that is. ANYWAY. In Beer Frame, subtitled "The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption," Paul set out to review any and every product available both domestically and internationally. From Beverly Bulk Sausage With Natural Juices, 10.5 oz can to the Brannock Device (that thing they use at shoe stores to measure you foot), Paul would review ANYTHING. And he did so with a degree of insight and stylistic panache that I still aspire to today. For over a decade, every time I've seen one of those weird tiny plastic tables they put in the middle of your pizza I've thought about Paul's thoughts about that object in an issue of Beer Frame.

That three-legged doohickey is called a lid support. It may not look like much, and it probably cost your pizzeria less than a penny, but it's saved many a pizza... from an unhappy fate. The lid support is so innocuous, and its functional utility so efficiently matter-of-fact, that it's become the perfect example of a product too simple for its own good: Everyone knows what it is but nobody outside the pizza biz knows what it's called, and most people just take it for granted. Hiding in plain sight, it has become classically inconspicuous--a stealth element in our consumer culture.

He then goes on to provide a detailed and presumably accurate history of Lid Supports! What? If there's anything I pretty much indiscriminately love it's when people indulge their desire to be totally obsessive about something totally arbitrary and really go all out in executing it. See also, Dishwasher Pete.

I met Paul when we were both doing one minute interviews on 7 Second Delay's "60 Most Important New Yorkers in 60 Minutes" radio show. He is currently working on a ton of rad projects, but that day he was getting interviewed about Uni-Watch, his website about sports uniforms. (He also works for ESPN and like, writes cool shit all the time and is just generally a great dude.) We eventually re-met at the City Reliquary and I found out he did Beer Frame and I was really excited and asked him to come eat pizza with me, and he agreed. Then I texted his land line for like, 10 months before I figured out what was going on and we finally made plans and we met outside Pizza Italia on a blustery Autumn day.

Pizza Italia is a real proper pizzeria, which is a rarity for the Financial District, which seems to be mostly full of places that are Investment Opportunities or Business Plans instead of Pizza Parlors or Restaurants. But Pizza Italia feels honest, and honesty is really important to me. When Paul and I got there, it was super slammed with the Soulless Business Dude Lunch Rush. It was totally chaos in there, but I noticed the pizzaman check on my slices a couple of times before handing them to me. Which is to say, he didn't just pull them out once they were hot, he made sure they were cooked well, and that's a degree of care and consideration under pressure that is rare these days.

I know I usually share slices, but me and Paul were hungry and this place looked non-shitty.

This slice had a good crunch and expert ratios, but the the cheese texture was a little mealy. And it felt cheap, which is a shame. If they hadn't cheaped out on the cheese, this slice would've been pretty amazing. They certainly gave it adequate care, there was a perfect amount of grease, and the crust and sauce were phenomenal! Paul said, "it's not like, world class, but it's a perfectly solid, legitimate slice." And I tend to agree with that assessment. But it WOULD be world class if they had better cheese!

Rating:

Pizza Italia - $2.75
11 Stone St (Whitehall & Bond)
New York, NY 10004

I been deep in the shit.

2011-11-08T10:00:00.001-05:00

But Slice Harvester is not dead! I have four more places to go in Manhattan and then I'm calling it quits, at least for the time being. Although there will certainly be a bit of Manhattan Wrap Up and perhaps a Final Four style showdown?

Anyway, I got this email today from a long time reader wondering where I'd disappeared to which contained this passage:
"Last year I was on a plane from Singapore to NY--i started talking to this guy working in the backwaters of Malaysia. He was visiting NY for the first time and looking forward to getting Pizza.

I asked him if he needed recommendations. He said, no, that he knew where to go because he'd been reading this blog from some guy who was eating at every pizza place--your blog.

Really. "

Also yesterday I hung out with Ben Trogdon who does NUTS! Magazine and we had some super inspiring conversations. It all reminded me that maybe I've been living my life of blood and flesh at the expense of my life of wires and words. Which is to say, I haven't been on the internet too much lately.

So here's what's going to happen:

I have two reviews ready for places I ate at with my friend Paul Lukas. I will post one of them tomorrow and the next one next Wednesday. In the meantime I will eat at the final two pizzerias in Manhattan I haven't eaten at, and I will post the reviews the subsequent two Wednesdays. After that we'll play it by ear.

We are living in wild times. Everyone stay strong.

Georgio's: "Plastic surgery disasters."

2011-10-05T21:44:00.001-04:00

By the time we arrived at Georgio's, I think Jen Shag and I had run out of expectations, though we hadn't run out of hope. Upon walking into the establishment, we were confronted with the ambiance of a Cafe Amore and the smell of a Pastafina. In short, what little hope we had left was squandered. I'm not exactly sure how to best tie it together, but everything about this place seemed to be summed up in the 4000" flatscreen on the wall playing some "Deadly Bar Fight" reality courtroom show and the gaggle of lonesome fools watching it, slack-jawed and dead-eyed.

And if ever a piece of pizza could be described as "slack-jawed and dead-eyed," this is the slice. It vaguely approximates pizza in the way that weird overly tanned, overly plastic surgeried celebrities approximate humans, but a true New York slice it is not. The sauce tasted like the meatball sandwich in my Middle School cafeteria. Jen remarked that the cheese tasted like "they cooked the wrapper from the mozzarella onto the slice." There were distinct notes of burnt plastic and impending cancer. The crust had a shiny gloss to it, like the varnish on a hardwood floor or the paint job on a car. Everything about this slice was artificial. To be frank, it looked like Carrot Top's face. In summation, Jen said, "they should be paying us $2.50 to eat this slice." I think I'd probably like to be paid more than that, but I'll take what I can get in these trying economic times.

Rating:

Georgio's Pizzeria - $2.50
20 Beaver St (Broadway and Something Else)
New York, NY 10004

Underground Pizza: "You believe in a pizza of crystal that can never be destroyed -- a pizza at which one will not be able to put out one's tongue or make a long nose on the sly."

2011-09-27T19:53:00.000-04:00

I AM A SICK MAN.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. My liver is bad, well -- let it get worse!

Some days ago I had the distinct misfortune of spending my afternoon repast attempting to nourish myself in a rather scurrilous establishment called Underground Pizza. Forgive me for my indiscretion, gentlemen, but a pox upon the fools who created this hellish place and a pox upon their ancestors.

Housed in a seemingly nondescript and innoffensive building on a seemingly nondescript and inoffensive block, this building and this block are both quite repugnant in fact, by virtue of their sheer banality. And the banality hides an odious truth: the food from this horrendously average establishment quite likely provides calories and energy to the most hideous of people, those who profiteer from misery and suffering: traders and brokers.

And surely their bodies have deteriorated in conjunction with their morals if this is the food upon which they eat. To call this food, why to call this slop "food" would be to call these parasitic ghouls "men"! As an exercise, walk to your rubbish heap, find a sullied sponge amongst the refuse, perhaps one with which you cleaned your toilet, and bite into it--this roughly approximates the experience of eating a slice at so-called Underground Pizza. As my close confidante Jennifer Shagawat said, "this place gives the underground a bad name."

Rating:

Underground Pizza - $2.50
3 Hanover Sq
New York, NY 100014

Miami, Fl: Pizza Cubano Head2Head SHOWDOWN!!!! The review is dedicated to all my homegirls reading Slice Harvester at Miami Children's Hospital.

2011-09-14T03:47:00.003-04:00

Last month I spent a little under two weeks in Miami, Florida with Mi Ami, Cha Cha. We hung out with her mom and sisters in the morning, flexed on South Beach in the afternoon and went clubbing with Pitbull and Trick Daddy every night. It was a grand time of delightful gefilte fish breakfasts in the sand, midday wheatgrass smoothies on the boardwalk, fried chicken dinners delivered to fancy restaurants, and 30 hits of E for a midnight snack. Now I have a sweet tribal back piece, a twitch, and a few holes in my brain, but all in all I think I am better for the time spent.

But despite the fact that I was on vacation, I still found time to work. You see, a few years ago when I was in Miami for the first time, friend to Slice Harvester and Miami native, Cristy Road, enlightened me to the fact that her home city has an entire culinary sub-culture of Cuban pizza shops that serve Cuban Style Pizza!!! I am not usually into regional pizza variations, but I love Miami and I love Cuban food, so I thought that maybe it would be awesome. Also fuck it, I am totally into regional pizza variations. Who am I kidding?

Anyway, my special lady friend's sister Dita suggested a couple of Cuban pizza places and Cha Cha, her mother, and I visited two of them. Earlier tonight when I was talking to Cha Cha about what to include in this review, she mentioned that her mother saved her soda cup as a keepsake from our day of Slice Harvesting! I tried to save all my stool the following day, for similar reasons, but those nazis in the TSA wouldn't let me bring that shit on the plane. (Har har).

Our first stop was Montes De Oca, on SW 8th St and SW 52nd Ct. This place is really awesome! It is half indoor and half outdoor, like many things in Miami. The outdoor portion has cool stone seating, and the indoor portion feels warm and inviting like a good diner. Everybody that works at Montes De Oca is really nice. They don't really speak any English, and my Spanish was horrible, and Cha Cha who sprechen zie Spanish was outside smoking when I tried to order, so there was a lot of gesturing and hand waving and making up words. Ultimately it took a total of three waitresses to get an order out of me, which is totally shameful. I vow to learn Spanish better from here on out!

There were like, a ton of different kinds of pizza available on the menu, and I ultimately decided on the Pizza Mixta, which had like a thousand things on it--ham, pepperoni, picadillo, mushroom, onion, pepper, cheese and tomato sauce.

Now, the first thing I noticed about this pizza was that the "toppings" were not on top! That's one of the things that seems to distinguish Cuban pizza from regular pizza. They put the toppings under the cheese. It is perhaps less visually tantalizing, but far more effective in terms of being able to eat the thing without it falling to bits. Like, sometime about halfway through my childhood, I noticed that when my mother prepared her bagel and lox, she would put the cream cheese down, then the cucumber, tomato and onion, and then finally put the lox on top. I always thought she was doing things totally backwards, because I put my vegetables on top of my smoked salmon, because they clearly looked better there! But then I realized, and by "I realized" I mean "she pointed out to me," that my bagel would fall all over the place all the time and hers remained neatly in place.

Anyway, this pizza was AWESOME. Another characteristic of the cuban pizza, at least the personal size, (as opposed to the family size, which is what they call a regular pie) is that it comes on a thick, soft crust, a lot like I remember Boboli being. It didn't even occur to me when I was there, but I am starting to wonder if the bigger pie has a thinner dough! I guess I'll find out in a few months when I am in Miami again. ANYWAY, this pie was like the most awesome Boboli pizza your mom ever made you while you were stoned and she didn't know it. Totally rules! Cha Cha's mom said this pizza was "rustic and delicious."

Rating:

Montes De Oca - Pizza Mixta - $7.95
5241 SW 8th St (at SW 52nd Ct)
Coral Gables, FL 33134

Our next stop, Rey's Pizza, was about 10 blocks West on SW 8th. Doing some amateur internet sleuthing, I learned that Rey's Pizza was, allegedly, the first ever Cuban Pizzeria, founded by two best friends. They had a falling out some time in the 80s or 90s (I don't remember! WHO CARES?!) and then the one dude split and opened Montes De Oca! There is nothing I love more than a good falling out. (Maybe a good blood feud?) And so I was slash am totally excited about participating and perhaps exacerbating this feud by eventually liking one of these places more than the other!!!!! OMG!

Rey's Pizza is shaped like a castle, which is awesome. I love most non-White Castle castle-shaped businesses. I wish I could go back in time and add that to the interests in my livejournal profile. "...cutting onions with a serrated knife, non-White Castle castle-shaped businesses, Wu-Tang grammatical errors..." It would've fit so well. I tried to take a picture of Rey's Pizza from the front, but walking in front of cars with an air of authority and snapping a quick picture of a business seems like it might get me murdered in Miami as opposed to just honked at like it does here in New York.

Rey's Pizza has an awesome costume mascot.

Rey's Pizza has no outdoor area, and the inside was brightly lit like a fast food joint. If any of my Miami readers want to write a scene report from Rey's Pizza at like 3am on a Saturday, I'd love to print it. This place seems like it would be totally awesome in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if I prefer the warmth of Montes De Oca to this place, I think it's situational. Like, I think depending on the circumstance I'd prefer both equally. The employees at Rey's Pizza were really nice, too. And they have their own brand of Meatless Spaghetti Sauce for Multipurpose Italian Specialties!

There was a little bit of deliberation, but for the sake of continuity I decided to get a Pizza Mixta here as well. I had the unfortunate experience of watching them cook my pizza here. They assembled the pizza on a countertop and then placed it in one of those weird conveyer belt ovens you imagine them having in prison kitchens. It was a real serious bummer for me to watch, but I figured, when in Rome or whatever. Anyway, they gave me my pizza eventually and I ate it eventually.

This pizza was WAY more well done then the last one and Mom remarked that they were more stingy with the ingredients than Montes De Oca. Cha Cha's initial assessment of this pie was that it would be better, because she likes her pizza burnt to a crisp apparently! JK. This pie was nicely just nicely browned, but after the altogether pretty pleasant experience I had with the last one, I had a hunch that Cuban pizza was not as good when cooked as thoroughly as a New York slice. And I dare say, I was right!

The crust was thinner and crunchier, but that didn't suit the style of pizza so well. The crust at Montes De Oca was thick and airy, and the cheese on top was viscous and warm without ever crisping. Generally all the flavors and textures of that pie were round and comforting. This pie, on the other hand was sharp and rough. And in general it just wasn't as good! I think even if it had been cooked "properly" (I don't even know if that's the word I am looking for), it wouldn't have been as good as Montes De Oca. If I were to describe this pie in two words, I would say "stingy and crisp," which pales in comparison to Mom's assessment of the last pie as "rustic and delicious." Ultimately, though, even if the other place was better, this was good food and I would eat it again!

Rating:

Rey's Pizza - Pizza Mixta - $7.95
6340 SW 8th St (SW 63rd & 64th Aves)
West Miami, FL 33144

Cucina Bene Pizzeria: "Good kitchen? Bad pizza."

2011-09-09T00:12:00.002-04:00

Cucina Bene Pizzeria's slice was just as bad, if not worse than Grotto, but the place lacked any of Grotto's weird, maniac charm. It was totally bland. Just a big room, painted horrible colors (bright blue/bright yellow), with a GIANT flatscreen. Like the giantest television I have ever seen. Imagine the most ostentatious Miami drug dealer you can think of and then think about how big his imaginary TV is and then like, times that by eleventy thousand. Because seriously, this thing was fucking SO BIG.

This slice also tasted like a battery. Jen thinks they must use the same distributor as Grotto. Whatever it is, this pizza gave me the same acid burn in the back of my throat. This slice was also too thin and totally insubstantial and I felt like I had been ripped off. The crust was totally stingy and what there was of it stunk. BOOOOO! Get off my phone!

Rating:

Cucina Bene Pizzera - $2.50

41 Exchange Pl (Broad & William)

New York, NY 10005

Grotto Pizzeria & Restaurant: "It can't rain all the time."

2011-09-07T06:38:00.001-04:00

Oy vey! Yesterday was such a rainy day, and it is supposed to keep being a rainy day for the next FOREVER. I wish the rain would stop just once. I woke up at a reasonable hour and took the train into the city with my girlfriend Cha-Cha so I could drop her off at her tango lesson at noon. I had nothing to do for an hour and a half, because at 1:30 I had plans to meet up with my friend Jennifer Shagawat, who runs that awesome Starcleaner Records and is also one half of the band Shellshag. The thing about Shellshag is that they are like, the most hardworking band on Earth, and also the most fun band in the Universe. I don't remember the first time I saw Shellshag, and I couldn't even count how many times I've seen them since then. I am just constantly impressed by all kinds of stuff about them:
Songs are awesome
Hella good hair on both of them.
Excellent attitudes.
Live show, ta die faw.
Lordamercy!
S is for smoking weed.
Hard times? Shellshag will help you through them.
Apple orange grapefruit tangerine.
Groovin' hard, lookin' sharp, kickin' butt, SUMMAH.

So yeah, I originally drafted that list in glitter glue on a neon poster board, but I don't have a scanner big enough to scan it. (I don't have any scanner at all.) ANYWAY! I started writing this at work after eating pizza, BUT THEN it was busy at the diner and I drank too much coffee so I could multitask but it was still too busy to stop and write AND THEN after work I was gonna do it but I got home and me and Kevin hung out and I cleaned under my bed because I was super wired from the coffee AND THEN I was like, "I'll go to bed at a reasonable hour and I'll do it in the morning" BUT THEN I decided to watch the X-Files before bed and you know what they say about the X-Files "once you pop the fun don't stop" AND NOW it's like, almost 7am and I have been up all night watching the X-Files. OOPS! Anyway, here is a Slice Harvester now. And I am losing my mind.

So yeah, I met Jen way down on Broadway after walking a great distance in the rain. I was soaking wet and hungry and really excited because I had scoped out our first pizza place and it looked CRAZY!

WHAT?! The Grotto is like, not a pizza place from real life. This is a pizza place from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. The front door just leads to a really claustrophobic staircase and then that just runs into an unnecessary seeming door that opens awkwardly and then you are in this weird basement space with the lowest ceilings ever and there everything is really bright colors and there are no windows and the people are all weirdos. AKA my dream come true.

Even though the environment was super cool this slice sucked and it tasted like I was eating a battery. The cheese was fine, and the dough was okay quality but spread so thin I ate the whole slice in like half a bite. And the sauce was the nastiest. Seriously, have you ever a eaten a battery? I haven't, but I imagine eating a battery would taste like this slice tastes.

Rating:

Grotto Pizzeria & Restaurant - $2.50
69 New St (Exchange & Beaver)
New York, NY 10004

Picasso Pizza: "I hope the owner didn't cut off his ear! Get it? Cause Picasso cut off his ear."

2011-09-01T11:52:00.000-04:00

I have this really bad habit of still calling my friend Andy Folk by his old name, Young Punk Andy, a name he never chose, and a name that is no longer particularly apt because Andy is no longer so young. This totally funny thing happened where, when I met Andy he was like, a spritely young 18 year old and I was clocking in at an old, haggard, world-weary 23. That is a huge difference in age! I was like, way older than him. But now that he is 25 and I am 50, or whatever fucking ages we both actually are, he is only a little bit younger than me instead of a lot! This is that phenomenon where my kid sister and my friend Cory were born the same year, but Cory is the same age as me and my sister is younger than me. Even though when me and Cory met I was definitely older than him. And I used to be much older than my sister than I am now, even though we're the same number of years apart. LISTEN IDIOT YOU EITHER KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT OR YOU DON'T AND IF YOU DON'T YOU'RE THE STUPID ONE, NOT ME. Anyway, Andy. Cool guy. You should read his zines. They are available from the Book Thugs and I'm sure you can mailorder them right from him if you want.

Leslie Nielson? Howard Dean?

Picasso Pizza. I forgot to take a picture of the front of it, because I am a jackass, but the front is incredibly unremarkable. Here is a picture of it from some other website:

The front of the pizzeria is hiding behind that tree. Thank you infoUSA for your great photography.

I got so lost coming to this place! That's mostly because I forgot the address and went to the wrong street, but also because it's really hard to bike to. That's the truth!

This slice was pretty good! The slice a whole had, what Andy characterized as "good integration." The sauce was on the wetter side, but was totally not sloppy and kind of ruled, although it could've been a little more flavorful or tangy. The dough had too much visible cornmeal, which put me off, but I didn't actually notice it while eating the slice, and it was definitely crispy and firm enough. The cheese was of a totally decent quality and was cooked to an absolutely respectable viscosity! This is what Andy was getting at with his "good integration" comment. The slight wetness of the sauce and the perfect viscosity of the cheese combined expertly and sat on top of the crust without making it soggy. It missed that special zest, and wasn't especially mindblowing, but for real, this slice was pretty alright! I would eat here again, unlike most pizzerias in New York City.

Rating:

Picasso Pizza - $2.70
303 South End Ave (Albany & Liberty)
New York, NY 10280

HEY EVERYONE I'M NOT DEAD!

2011-08-18T23:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks for everyone who sent me emails asking if I was still alive (frequent poster Thomas Traveler and my mother, who knew I was alive, but texted me "hey boychik, are you ever going to update your website again?!"). I am. Sorry for the lack of updates. I decided to take a summer vacation. Right now I am in Miami and I will be home at the end of the month, at which point I will resume regular updates and finish Manhattan! Perhaps while I'm here I'll throw together a semi-comprehensive survey of Cuban Pizzerias here in town. For now I am in linen pants and a silk shirt, hanging out on South Beach, chain smoking 305s and scraping advils with a razorblade so I can sell them as ecstacy outside Cameo.

Sorry to keep you all so uninformed. It was never my intention and I hope you can forgive me. For now, here are some home videos of me and my life partner Cha Cha hanging out on vacation:

So yeah, I'll be back in the beginning of September. If you want me to get you Trick Daddy's autograph or anything, I probably won't because I don't want to bother him for stupid shit like that, but I'll tell him you said hi.

Steve's Pizza: "Boston style pizza."

2011-07-30T22:59:00.000-04:00

Steve's Pizza is a horrid and sad place, however, everyone in there seemed happy despite that fact. There is a huge banner on the outside of Steve's, which is attached to a place called Charly's, which sells "Burgers Philly Steaks Burritos Grilled Chicken," proclaiming that they serve "The Finest NYC Pizza" or something like that. It's places like this that give the banner outside Pizza Suprema a negative connotation. Because the pizza here, it totally blows! They had a pretty cool statue of an ugly pizzaman, though.

After getting our slice, we looked around for some seating until we realized that if we walked through Charly's, there was a staircase, and it led to another floor, full of cafeteria style seating. I actually helped some Midwestern Cornbread Dad carry his baby stroller up the steps while his other 40 kids ran in circles around his ankles. When we got upstairs it was more of the same. Cornbread Tourist Families just slobbing pizza down their throats before they wait in line to look at the Ground Zero Rubble so they can tear up while they hum the Star Spangled Banner and their kids swat flies and have no idea what the significance of that moment is because they weren't even born yet in 2001. I don't even know where I'm going with this.

This slice was the biggest piece of garbage. It's like gas station/roller rink/bowling alley/birthday party pizza, but it's missing any of the sentimental umph. There was just nothing going for it. Ross, who is a Boston native, called this slice "Boston style pizza." For those that don't know, Boston is famous for it's Greek Pizza, which is famous for being brittle and having poorly spiced sauce, both of which were exhibited in this slice. Ross said, "Greeks have contributed a lot of things to modern society. Pizza is not one of them." This slice was a fucking bummer. Whatever, just don't go here.

Rating:

Steve's Pizza - $2.50
110 Cedar St (at Trinity)
New York, NY 10006

Pronto Pizza: "I don't wanna waaaaste myyyyy tiiiiiime become another casualty of society."

2011-07-23T00:52:00.000-04:00

Pronto Pizza. This place is the pits. This whole chain is the pits! Or, I don't know, maybe they're not related, maybe there is just a coincidental thing where all the owners of shitty pizzerias are inspired by the Great Pizzaola to name their stores Pronto Pizza as a benevolent act on her part, to warn the true believers of the world that they should stay away.

The slice they sell here is about the thickness of a piece of chewing gum and "tastes like a punishment," according to Ross, who had even more to say. "This pizza is making a mockery out of something I love. It's like Good Charlotte or Sum 41." When we finally got to the crust, which rose up from the meager base of the slice, Ross commented, "the inequity of thickness of the slice to the crust provides an apt metaphor for the distribution of wealth in America." Way to go, Ross! I love that shit.

Rating:

Pronto Pizza - $3.00
114 Liberty St (Trinity & Greenwich)
New York, NY 10006

More Pizza Reviews Forthcoming. For Now Events and Press and Friends Doing Cool Stuff!

2011-07-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

1. I am having another pizza party at The City Reliquary! This time, to celebrate the release of Issue 5 of Slice Harvester Quarterly! This issue covers all the pizza from 23rd to 42nd, has the top quality illustrations you've come to expect from Brooklyn's own Joe Porter, and features a back cover by talented Brooklyn native cum Oakland raider Aminah Slor! I have been neck deep in zine hell for days now and this issue promises to be THE BOMB.

Event details:
8-10pm, this Saturday, July 23rd, at the City Reliquary Museum (370 Metropolitan Ave, BK, NY)
Featuring:
Reading by Me!
Beers from Brooklyn Brewery!
Pizza from I don't know where, but hopefully it's Grandma Rose's and Best Pizza again because both of those places are awesome!
I am hoping my grandfather will be there, so bring your grandfather!
In fact, I will give a free set of every issue of Slice Harvester Quarterly that's out so far to anyone who shows up with a Grandparent. It doesn't matter if it's your grandparent. If you know someone who has grandchildren or is just generally grandparent age, bring them and I will give you free stuff!

Do me a favor and RSVP on Facebook. Do it even if you aren't coming because it makes me feel good to check that thing and see a ton of people on there.

2. It seems I have been profiled in New York Press! Read the article! It is really nice. Check out other stuff the author Jon Reiss wrote because he seems to be a pretty good writer and he is also a total sweetheart and when I met him he looked like a young George Tabb, who also wrote for the New York Press, but he hasn't looked like that again any time I've seen him since, so he's also a shapeshifter or something!

3. And finally! My good friend and Slice Harvester's #1 most frequent Pizza Adventurer, Caroline Paquita, is starting an Independent Publishing Venture called Pegacorn Press! This is very exciting news, because Caroline is not just a talented artist, she is also an incredibly diligent worker, unflinching in the face of adversity, and if she sets her mind to something, she will make it happen.

She is currently involved in some internet fundraising, so if you've got five bucks to spare, go over to IndieGoGo and email homegirl some money! Everyone who donates gets a present in the mail! If you can't spare five bucks, you can at least "like" her project on Facebook and then tell everyone you know to donate and you can just pretend you are one of the anonymous donors, and no one will know and the only real tangible repercussion will be a lingering feeling of disappointment in yourself that you will carry with you your whole life for not forking over FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS for something awesome.

Majestic Pizza & Calzone: "Don't judge a book by it's cover."

2011-07-15T15:35:00.001-04:00

Majestic Pizza & Calzone is like, the best looking pizza shop anywhere near here. It seriously has the most picturesque awning I've ever seen and the inside has like, the perfect amount of wear and tear. Like well worn jeans. The even sheen of grease staining the price board a perfect yellow looks great without looking decrepit or untended. Seriously, seems to live permanently in that few month grace period where your jeans are the softest and fit the best, but before you blow out the crotch a million times from your bike seat. The place looks loved and cared for! I am inherently distrustful of sterile and pristine things. I am also distrustful of "distressed denim" and all the distressed denim aesthetic elsewhere in the world, which is partially about me being fussy about authenticity, which I am sort of unnerved by because I think desire for authenticity can be really damaging! Didn't Theodor Adorno say something about "the quest for authenticity is the death of many revolutionary movements" or something? Am I making this up?

I don't really know where I'm going with all this. Not enough coffee yet, today. Maybe I'll touch on some of this stuff later on, but I can't imagine anyone actually cares about what I think. Back to Majestic Pizza, while this place looked really good, it FELT horrible in the heat. The doors were open and there were like, the saddest two ceiling fans drawing out the slowest circles above our heads. As I was handed my slice, I wiped the sweat from my forehead for the millionth time in the five minutes I'd been inside and Ross said "it feels like a fucking opium den in here!"

This slice, while it wasn't bad, was not the mind-boggling, perfect piece of pie I was expecting. It definitely wasn't BAD, though. But It's a Pizza a few doors down may have a better slice? Judging from the fronts of the places, Majestic should be blowing that ugly duckling outta the water. But this slice, while it had good ratios and quality ingredients, wasn't cooked so well and was, to be honest, a little bland. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I felt totally let down.

Rating:

Majestic Pizza & Calzone - $2.50
8 Cortlandt St (Broadway & Trinity)
New York, NY 10007

It's a Pizza: "Don't judge a book by it's cover."

2011-07-13T15:49:00.003-04:00

Last week I ate pizza with my friend Ross Noyes. Ross is a punk kid from Boston, and when I had first met him many years ago, I thought his last name was like, "Noise" or "Noize" or something and it was an unfortunate remnant of his teenage punk band. But it turns out his real actual last name is just a homophone. Who knew?

One time Ross walked into the diner while I was working, on a moderately busy evening. I made eye contact with him, but didn't say anything because I had armloads of food and was bringing them to a table. When he shouted, "APPARENTLY I'M FUCKIN' INVISIBLE ALLOVASUDDEN!" a few seconds later, I thought he was talking to me and quickly rushed over to quiet him down. "Hey man, sorry, I see you there, I'm just busy." I blurted out.
He looked surprised and was like, "what? You thought I was talking to you? Come outside for a second, lemme show you something."

We walked out front and he showed me his bike. One side of the handlebars was flush with the frame, like a two dimensional drawing, and the wheels were totally fucked. I looked at him shocked and he said, "I just got dragged under a truck for two blocks."

I took him inside, gave him coffee and a whiskey, and asked how the hell he was still walking. He looked me in the eyes and said, "Cause I'm fuckin' Wolverine. I don't get hurt." When I saw him the next day, he was walking with a cane. Ross is a person who, while I don't necessarily think he's got everything figured out, I never worry about him making it in the world, because he seems like he can really take care of himself and he seems like he's at peace with who he is.

A little while ago I started therapy for the first time in my life. It's been really helpful in learning and growing as a person, and in unpacking a lot of the baggage I've accrued in the time I've been alive. When I first started seeing the doc, there was a voice inside me telling me that it was a bourgeois extravagance, like it was weakness on my part that led to my needing therapy in the first place. I knew that was bullshit but I also couldn't shut the voice up. And oftentimes, it would come back to me and it would say, "look at Ross. He deals with his shit. Why can't you just deal with your shit?"

One day I was waiting at the halal truck near my doctor's office for a chicken on pita, and Ross walked by. We noticed each other and the first thing out of his mouth was a surprised and amicable, "what the hell are you doing in this neighborhood?"

For a split second I was frozen. Here was this guy standing in front of me who, in a lot of ways, seems to embody many of the of the more admirable qualities of American masculinity--strength, self-reliance, confidence--without replicating most of the bad ones. For a moment, I felt a sense of self-imposed shame about my need for help. But I knew that at heart, Ross wouldn't think any less of me for seeking out assistance, and more importantly, I knew that if he did, it was his problem, not mine. So with some trepidation that I'm sure went unnoticed, I said to him, "I'm just getting lunch on the way to see the shrink."

Without a second thought, Ross looked at me and said, "I wish I was in therapy. Good for you." And suddenly all these illusions I was harboring about both of us were shattered. It's always interesting, and oftentimes potentially disastrous, when the image you've created for someone comes face to face with their actual humanity. This is why so many people are disappointed when they meet celebrities, for instance. But we don't just create personas for strangers, we create them for everyone in our lives. Our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors, our family. And people create them about us too. There's nothing wrong with it. I will never understand the entirety of another human being, so I have to surmise and imply what I can't know. But it's always heartening to realize that maybe you've oversimplified someone. That maybe there's a lot more to them than you let yourself believe.

I was a few minutes early meeting Ross last week, and so I had plenty of time to stand around in front of It's a Pizza and ponder their hideous facade. I thought for sure I was looking at some heartless business endeavor, malevolent tumor of capitalism blighting the face of a city street. When Ross arrived, I nodded towards the awning and he said, "I am not looking forward to this."

Inside the place was decorated horribly. There was fake brick on the walls, and an array of weird mirrors hanging "artistically." The chalkboard pricelist had those fake painted food pictures at the bottom that look like they're out of a terrifying comic book. But it was bustling as hell in there, it smelled good, and there was a pretty authentic looking (and sounding) pizza man behind the counter taking orders and yelling at customers.

When our slice came out of the oven it looked pretty good. And it was good! The sauce was a little too sweet, and tasted more like the sauce on a chicken parm than on a slice, but there was just the right amount of it. The cheese was good quality and the dough was cooked to perfection. The crust, while skimpy, was absolutely delicious. Ross said, "If this place was in a different city, like Athens or Duluth or something, you'd be like, 'this pizza place fuckin' rules!' and there'd be only punks working here."

And suddenly, eating this good slice, and looking back at the guy behind the counter, who by all signs looked to be some moderately shlubby New York native and not the "business savvy" Wall Street shark I assumed would own the places based on the exterior, everything took on a different connotation. The aesthetic qualities I found distasteful about the place at first suddenly seemed charming, like when someone makes a benign and well-intentioned bad decision. The fact that the place looked like it would totally suck and it didn't made it seem almost better than if it had looked cool. Because that would've been unremarkable. "This pizza place that looks like a pizza place is a pizza place and they sell pretty good pizza." But because the place looked like a miserable outpost of the Capitalist Death Culture, but turned out to be a decent pizza shop, there was something triumphant about the whole experience.

I also noticed on the sign out front that they offer a 99¢ slice "happy hour" from 4-6pm. If the slice they serve then is the same as the one I ate, then this is clearly the best slice of pizza you can get for a dollar anywhere in the city.

Rating:

It's a Pizza - $2.25
20 John St (Nassau & Broadway)
New York, NY 10038

Friendly Gourmet Pizza: "No part of the name of this place has any resemblance to actual real life."

2011-07-11T17:31:00.002-04:00

The other day I had the most post-internet experience I've ever had in my life. More post-internet than the handful of OKCupid dates I went on a few years ago (that's right, I'll own up to it)! I recently became aware of Internets Celebrities, a duo of native New Yorkers who make thought-provoking, oftentimes hilariously insightful videos about a variety of topics, most relating to New York City. Their most recent work, ostensibly about the rumored correlation between the price of a slice and the price of a single subway fare, but actually a biting commentary on the lack of services provided by the MTA despite consistent price increases. Their succinct findings: "The MTA is essentially charging us $2.50 for a $1 slice."

A week or two ago, Rafi Kam, one half of IC, twortled on twerter inviting strangers to meet him for lunch. I think I was the first and maybe only person to respond, and so a short few days later, we met up outside Friendly Gourmet Pizza to get a slice. Two strangers, joined by one common trait: an abundance of time on the internet. Would we butt heads, would a fast and enduring friendship form? My mind was full of questions as I made my way down the stairs of my building to unlock my bike and head to Nassau Street.

Sadly, when I got downstairs, someone had locked my brake cable into their u-lock! I was aghast and furious. In a hasty act of defiance, I took a permanent marker and wrote a note across their top tube that said "BE MORE CAREFUL NEXT TIME" and then got onto the J train, afraid that I might be late and miss out on meeting Rafi.

On the train, the reality of my situation began to set in: I had just deliberately vandalized a bike that my bike was still locked to. Ergo, I would likely return to Brooklyn to find my bike vandalized. There was no question that the party responsible for my misfortune got off easy. Locking up someone else's bike is an amateur mistake, and sharpie washes off easy enough. But I had set myself up to be the recipient of easy vengeance, and I was none too pleased with my own rash and amateurish behavior.

This picture was taken on a prior pizza mission, when I got to Friendly Gourmet too late and it was closing for the night.

By the time I got to Friendly Gourmet, I looked a mess, and I was feeling like a total greasy weirdo. I was positive this stranger would see me for the loathsome shitbreather I am and would turn around in disgust at the very sight of me, but I held my ground and stood around outside the pizza parlor, which was tiny and cute, with a constantly moving line out the door. There was no seating to speak of, just a hastily assembled "countertop jutting out of the side of the building. As I waiting for Rafi, I was transfixed watching the flow of people moving in and out of the tiny storefront, the line out front ebbing and flowing like the tide. The place was cute as hell and they seemed to be running a pretty professional operation. I was getting excited to try the slice, and pretty soon all my concerns melted away. By the time Rafi strolled over I was cool as a cucumber and we stepped inside to get our slices.

I got a plain slice and Rafi got a grandma slice (not pictured). Mine smelled good and looked like it could be anywhere from passably decent to absolutely great, but I knew it wouldn't be bad. This slice had too much sauce, but otherwise, it was totally good. The sauce taste was a little overwhelming, but I think in a more moderate quantity it could definitely be a more subtle component in the complex flavor of a good slice, as opposed to the edible equivalent your hamfisted, slightly drunk uncle who is nice when he's sober, but who, after his fifth beer, talks too loud about uncomfortable subjects on Thanksgiving. But even with the sauce acting like a dickhead, the quality of the rest of the slice shined through! The cheese, while nothing to write home about was actually decent. That shouldn't carry the weight that it does, but it seems that these days most pizza places are using pretty crummy ingredients. The dough was crunchy and maintained it's integrity. The crust was crunchy enough without being brittle, and salty enough, which is really all you can ask for.

Rafi didn't seem too awed by this piece of pizza, but he hasn't been in the trenches like I have. (No offense, dude!) Compared to most of the shit they are slinging in this town, this slice is incredible. I know I've said this a million times, but in my dreamworld Crimethinc Utopia ruled by a kindly wizard, a slice this good would be the worst pizza around. However, in our sick fucking society (SFS), where everything is so backwards that "progressive" media outlets discredit sexual assault survivors and support defense contractors, and in Oakland the BART cops seem to kill someone every time there's a holiday, there is obviously no justice or sanity, so most pizza sucks and this pizza, which is by all accounts totally good, just not great, stands out as a shining beacon of hope amidst the shit.

Fuck the world.

Rating:

Friendly Gourmet Pizza - $2.50

59 Nassau St (at John)

New York, NY 10038

Postscript:
I got so worked up being angry about the pervasive rape culture and systematic violent oppression in this country, I forgot to talk about what happened to my bike! Are you ready for this? Take a deep breath...

Nothing. Nothing happened. My guess is that whoever was unobservant enough to lock my brake cables was also unobservant enough not to notice that I had written across their top tube in permanent marker! I was thinking on the bus ride home from my girlfriend's house that night that if I saw them, I would offer to wash off my graffito if they paid me the $9 I had to spend in public transit costs because my bike was stuck to a pole all day.

Also, while I'm talking about the pervasive rape culture:
Attn: All Male-Bodied Dudes! Every time your cousin or your coworker or your best friend from high school or your neighbor who you are having a beer with on the stoop makes a rape joke and you don't say shit, YOU are personally responsible for creating a climate in which survivors are not taken seriously. Don't forget that.

Liberatos Pizza: "More than a feeling."

2011-07-06T18:59:00.001-04:00

Liberatos Pizza is on a weird street in a weird building. There are other restaurants on the block, but it seems like somewhere I wouldn't want to go to find food. The buildings are too tall and the street is too narrow. There's a pervasive Dickensian gloom. I wouldn't mind if my tailor or cobbler was on this block. Or if I was going to like, a meeting of the Hermetic Order. But it just doesn't seem like there should be food here.

On the inside, the place is gigantic, and when I was there, empty. There were weird hair metal power ballads playing on the radio, it was super hot, and there were just WEIRD VIBES, MAN. Everything just felt awkward. Suddenly the three of us couldn't really make much of a conversation and everyone was just sort of looking around.

This slice was the only one we ate our whole day together that was adequately cooked and served hot enough. This circumstance created the illusion that the slice itself was better than all the previous slice, when in fact it was just warmer. The slice had too much cheese, and the dough and sauce made it taste like Stoeffer's. I would say that no one should really bother with this pizzera, but it's not TERRIBLE. Try the weird falafel place down the block that looks like it's from the Jetsons.

Rating:

Liberatos Pizza - $2.75
17 Cedar St (Pearl & William)
New York, NY 10038

Anna Maria's Pizza: "BUT IT IS IN A MALL!"

2011-06-24T16:44:00.002-04:00

Anna Maria's Pizza is in the food court of the mall at Pier 17 in the South Street Seaport. It is the weirdest food court I have ever been to, and for some reason made me think of Union Station in DC with it's fake internationalism. The other food stalls all had these oddly generic names like "Little Tokyo," "China Max," "Simply Seafood," and a place just called "Philly Cheesesteak" which allegedly featured "Live Cooking." I guess it is good to know that my food is not being prepared by androids? I don't know, the whole place made me feel uneasy, and the slice was $4.

This picture may not make it clear, but it was pretty big at least, considering the price. And it tasted more like real pizza than Pizza & Pasta Delight, and was decent if unremarkable, at least at first. But as we progressed along, the slice became less and less palatable. The ratio of cheese to everything else grew incrementally as we ate, until the very end of the slice became a sloppy, overly cheesy mess. And it had that grease taste that reminds you of bad butter. (Remind me to start a pop punk band called Bad Butter.) Chuck and me were really harshing on this slice, but Matt, who believed that the slice simply hadn't been cooked long enough, took up its defense willingly and fervently. "It's not necessarily the piece of pizza's fault that whoever is working didn't cook it well," he practically shouted at us. "They cooked a good piece of pizza badly!" I think there's definitely more wrong with this slice than the fact that it wasn't cooked enough, but Matt might be on to something.

Rating:

Anna Maria's Pizza - $4.05
Pier 17 (Peck Slip & Dover, kinda)
New York, NY 10002

Why I have chosen to discontinue distributing Slice Harvester Quarterly through Microcosm Publishing.

2011-06-23T13:27:00.002-04:00

This post may not seem especially relevant to folks who are not involved in punk or activist communities, but it does address larger-scale issues of dealing with abuse and holding abusers accountable in any community, and what role individuals play in making that accountability happen.

Some years ago, Joe Biel, a co-founder of Microcosm, was publicly called out for being emotionally abusive in his relationship with his then-partner and Microcosm's other co-founder Alex Wrekk. He has also been called out as being manipulative in collective organizing with Microcosm. This whole time, the company maintained a degree of silence about this issue that I personally found totally odious and appalling.

Some time in 2009 or '10, (you can read an accurate timeline at Alex's website), Joe began engaging in a mediation/accountability process initiated by Cindy Crabb, publisher of Doris Zine and general rad ally and friend. I had already read Alex's zine about the abuse via Support New York, and was heartened to hear that Microcosm was perhaps finally taking accountability. In January of this year, Microcosm released a very problematic and disappointing statement, which has been critiqued by Cindy far more succinctly than I feel capable of right now. In February, someone from Microcosm contacted me to order new zines and I wrote them the following email:

Hey J----,

I don't think we know each other. I have had lengthy discussions with S---- in the past about some misgivings I've had about distributing through Microcosm, which she more or less helped me to quell, but those misgivings have been given new breath as of late.

Aside from doing Slice Harvester, my main project for many years has been doing perpetrator accountability work [with] Support New York (http://www.supportny.org) here in NYC. Much as I appreciate the income generated by, and reliability of, turning a bulk of my mail-order over to Microcosm, my allegiance lies first and foremost with my beliefs around those who perpetuate abuse and how they should be held accountable.

Before agreeing to distribute through Microcosm a year or so ago, I had a number of long and very involved conversations over the phone with S---- in which she assured me that Joe's process was making progress and that the collective was totally into keeping him accountable. In light of some recent updates from Cindy Crabb, I don't feel like I can continue to distribute Slice Harvester with you all in good conscience. Even though SH is totally separate and anonymous project and is absolutely distinct from my accountability work, my commitment is still to that work, and when I think about continuing any kind of relationship with Microcosm, I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I've learned to heed.

I wish Microcosm had been a little more transparent about acknowledging Joe's abusive behavior from the get go, and I really wish it seemed like you all were acknowledging it at all right now. I can't even find the public statement you guys made about Joe's behavior anywhere on the website. Is it available outside of anarchistnews.org, where I finally found it in google? It doesn't seem very transparent or accountable to leave something so crucial off the website.

Overall, I am really disheartened by all of this and as I said, I don't think I feel comfortable working with you guys any longer.

love, Colin

No one at Microcosm bothered to respond. Earlier this week I was shown their most recent public statement, which was actually published on their website this time, at least. At the time I first saw this statement, there was a conversation going on in the comments section that seems to have disappeared now, but was luckily archived here. If the comments had still been open on that blog post, I probably would've written to Microcosm there instead of writing this public letter, but since they seem determined to close down any actual dialogue, I feel like I have no choice but to write something here.

While I think that the new statement is far more heartening than the last, I still feel majorly let down by it's timing, it's vagueness, and the silencing of criticism Microcosm has engaged in by hiding the comments that were previously posted. At this point, Microcosm has a few copies of Slice Harvester Quarterly #2 left and when they sell out I don't think I'll be selling them any more any time soon. I would urge any other zine makers who consider themselves an ally to stop working with Microcosm until they get their shit together, and I would urge everyone else to hold off on ordering from them until they prove themselves to be willing to engage in actual accountability and dialogue.

There are standards we must set in our community. Abuse and abusive behavior happen in this sick fucking society, there is no avoiding that. We are socialized to harm one another, and men in particular are socialized to be so disconnected from our emotions that the harm we cause is oftentimes inadvertent. However, it is each person's responsibility to be open and honest with themselves and the people in their lives and foster an environment where abuse accusations can be taken seriously, and both survivor and perpetrator can be given access to the healing they need. Microcosm's actions have done the exact opposite of that. They've given an abuser a shield to hide behind and perpetuate his shitty behavior while publicly seeming accountable, and that is untenable. Microcosm needs to get their shit together ASAP. This stuff is hard to navigate but they are majorly fucking up.

Pizza and Pasta Delight: "Double your pleasure, double your chin."

2011-06-22T13:47:00.002-04:00

Last week I went and ate pizza with my close personal friend Chuck Van Dyke and my close personal acquaintance Matt Winn. Chuck is from Paris, TN, but mysteriously, Matt has a thicker Southern accent than him even though he grew up on Lawnguyland. He seems smart and reads a lot of thick books. I don't know him that well, so I'll just leave it at that.

Chuck, though, I know that guy real good. I met Chuck many years ago playing a show at the Jerk House and he was so shy and mysterious that I decided I had to be his friend. He was living in Chattanooga at the time, but I hung out with him a couple of times when he was coming through on tour and then one day he came to stay at The Fort for like, two weeks or something. Some time in there I got called in last minute to record The John Candies tape, and I was over there in the bedroom that Good Kid Paulie was sharing with like, 40 people. I was trying to set up the four track and was having tons of trouble getting the drums sounding right. I went out in the living room where I saw Chuck sitting on the couch and was like, "hey man, will you listen to something for a second? I can't get these drums sounding right." And he was all, "nah, I gotta go, I'm late for work." "Work?! How long are you in town for?" "I dunno... I guess I moved here."

At the time, Chuck had this goofy green hair and I think he maybe even had an earring and he definitely wore a sport strap on his glasses and he seemed so weird and I liked all the bands he had been in and so I was just like "I must best-friend this man." And then it was a total courtship. I took him for a bike ride to the museum and pretended that it was something I do all the time, and then we went to the record store and then ate tacos and drank beer at the water. I made him a Mixed Tape. Eventually I won him over and he became My Dawg and he still accepts me even though I'm not nearly as awesome as I seemed during those first few weeks of our burgeoning friendship. Also, he doesn't have the sport strap any more and his hair is not green, but now it looks like Johnny Ramone or like, Little Lord Fauntleroy or something and he always wears denim shirts, which is equally cool and weird. Anyway, this dude is a total winner.

Pizza & Pasta Delight is a weird dead zone. It's hidden away in this weird alcove where no one seems to go and the vibes inside are straight up mundane. Mad mundanity, son! The address of this place should be on Banal Street! Nyuck nyuck nyuck. For real though, one time I was in the car with my mother and I said "I used to always pronounce banal 'baynel' because it smells like anal." I was trying to say "it's spelled like anal" but I Freudian slipped on a big old pile of intellectual doodoo and landed flat on my ass. Not as bad as the time I called my mom after I read about the Sean Bell verdict in the Times and as soon as she answered I was like, "MA I AM SO FUCKING MAD RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD SOME DAYS YOU JUST WANT TO GO OUT AND MURDER ALL THE FUCKING PIGS IN THIS CITY..." and she was all, "Oh, you know, yeah, that's really great. You're actually on speaker phone because I am driving and your 200 year old conservative grandmother is sitting in the car next to me so now is probably not a good time. But I am sorry to hear you're feeling bad and we should talk about it later." Why am I even mentioning this? Because Pizza & Pasta Delight was such a boring empty dead zone that I have nothing to say about it!

And much like the ambiance of P & P Delight, the flavor of this pizza was nearly nonexistent. Matt called it "Ghost Pizza." Something about this whole place reminded me of that haunted train in Final Fantasy III, but sadly, that reference is probably lost on a bulk of my readership. Anyway, this pizza tasted like a piece of winterfresh that you've chewed all the flavor out of. You know how there's still like, a taste to old gum, but it tasted like NOTHING? This pizza is like that. And the texture was a nightmare. Matt said, "you don't even need your teeth to bite this pizza!" and Chuck was like, "yeah, it's like eating a piece of cake." I thought the crust sucked, but Matt seemed to find it inoffensive, at least, so there's that.

Rating:

Pizza & Pasta Delight - $2.55
77 Fulton St (Gold & Cliff)
New York, NY 10038

A map of all the pizza.

2011-06-21T00:49:00.002-04:00

My mother complained to me yesterday that since she doesn't have a twitter or a facebook, she never sees any of the newspaper articles about me or the things that aren't pizza reviews, because I don't put that stuff on the blog anymore. So here you go, ma.

Jeff Manheimer made this map for me. We are still working out some small details, but I was never one to keep things secret until they're finished, so here it is now. I'm almost finished with eating all the pizza in Manhattan; by the time I'm done I'll have been at it for two years. The truth is, lately I've been feeling a little sour about the whole thing, like it's not that important or not that meaningful.

And it's neither of those things, but looking at all the information on this blog aggregated into points on a map makes me realize how monolithic it is. Whether or not it matters, I set out to do something HUGE and in a few weeks I'll have done it. And here is the proof. Thanks, Jeff.

This map is easily accessible at any time of day via the "The Map!" button up there at the top of the page. At Slice Harvester we are working day and night to keep you knowledgeable about local pizza parlors. Don't forget that. I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for YOU.

Lisa's Pizzeria: "Where's Lisa at?"

2011-06-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

There is an incongruity between the brand new awning of Lisa's Pizzeria and the establishment's worn in and much loved interior that strikes a dissonant chord deep within my soul. That's maybe a little histrionic, but the point is, there is something terribly awry here. At first I thought there had just been like, a remodel of the facade, or whatever. As soon as I was handed my pizza, I became ill at ease. Lew seemed to be taking it easy and keeping his expectation low, but Justin bought into the decor's supposed authenticity hook line and sinker.

This slice wasn't terribly bad, but it wasn't too good. Lew said the sauce had "a vomit quality" to it, and while I wouldn't take it that far, I agree with his assertion that this slice was NO GOOD. At first Justin kept sticking with his guns, saying that the slice was okay, but he finally admitted, "this vaguely approaches what I am expecting to get when I think about ordering a slice of pizza." The crust was good, though, and the cheese was just sort of whatevs. But ultimately, despite the slight vomitude, this shit wasn't too bad. It just wasn't any good at all.

Rating:

Lisa's Pizzeria - $2.75
76 Fulton St (Gold & Cliff)
New York, NY 10038

Rosella's Pizzeria: "..."

2011-06-14T19:58:00.000-04:00

This place is pretty mundane. Caruso's may have had a mediocre slice, but at least they had a charming man! This place had nothing really going for it and was totally unmemorable. At least I had good company, if I had been by myself I might've just Rip Van Winkled the rest of my life away and some children would've unearthed me in the corner 200 years from now with a beard stretching out the East River.

This slice looked straight up NYASTY behind the counter, but it looked a little more promising when it came out of the oven. But looks can be decieving, and a good slice is hard to find. And bad slices come in so many forms, so let me tell you about this one. Firstly, this slice is incredibly insubstantial. Everyone appreciates a thin crust, but this slice takes that concept too far. It is waifish, a will o' the wisp. This slice should extra in Oliver Twist or time travel and star in a CK One ad. This slice also had wet, sloppy sauce and totally bad cheese. My notes end with a resigned "this is just crummy." I don't know what else to say! It just ain't good.

Rating:

Rosella's Pizzeria - $2.70
164 William St (Ann & Beekman)
New York, NY 10038

Caruso's Pizza & Pasta: "This might throw a wrench into my hypothesis that pizza was better in the 60s."

2011-06-10T18:36:00.001-04:00

After me and Lew ate at Portabello's, we went over to City Hall Park to look at those wretched new Sol DeWitt sculptures, not smoke, and wait for our friend Justin Sullivan. Justin is someone whom I like a lot and respect immensely, and I have been wracked by a strong sense of trepidation in preparing to finally write about him. Sometimes when I hang out with Justin, I feel like I am a freshman and he is like, the cool senior who sees something in me that I don't even see and invites me out with the older kids. There's never anything condescending about it, he just exudes a certain amount of comfort with himself and comfort with his place in the world that I aspire to but will never achieve because of the constant Woody Allen narrative in my head. I have had a few Justin Sullivans in my life, he is not the first, but he is definitely the most relevant right now.

I was telling Lew as we sat on a bench and I kept rolling cigarettes and then realizing I wasn't allowed to smoke them and then sticking them in my hat, that sometimes, if I find myself in a sticky situation or trying to navigate awkward terrain, I'll think to myself, "what would Justin Sullivan do?" And the answer I always come up with is "Justin Sullivan wouldn't even be in this situation in the first place!" It's like that song Geoffrey Ingram by the Television Personalities, (which is kinda like that song David Watts by the Kinks minus the class critique and sardonic tone), which is basically Dan Treacy ruminating about his cool friend, for whom everything seems to work out. The refrain ends with the line, "Geoffrey always gets in as it starts to rain." Are you guys following me here?

The thing about Justin Sullivans is that they don't know they're Justin Sullivans, or else they wouldn't be a Justin Sullivan, they'd be a Justin Timberlake, and that guy is a dick! And like, I don't think that my friend is some total superman or anything, I know he has his own insecuritites, I've seen him make missteps. But he still seems like he's got his shit so together, and it's nice to see and it inspires me to be better myself.

And the thing about life is that everyone is someone's Justin Sullivan. I'm sure even I could be somebody's Justin Sullivan. I mean, if one didn't have access to my constant inner monologue, a position which I make difficult by publishing it in fanzines and all over the internet, one might take me for a cool and confident character. For fuck's sake, somebody out there is Justin Sullivan's Justin Sullivan. But the thing to really remember, if you want to keep a healthy perspective, is that Justin Sullivan may well be somebody's Phil Chapman! It's the circle of life, dog.

Our first stop was Caruso's Pizza & Pasta, on shitty old Fulton St. Caruso's is huge and was pretty empty when we went in. I walked up to the counter to order our slice while Lew and Justin just lurked behind me like the creeps that they are. The pizzaman, who was a potential John Turtorro, gestured to them and said, in his ambiguous Mediterraneanish accent, "what about them? What are they having?"
I looked over my shoulder and furrowed my brow, "them, nothin'."
"Nothin'?! Why nothin'?! Tell 'sgood pizza!"
"Nah, those guys, they're a couple a jerks. A couple of losers. Look at the long hair. They're deadbeats."
"Aaaaye! They seem like nice enough guys. And whatchoo sayin' about long hair?" he lifted his hat to reveal the makings of a ponytail tucked within. "I love long hair, I'm from the 60s!" He looked at my greasy punk vest and stupid tattoos. "You, when're you from?"
I told him I was from the future and then he handed me my slice and we both laughed.

I wanted to love this slice, because I love the guy who sold it to me, but I just didn't. It wasn't bad (!!), but it wasn't really too great, either. It had good grease, and excellent ratios. And the sauce was okay. But it was too floppy and undercooked and there was something wrong with the cheese. "I don't know what the quality is," Lew muttered, looking thoughtfully skyward, "but it's hard to chew. It's like bubblegum." And the dough tasted like a soft pretzel, which I kind of like. I've always thought pizza dough, bagels and soft pretzels belonged to the same family of bread. Same genus, different species. Like Wonderbread and Twinkies.

Justin said, "if I was just eating this slice and not analyzing it, I'd be happy." And he has a point, because it's not bad, but it definitely falls short. I don't know how they could remedy the cheese situation, but the dough would be helped immensely if they'd just cook the fucking thing a little more.

Rating:

Caruso's Pizza & Pasta - $2.50
140 Fulton St (Nassau & Broadway)
New York, NY 10038

Portabello's Pizzeria & Sicilian Kitchen: "Ummm... no thanks, I'll pass... I've actually got plans and can't make it sorry man, really important stuff to do, you know like...

2011-06-08T13:40:00.000-04:00

I had a good feeling about Portabello Pizzeria & Sicilian Kitchen, for some reason. It just looked like it would be good to me, but obviously I was just over-caffeinated and too easily fooled. The place had a lot of style and charm, though. It looked like it had been there for a while, and there was like, a really sloppy smattering of newspaper clippings taped to the walls in this haphazard fashion, with no real aesthetic sensibility or regard for any sense of order, and I just found it so endearing. But the pizza was super lame, so fucking whatever, they can have all the endorsements for Staten Island boxing gyms in the world and I still will never come back!

This slice looked fine and didn't smell bad or anything, but then it just wasn't good. The first bite had a big glob of sauce and the sauce was nasty. I was totally too sweet and tasted super chemical-y. Definitely not my thing. Luckily, the rest of the slice had little to no sauce on it! Unluckily, the cheese and crust sucked too. Or, the cheese was fine, I guess, but the crust was soggy and boring, and absent a decent sauce it really had nothing to offer me. Lew said, "if this was my only slice of pizza when I was visiting I'd be really bummed." And I think that's all you really need to know. He is not from here but even he knows that this pizza is lame.

Rating:

Portabello Pizzeria & Sicilian Kitchen - $2.75
83 Murray St (W. Broadway & Greenwich)
New York, NY 10007

Tribeca Pizza: "Starts strong, ends shitty."

2011-06-06T13:04:00.001-04:00

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

Palermo Pizza: "Someone show these guys how to use the oven!"

2011-06-03T20:06:00.001-04:00

Palermo Pizza is a slight disappointment, but was still the best slice I ate when I walked around with Phil "Phil Chapman is a scumbag" Chapman and Jon the Reporter for the NY Press. The decor was unmemorable, as was the staff. At this point these places are starting to really blend together, and if they're not at least a little charming, and this place wasn't that. I remember the windows being big and bright, and I remember thinking about Bar Mitzvahs, but I think that's just because Jon the Reporter was talking about his Bar Mitzvah when we walked in. Like I said, this place didn't make much of an impression. They had alright coffee, though, and a really clean bathroom, possibly thanks to this sign.

This reminds me of this story Meredith told me about almost getting into a fight at the MOMA during a dance party "curated" by DJ Jazzy Jeff because she stood on the toilet with her head sticking out of her stall and announced, "LADIES! If you are going to hover, please lift the seat. Some of us sit on these things. Collectively our behavior in this bathroom is APPALLING" or something and then some lady was all "shut up" and Meredith was all "make me" or whatever. I don't remember. It's funnier when she tells it. Just ask her about it next time you see her. Or actually don't, that'll probably annoy her. But anyway, either way, nice sign, nice bathroom.

This slice was nearly perfect! It tasted good in every way and seemed to be made of quality ingredients. Like, good cheese, delicious understated sauce, and the dough tasted phenomenal. But the whole thing was pretty undercooked and that hints at a general lack of concern on the part of the proprietors of this place. Like, they put more effort into their bathroom sign than they did into cooking my pizza. And even despite that, it still gets a 6/8 rating! Like, imagine how good this slice would be if they cared about anything besides making clever bathroom puns? Seriously, it would be up in the running for one of the best slices I've had, maybe.

Rating:

This might could've been a 7-7.5 if it had been cooked! Use that oven, guys.

Palermo Pizza - $2.75
61 Murray St (at W Broadway)
New York, NY 10007

Star Pizza: "Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, be better off than you are? Or would you rather be a mule?"

2011-06-01T20:06:00.001-04:00

Star Pizza sucks, there's not much more to it. Delizia Pizza or whatever the place the new plastic on the awning is obviously covering up probably sucked too. Most of the pizza sucks. So do most things! That's just the way the world is. Everything stinks, nothing rules. Blockhead Skateboards really summed up the general state of the world when they made that Nothing Is Cool skateboard. The world basically sucks, and you can really only hope to have more hopeful days, than others, but not today. Every so often enough things collide that it's just impossible not to be bummed about your friends' self destructive behavior, your city letting rapist cops walk, your country falling further and further into a total cultural void. Maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but when I think about my experience at Star Pizza, it makes everything seem even more dour, dire and grim.

Jon the reporter described the texture of this cheese as forming "tiny globules" in his mouth, and he couldn't be more right on. This slice had nothing going right for it. The cheese wasn't undercooked, it just wasn't made of cheese. If it was like, soy cheese or daiya I'd STILL be disappointed in its texture. The sauce tasted like someone bought the cheapest tomato paste at the dollar store and just slopped in on the dough, and the dough tasted like Spread. You know that stuff in the big giant tub at the supermarket that isn't butter or margarine, it's just called Spread, and it's made of chemicals that like, make you grow extra limbs and have mutant kids or like, grow a GIANT BONER like in Class of Nuke 'Em High. Total sick stuff. There is a general lack of compassion in this pizza. This pizza does not care about you, it doesn't care about the people who make it, it doesn't care about itself. Maybe it's a sense of nihilism, a sense of giving up in the face of impending and awesome doom. Scientists know the sun is gonna implode in 3 billion years and take us all out, so who cares if we pollute, who cares if we let each other starve and fight and die, who cares if we serve shitty pizza. Fuck every single one of the quitters, that's what I say. We may all be on a sinking ship, but it's sinking slow and I'm not out of hope yet, despite this exhaustion I feel.

Rating:

Star Pizza - $2.75
26 Murray St (Broadway & Church)
New York, NY 10007

Little Italy Pizza: "I think this is the first place called Little Italy to serve a good slice!"

2011-05-27T18:46:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week I went pizza eating with my "friend" Phil Chapman. I have known Phil for years, and even worked for him for a short time, and I can say, with total abject honesty, that he is the closest to a real life Newman I have ever met. (Coincidentally, he is also the only person I know with a Seinfeld tattoo.) Phil is not a Newman in terms of his aesthetic appearance. In that regard he looks like any other dour, overly tattooed, aging punk rocker holding up any shitty bar in Portland, OR. Phil is a Newman in demeanor, in that he truly and greatly rejoices in the suffering of others.

Of course I'm speaking in jest, to some extent. Phil is my friend and he is very dear to me. If he were abducted by aliens and I was never able to see him again, I'd think of him with only slight disdain and perhaps even a touch of fondness every time I watched Seinfeld, listened to NYHC rap projects, or saw an old person fall down crossing the street. Phil is a true New York legend, and I am simultaneously envious and sympathetic of those who haven't had their lives touched by The Yenta of Thompkins Avenue.

We were also joined by a newspaper reporter! I wasn't sure what to expect from him, but when he showed up to meet us he looked just like George Tabb and was wearing an Avail t-shirt, so there goes, he is one of us.

Our first stop was Little Italy Pizza on Park Pl. I was pretty terrified, because thus far I have never gotten a good slice from a place called Little Italy. This place had little to no ambiance beyond basic Bustling Pizza Parlor vibes, but there was nothing especially offensive or lame about it. It was just sort of regular. Like any number of other pizzerias I've been to in my life. Formica tables, slightly greasy walls, a bunch of dirks eating their stupid lunch.

This slice was really pretty awesome, though! It could've been crisper, but it was hot enough and had great ratios. Perhaps it was a little too greasy and that is what led to the floppiness, but the flavors were so damn good I didn't mind too much and it seems like you could still eat it on the go. The sauce on this slice had a great consistency and actual dairy flavor, the dough tasted great and yeasty like awesome bakery bread, and the sauce was understated but delicious. A little crisper and this slice would've been perfect, but it was pretty damn good.

Rating:

Little Italy Pizza - $2.75
11 Park Pl (Church & Broadway)
New York, NY 10007

Cafe Amore's Restaurant: "When the smell hits your nose and you think the dead rose that's Amore"

2011-05-25T13:05:00.000-04:00

Cafe Amore is a small local chain with three restaurants that serves giant slice of shitty pizza. For a minute I was thinking it was the worst smelling pizzeria in the city, but I actually have a feeling another small local chain, Pastafina, might take that prize home. These places have even less character than the other small local chain, Abitino's, which is a total pretender and chock full of false authenticity, but they at least have some kind of interior design motif. Cafe Amore just has a shelf of decorative wine glasses.

"For display only"

Otherwise, there are pretty much bare walls and formica table tops. I don't know, I don't mind simplicity but this place is just dreary and so is the pizza.

This slice had nothing going for it. No personality. Aminah said it has "the lingering aftertaste of old people," which she admitted she "kind of liked." But Aminah likes disgusting things! Look at her art. She is intrigued by the sick side of life. And while I dabble in the disturbed, my intrigue with the occult doesn't extend to Hellishly Bad Pizza.

Notice the total lack of structural integrity on this slice. When folded the front flops forward like a huge flaccid dong, flopping around under it's weight at the whims of gravity. Looking at it from the front, it creates what I call The Grease Tunnel, and slightly resembles a quivering and trepidatious anus, poised to spray diarrhea everywhere after having received an enema at the hands of the Pretty Hate Machine himself, Trent Reznor.

Did I spoil your appetite? Does thinking about Trent Reznor giving a slice of pizza an enema and then the pizza shooting greasy, liquid shit all over Marilyn Manson make you feel anything but hungry? Good. Because I don't want you to associate Cafe Amore with food. I want you to associate with gross things, vile things. This is Pavlovian training. Stay away from this place!

Rating:

Cafe Amore Restaurant - $2.75
147 Chambers St (Hudson & West Broadway)
New York, NY 10007

Dona Bella Pizza: "HELLO!"

2011-05-23T12:56:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if this spot has been Dona Bella Pizza for long, but there has definitely been a pizzeria on this corner for as long as I can remember. I distinctly remember eating a couple slices here when I was a poser bike messenger as a teenager. I don't remember if they were any good, but the slice we got the other day definitely wasn't.

This slice was thin and greasy, though not too greasy, and these are both good things, but that is where the goodness ends. The closest textural approximation I can give you for biting into this pizza is that it felt like I was eating a King Cone. You know how when you eat one of those things, you can tell that once, the cone was a rigid and crunchy object, but since it sat in a freezer box full of ice cream for the past year it became, not soggy, but more like, formerly crunch, haunted by the specter of crunch. That is what this slice was like. The cheese was a decent quality, but the sauce had that weird shrimp flavor that bad sauce sometimes has. Aminah said, "I wouldn't recommend it, but I like it," and I tend to agree. Just like III L's, this is distinctly NOT good pizza, but I was totally okay with it.

Rating:

Dona Bella Pizza - $2.50
154 Church St (at Chambers)
New York, NY 10007

III L's Pizzeria: "I keep trying to think of three words that start with L and glibly summarize my experience with this place but I am having NO LUCK!"

2011-05-20T18:31:00.002-04:00

Recently I went pizza eating with my good friend Aminah Slor, who I have known since she was a teenage waste pissing her life away in Tompkins Square Park. She grew up from her humble Brooklyn roots to become one of the most talented artists and tattoo-appliers I have ever seen.

Some years ago, at the beginning of her career as a tattooist, she gave me this cool Ramones-related Salami on my thigh:

That was one of the first tattoos Aminah ever did and I am pretty sure I traded her like, a mostly full package of Samson tobacco for it. She also touched up my toes after I spilled drano on my foot and they rubbed off (DIY tattoo removal enthusiasts, take note: if you want to replace your tattoo with a weird, itchy, peeling rash, spill Drano on it and don't wash it off).

Probably two years ago she gave me this sweet Wolfman Jesus tattoo, also, which really documents how far she's come since the Salami Days and also how talented an artist she is:

Here is a drawing I gave Aminah as a sketch of what I wanted my tattoo to look like, and next to it is the drawing she made and tattooed on me. Seriously, this lady is the most talented.

I could make this post a million times longer about how awesome Aminah is, but I'll just leave it at that. She is a serious asset to the international community of freaks and weirdos and I am oftentimes so proud that she is my friend.

Our first stop was III L's Pizzeria, which is on Broadway near the Federal Building. They have a crazy x-ray system to get in there (the Federal Building, not the pizza parlor) like they have at court and once when I went there to pick up a child I know from the daycare center in the ground floor of the building I almost got arrested because I had all these knives and boxcutters on me! Luckily I noticed the x-ray devices and stashed my supplies for cuttin' you in the bushes outside. They still didn't believe that someone would trust me with a child, but eventually they let me pick him up when I showed them they'd had my ID on file for months as the kid's emergency contact! Anti-Punk discrimination on the part of the federal government is a serious problem that I hope President Barrett Orbalmo will work hard to alleviate. Ugh.

Sorry, I get easily distracted. Anyway, III L's was a grimy place full of grimy teens and it had great style! The employees were all wearing matching uniforms, but they all had like, Bone Thugs corn rows and cursive neck tattoos and looked hella rugged even though they were wearing goofy uniforms. There was no where to sit, so we took our slice out the door and sat outside the Fed Building, where we were met by my friend and current roommate Sean Monaghan, famous San Francisco punk rock style icon and general all around decent dude. And he joined us in reviewing this slice.

First thing to notice about this slice is that it kind of looks like pizza from a roller rink. And that's what it tastes like! Sean took a bite and said, "woah, it's totally mushy!" and Aminah was like, "yeah, but I like this rubbery texture sometimes." And I agree with her. This slice had a lot of Elio's Action going on, and as you all may know, while I admit that shit is definitely Objectively Bad, I totally unabashedly love it. It's like how my favorite song in the whole world is honestly and truly Girls Dem Sugar by Beenie Man and Mya. Or like how I love watching Law & Order: SVU!

Anyway, according to Aminah, "this is better pizza than you can get anywhere in Oakland," which is not saying much, but it's certainly saying something. Sean said this slice felt like it was made of chapstick, which is gross, but we all agreed the crust was good. It wasn't like BANGIN, but it was good. Overall I was satisfied by this slice, but it definitely was not good pizza.

Rating:

III L's Pizzeria - $2.25

315 Broadway (Duane & Thomas)

New York, NY 10007

Saluggi's Pizza: "No thanks!"

2011-05-19T02:35:00.001-04:00

I didn't take any notes on this place because it made me mad. Fucking stuffy. Come here for lunch from your office job or whatever it is YOU PEOPLE do. But count me out, maaaan. I don't want no part in this charade you call society. Real talk: Alex, Greg and I felt really uncomfortable standing there waiting for our slice and definitely didn't feel comfortable staying.

This pizza wasn't very good at all, totally grasping at some kind of high brow that it didn't quite pull off. The cheese was lumpy, the dough was crisp but too rigid, the sauce was mediocre at best. Fuck it. I'm not wasting any more energy on this place, don't waste any of yours.

Rating:

Saluggi's - $3.00
325 Church St. (Lispenard & Canal)
New York, NY 10013

Luna Pizza: "Worst NYC Disasters by Century: 1668 - First Yellow Fever Outbreak; 1776 - Approx. 1/4 of City Burned to Ground; 1832 - Cholera Pandemic; 1977 - Blackout and Ensuing Riots; 2011 - This Slice of Pizza."

2011-05-16T19:45:00.001-04:00

. Make sure and get your hazmat suit on before coming to Luna Pizza, because this slice is a mess! The place itself is charming and I REALLY wanted to like it. It's got a real family vibe, not that it's like A Family Restaurant (which I guess it kind of seems to be), but like it's run by people who are related to each other. I got the distinct impression that the guy who sold me my slice was the lady who rang me up's nephew. But the slice! The slice should be declared a superfund site.

This slice was forged in the molten center of the Earth! It looks like that one Dick Tracy villain with the melty face. Or like a Charles Burns drawing. And when I picked it up it totally fell apart!

Check out the aftermath of that precarious lift:

A slice of pizza should not do that! Greg said "tastes exactly like the Pizza In A Cup I used to make at the Pickle Barrel," a grease pit Greg used to cook at in Chattanooga, TN. I feel like they should've just put the sauce and cheese into a bowl and like, given me a piece of toast to dip into it. That would've been more functional and it would've had the same effect. The grease to cheese ratio on this slice was an exact 1:1 when it should be like, 1:50. And the sauce tasted like it would've been better suited for a seafood pasta dish, which wasn't necessarily the worst thing, but with all the other distressing elements just contributed to the ultimate sense of disappointment we all felt about this slice. The crust was fucking awesome, though.

Rating:

This slice coulda been like a 6 if I had been able to lift it up. Step your game up Luna!

Luna Pizza - $2.50
225 Park Row (at Worth)
New York, NY 10038

Multi Tastes Diner: "This will mostly be photographs."

2011-05-07T18:41:00.000-04:00

Multi Tastes Diner is my new favorite place on Earth! It is a veritable heaven for the eclectic palate and a miserable hell for the indecisive. There are like, four or five hundred items on the menu! Pizza is item #320 and is $2.00, but there is also roti, oxtail, prawns and chicken szechuan style, burgers, chicken fingers, milkshakes, veal milanese, crab cakes, Alizé... fucking ALIZE. Let's drink some Alizé and eat some spring rolls and a beef wellington. FUUUCK! And they have a fishtank. And the place is full of fucking WEIRDOS!

The pizza was nothing special. There was this strange like, asteroid belt of weirdness in between the cheese and that crust that was "distinctly neither crust nor pizza," as Alex astutely observed. I said it made me think of the desert planet Arrakis in the Dune Novels, but Greg and Alex didn't have any idea what I was talking about because I guess sci-fi novels are not punk enough for them or something. I'm gonna go back and rewrite Dune and give all the characters dread mullets and denim vests and make it take place in Minneapolis and then maybe they'll pay attention!

Anyway, like many of my reviews of awesome shitholes, I say come here definitely, but don't bother with the pizza. My guess is that the chinese food is probably the best, then the diner shit, then everything else. Either way, it's worth a stop if you are a connoisseur of strange places.

Rating:

Multi Tastes Diner - $2.00
23 St James Pl (at Madison)
New York, NY 10038

And I may as well mention, Slice Harvester will be taking a short break next week, because I am going to Miami to meet my girlfriend's family and not care about the NBA playoffs. Wish me luck! Updates will return on Monday the 16th. Thanks for you patience, dogs.

Gino's Pizza: "One small bite for man, one great belch for mankind."

2011-05-05T18:03:00.000-04:00

Gino's Pizza is in this totally weird half-basement on a strip of stores that are all in totally weird half-basements. Because of this, all the awnings on this block of Catherine St seem really low, and walking to Gino's, Greg, Alex and I felt like giants, which was cool! If you are short and don't like it, walk around on this block for a bit and you'll feel huge! (Or 'yuge' as my father would say!) And if you decide to stop in for a bite at Gino's, which I wouldn't recommend but I also wouldn't necessarily advise against, you will notice the saddest pizza counter in all of New York City.

Luckily, as the sign said, that crummy assortment of "food" is actually all just "sample's" and it's not for sale. They apparently keep the real pizza, which is regular size despite what that tiny, solitary frisbee of a pie might lead you to believe, underneath the counter for some reason.

I showed this slice to Greg and Alex and asked them to tell me the first word that comes when looking at it. Alex was silent for a while, and then finally told me, "it's less of a word and more of a general uneasiness." Greg said, "it sort of reminds me of the surface of the moon." And this slice is somewhat terrifying and alien. The taste of this slice is defined more by an absence of flavor than any defining characteristic. It tastes like a lack. This is that mysterious substance known as anti-pizza. And it extended everywhere. The bulk of the slice had a slightly unpleasant sweetness and then NOTHING. The crust was all texture and no flavor. There was an overall frozen quality to this slice that wasn't altogether unpleasant. In fact, we all kind of liked it. At one point I took a bite and muttered, "at least it's inoffensive." And Alex replied, "yeah, I mean, I'm not mad." But it wasn't good either. It was just nothing.

Rating:

Gino's Pizza - $2.00
81 Catherine St (Moore & Cherry)
New York, NY 10038

Frank & Tommy Pizza & Restaurant: "I am into it because I love hot dogs!"

2011-05-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

I recently had the pleasure, (and what a pleasure it was!), of eating pizza with my friends Greg Harvester and Alex Turner, who were in town with Greg's awesome band Neon Piss for a couple of days. If you like dark, weird, super urgent punk songs that kind of remind you of everything rad about 81 hardcore and the Wipers at the same time, do yourself a favor and follow that link. 'Bullet in the Back' is my jam, dogs. Alex is a really rad guy who I have partied with on the left side, the right side and the dead center of the country. I don't know him super well but he always seems to be travelling with people I really love, and it's a real pleasure every time I unexpectedly run into him. Greg Harvester used to be in a band called Rice Harvester, and did a zine of the same name. He is also inadvertently responsible for the name of this here website. A few years ago, I had just got home early from travelling and my apartment was still sublet. I had nothing to do nowhere to go-oh, and I ended up in this crummy hallway with a ton of people I know waiting for Greg's band Black Rainbow to play a show, when Greg came out a drew a picture of a little dude on the wall wearing a hat like Raiden from Mortal Kombat, and wrote "Rice Harvester" beneath it. As soon as he left, I took out a sharpie and drew a dollar sign on the dude's shirt and added a P, transforming the text into "Price Harvester." Soon everyone hanging out was making mock versions of Greg's tag, there was a crusty picking at a friend's dreads that said, "Lice Harvester," a picture of Jesus leading peope to heaven that said "Christ, Harbinger," and then my pal Mike Leslie drew one that was almost identical to Greg's, except instead of the rice paper hat, the little dude was wearing an upside down piece of pizza on his head and he wrote "Slice Harvester" and like a week later I stole the name for my website! Since then me and Greg have shared a handful of pretend-litigious emails, because he is fake suing me, but I don't think we've seen each other face to face in almost two years, so it was really nice to have him come out and eat pizza with me because in a lot of ways he is like, this project's Uncle or something.

Our first stop, after walking through Police Plaza and feeling like we were in a dystopian future sci-fi movie, was Frank & Tommy Pizza & Restaurant, a nice greasy little hole in the wall on Madison St. It was filled with totally grimy people and there were tons of folks hanging out not eating anything, just lurkin' and starin', and the whole place smelled like hot dogs, which bummed out Alex and Greg because they are vegetarians, but I was into it because I love hot dogs. Buh buh buh buh buh buh buh.

This slice didn't look like anything too great but it was totally good! Here's the what-what (as opposed to the what? what? what? what? what? what? wha-what?!, which is here): This slice had good cheese, dare I say, great cheese. It tasted like actually dairy as opposed to dairy-ish substance. The sauce was nondescript and understated in a really good way, and it had an excellent crunch. There was a visible layer of totally raw dough at the top of the slice that seemed thicker than it should've been, but I didn't taste it or feel it in my mouth. All told, this slice was quite alright! It wasn't super mindblowing never have another slice again AWESOME, but it was good and solid and I will eat here on other occasions if I ever find myself in this neighborhood.

Rating:

Frank & Tommy Pizza & Restaurant - $2.25
205 Madison St (at Essex)
New York, NY 10002

Little Italy Pizza & Deli: "There but for the grace of God, go I."

2011-04-29T17:44:00.000-04:00

Little Italy Pizzeria & Deli probably doesn't actually count for Slice Harvester, as it is clearly a Pizza Deli and I definitely don't really go to those. But shit man, by the time we got here me and Morbles had only eaten two out of 8 slices because every other place was either some fancy brick oven sit down joint, or had been closed and turned into a manicure shop. What was I supposed to do? We had to eat here.

This slice was exactly what you'd expect. Too thin, kinda floppy, and the sauce tasted like either metal or chemicals. Kevin liked it okay, but he is from either Kansas or Missouri so what the hell does he know about pizza? The metallic/chemical flavor was slight, but it was still there, and it was unsettling. I think maybe this slice gave me botchulism? I don't know, man. The crust was alright but this slice sorta stunk.

Rating:

Little Italy Pizzeria & Deli - $2.75
183 Varick (King & Charlton)
New York, NY 10014

Famous Ben's Pizza of Soho: "This is good pizza, but you probably already know that."

2011-04-27T18:56:00.001-04:00

Ben's Pizza has always been good. I ate here for the first time a bunch of years ago when I used to be a nanny for this awesome kid Cassius. We were heading home from the Thompson Street pool and I stopped in for a slice and gave him a few bites. He was 11 months old and I think it was his first time ever eating pizza, which was definitely one of the high points of being a nanny. I also gave him his first Gabilla's knish from a street vendor by City Hall. Plus one time, I was walking him around in a baby backpack by St Marks Place and I ran into my high school girlfriend, who was this totally older goth lady who I thought was my One True Love for like 3 months until she dumped me a few days before September 11th! She was all, "oh, Colin, who's this?" and it was kind of implicit that she thought he was my kid.
So I was like, "this is Cassius."
And she was all, "he doesn't look like you."
And real quick I just blurted out, "well, he looks like his mother," which wasn't a lie, but it definitely perpetuated the notion that this beautiful child was my progeny, a mistruth that I was eager to nurture for totally silly, but probably obvious reasons.

Anyway, this place. It's always swarmed with people because it's kind of reknowned for having a great NY style slice. I read a couple of reviews on the internet because I was curious what the general impression of this place was, and people pretty much universally decried what they considered bad service, which is BANANAS to me. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I think it must be all tourists or folks from some fantasy land, because the people in here have always been curt and cordial with me, at least until last week with Kevin Morby, when the woman at the register was exceptionally chatty and super friendly!

This slice was fresh out the oven and soooooo messy, but I totally great. I did this really amatuerish thing where I picked it up before giving the cheese an opportunity to solidify and all just sort of slid off the crust. Kevin Morby said "IT'S LIKE A FUCKING CHEESE LANDSLIDE!" and then sung that Smashing Pumpkins song Landslide while I videotaped the cheese dripping off. (Okay, seriously, that video of little kids singing makes me cry every time I listen to it. The one kid at like 50 seconds in with the grey shirt and very earnest eyebrows just feeling it so hard just fucking TUGS at my heartstring.)

Rating
Anyway, drips aside, this slice was totally rad. Excellent quality everything, skillfully assembled, you can taste the love and pizza-making experience in every bite. This is a totally solid slice.

Rating:

Would've been a full 7, but there was a half-slice deduction because this thing should not have cost $3.00.

Ben's Pizza - $3.00
177 Spring Street (Thompson & West Broadway)
New York, NY 10012

Rosetti's Pizza: "This place is AWESOME!"

2011-04-25T19:20:00.000-04:00

I love Kevin Morby. He is a great dude. A few years ago he walked up to me at a party and just started talking to me. I was kind of bummed because I was in the middle of a conversation with a Cool Older Punk who I was really excited wanted to be friends with me. Kevin was really persistent about hanging out and we made plans to meet up later in the week. He came to my neighborhood and I made him come grocery shopping with me. He also briefly played second guitar in a band I used to be in and that shit was fun and he is a good guy and blah blah blah. Sometimes people's projects get popular and you feel resentful because they are a dickhead, or you feel like they are total sellouts, but when I started seeing Kevin's pictures in the paper and stuff, I was not only unsurprised, I also just felt really happy and like maybe we live in a just world after all. Does that make sense?

Anyway, my buddy had been on tour for a really long time and we hadn't seen each other in ages when we met up in Soho to slam a bunch of pizza. Sadly, the first like, three or four pizza shops we stopped at were either shuttered or fancy, sit-down establishments that don't count for Slice Harvester. Our first stop was Rosetti's Pizza, on 6th Ave at Watts St.

Rosetti's was like, a total sleeper slice. I don't know, maybe other people know something I don't and have been singing this place's praises for eons, but I've never even heard of it before and it was GOOD! I am getting really hungry thinking about it and I just ate a brisket sandwich like, 5 minutes ago from my mom's Passover leftovers so it's not even like I'm super hungry or nothing. When we were waiting for our slice, the pizza man realized he had burnt some other guys pizza by accident, and instead of blustering and being a dick about it, he offered the guy a new slice. AND THE GUY DECLINED! It was like a contest watching these people try and be more polite and demure to each other.

This slice was really good. It was really thin, but it was super wide, and the ratios were in perfect accordance with the thin base. The sauce was totally delicious and the cheese was spot on. This is what every slice should be like, although sadly most slices don't come anywhere near this level of awesomeness. I bet you in the comments some putz is gonna be like, "waaaah this is just regular pizza what's so special about it?!!!???!?!" but that person is an idiot. Slice Harvester is about cataloging the huge spectrum of oral, olfactory and emotional experiences that can be garnered in the simple act of sharing a slice of pizza with a friend. So get with it or get out! This slice was delicious. Whether or not it stands up to the test of time we will find out during the ULTIMATE SLICE ELIMINATION ROUND that will happen at the end of all this, but for now as the mayor of Slice Harvester I declare this pizza to be... awesome.

Rating:

Rosetti's Pizza - $2.50
114 6th Ave (at Watts)
New York, NY 10013

Pizza Shack: "Looks Can Be Deceiving."

2011-04-20T18:32:00.002-04:00

Someone teach T-Bone synths or something so Scum Witch can be a reality.

Pizza Shack seemed like it was gonna be a disaster. The aesthetic of the place is a little too clean and new looking for the neighborhood, especially after all the Picturesque Shitholes we'd been eating at all afternoon. And as soon as we opened the door, the smell of huge quantities of melted butter wafted out at us and almost knocked me down. It is one smell I truly despise, and it was OVERWHELMING.

But my nose eventually adjusted and I realized that the owner was chatting with a couple of people from the neighborhood who seemed like regulars, which took the store's hoity-toity airs down a notch towards Earth. And my real concern when I saw how nice the place looked inside was for my wallet, but let me tell you, this slice was still only $2.00.

This slice was really good! This slice had really good ratios, a nice crunch and plenty of grease. The flavors were good, and you can tell that a lot of care goes into each pie here. This is not just a business, these people seem to love pizza. I personally found this slice to be a little too sweet for my tastes, but not in a synthetic seeming way. This was a deliberate decision and these people just like their pizza a little sweeter than I do. but that didn't make it any less good.

One final thing to mention about this pizza is that it was INCREDIBLY hot, which you will absolutely love if you are my mother or late grandmother.

You know, if you fold a slice in the dead of winter, steam will rise up from the cheese. Indians believed it was the soul, ascending to the Great Pizzaola before the slice is eaten.

Rating:

Pizza Shack - $2.00
525 Grand St (East Broadway & Henry)
New York, NY 10002

A-1 Pizza Shop: "The future is NOW!"

2011-04-19T19:44:00.000-04:00

A-1 Pizza Shop looks like a Crown Fried Chicken on the inside. There is one of those walls of Value Meal specials like they have in any fried food store, and it looks like typical fried food store fare. Popcorn Shrimp, Cheeseburger Meal, Fried Chicken, all that shit. They also have this weird little computer station where you can put in a dollar and use the internet for 12 minutes and it looks like something out of Neuromancer.

It has a functional printer next to it, so while we were waiting for our slice I paid a buck and searched the internet for a picture to summarize how I felt about my day out eating pizza with Meredith, T-Bone and Logan.

The workstation has a complimentary printer, so I printed out four copies and handed them to everyone. T-Bone was really bummed out to be holding a picture of a cute fairy because he is a heavy metal warrior. I should've probably used Microsoft Paint to make her into a vampire or something for him. Meredith was happy though.

And that was that! I was so excited about paying a dollar to use a computer inside a fried food store that I forgot we even had any pizza coming. When our slice finally came I was so busy looking up Juggalo Courtship Imagery to print out and give my girlfriend that I didn't even notice.

This slice was pretty alright, especially coming from a fried food store! It had a wildly inconsistent dough-thickness, which was weird and sort of funny. When I took the first bite, I exclaimed, "this is the thinnest thing I have ever put in my mouth!" But as we progressed along the damn thing, it briefly became the perfect thickness towards the middle and then was too thick by the end! You know how the past couple of years Autumn and Spring are only like a week long before Summer or Winter take over and make things unbearable again but that week is SO PERFECT even though you know it isn't gonna last? It was like that. The cheese and sauce were way decenter than I expected, and aside from the variable thickness, this slice had good enough ratios. The crust was crunchy, although the slice as a whole seemed slightly undercooked. Ultimately, this slice was satisfying and it's flaws, though present and tangible, were altogether inoffensive. It lives in the land of total and utter mediocrity, where the mayor is Michael Dukakis and the Bay City Rollers play a show every night.

Rating:

A-1 Pizza Shop - $2.00
505 Grand St (East Broadway & Henry)
New York, NY 10002

Va Bene Pizza: "Very not okay."

2011-04-14T12:00:00.000-04:00

Va Bene Pizza sucks! But they were listening to freestyle.fm on the radio, which is one of those stations that only sounds cool in a pizza parlor. I was really pumped on the music when we were in here, and asked them what station it was. Since last week I have tried to listen to it at home a dozen times and it never sounds any good. This place also has crazy colored walls that made all of our heads hurt.

Seriously. Meredith walked in this place, and was like, " one of the first things I learned in high school science class was that when you combine certain colors it has adverse effects on the brain. Bright green and bright red like this is like, the biggest one. This color combination gives people headaches!"

This slice was bad. There wasn't enough sauce, and it tasted fucking GROSS. At first there was seemingly no grease at all, but then suddenly the grease was running down my face and hands in torrents, like an old faithful of fattening liquid. The dough tasted like white bread. Logan said, "there's kind of a pastry thing going on." All in all, this slice was pretty crummy. Still pizza, but crummy. I wish it was good because the guys in here were sweet as anything and like I said, the music was great.

Rating:

Va Bene Pizza - $2.00
201 Clinton St (East Broadway and Henry)
New York, NY 10002

Shalom Chai PIzza: " A shtick natches!"

2011-04-13T10:23:00.003-04:00

Shalom Chai Pizza is a truly wonderful place, but before we get there, let's zoom in on my friends for a minute because this picture is too awesome.

I wish they were in a band together so that this could be the awesome band photo. Best proposed band name wins a copy of the new issue of Slice Harvester Quarterly.

Anyway, Shalom Chai is as awesome on the inside as it is on the outside. This place was boisterous! Like just real loud. There was a pretty diverse crowd in there for a kosher place, including one dude who screamed out everyone's name but ours as they came in. Hopefully at some point this dude is gonna know my name. There was also a table of old dudes with no food who just sat there shit talking for fucking ever! It was so awesome. And the pizza, the pizza was easily the best kosher slice I've ever had.

This slice had great ratios, although according to Meredith, it was "floppier than I would've expected for how crispy it looks," which was true, but all in all, it had a really good texture for a kosher pizza. The cheese didn't taste nasty like many kosher slices of the past, and the crust was pretty good! T-Bone really liked this slice and continued to talk about it all day.

While I was ordering the slice, I noticed something interesting on the chalkboard by the register.

That's right! Pizza Knish! I was intrigued, so I got one, and we ate it! I will eat any food that is advertised as Pizza _______. Give me Pizza Vindaloo, Pizza Sushi, Pizza Pudding. I will try eating it once. And so it was with this Pizza Knish.

This thing was weirdly awesome although not so great. It wasn't hot enough, so the cheese didn't melt all the way, and sauce was the same, kinda nasty paste from the slice. And there wasn't really enough of either. I would probably eat this again, though. Logan said this was "definitely date food," and I can totally see his point. This whole place is awesome. It is so cool to hang out in, they have all those cool animals outside, you can walk over a bridge either before or after. It's a perfect date spot! But the pizza stinks. So does the knish, but at least it's got enough novelty value to be fun to eat.

Rating:

Kosher Scale:

Shalom Chai Pizza - $2.75 (Knish, $3.75)
359 Grand St (Essex & Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002

Vic's Pizza: "We are entering the city's Picture Perfect Pizza Parlor district."

2011-04-12T10:16:00.001-04:00

Last week I went out eating pizza with my friends Meredith, who is a famous pizza pal, T-Bone, the singer of a notorious local band, and my friend Logan a true American weirdo who I have met over and over again all over the country.

Our first stop was Vic's Pizza on Essex. It's not too much to look at from the outside, but once you get in there's great music playing and a bevy of wonderful hand drawn signs.

There was also a Ms Pacman machine that T-Bone was quick to play.

This place is totally adorable and I'd want to be here for hours if the food was any good! Sadly, the pizza was a fucking bummer.

This base of this slice was the texture of cardboard. It seemed like that might be its only flaw for the first few seconds of the first bite, but then the flavor of the sauce set in. It was like, this slow motion ketchup tidal wave in my mouth. The time it took to set in makes me think of that Heinz commercial with Joey from Friends where he pours the ketchup off the tenement roof and then winks at a babe after he catches it on his hotdog. Except instead of a hotdog stand on that sidewalk imagine you, laying prone on the ground, bound by your wrists and ankles as if to some kind of medieval torture device and then the ketchup just falls all over your face like water torture. Ugh. The crust was flavorless. The ratios were all wrong. T-Bone was busy playing Ms. Pacman, but he walked over at one point, took a bite and said, "too soft and gooey inside. Not very tasty. I don't like it."

Rating:

Vic's Pizza - $2.25
51 Essex St (Grand & Hester)
New York, NY 10002

Contributor Comix Friday!

2011-04-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

I had planned to write a review today during the slow early evening hours at the diner, but I left my pizza journal at home. However, I present to you instead, a comic, by my good friend and fellow pizza lover, Gabby Schulz, known to some by his nomme de plume, Ken Dahl. Gabby makes awesome comics and writes wry, social commentary on his website. He has a few books out and one of my favorite twitter feeds.

I asked him to draw a comic for the most recent issue of Slice Harvester Quarterly (ordering instructions here), and he threw this together for me in like, 5 minutes, which is super amazing to me because I can't draw very well.

If you're somehow unfamiliar with the ubiquitous Shoddily Modified Spice Shaker, it is discussed in depth here.

Reviews will be back on Monday. Until then, go read about why the world is a shitty, unforgiving place on Gabby's blog.

Rudy's Pizza & Restaurant: "Don't you be so cruel and feckless."

2011-04-07T12:41:00.000-04:00

Rudy's Pizza & Restaurant is a nice looking place, don't get me wrong, and the staff are nice, but it is a total poser tourist trap. Maybe maybe maybe maybe MAYBE the pastas and stuff are good, but the pizza here is bogus and for some reason, even though the slice ended up being $2.50, I just felt like I was about to get ripped off. Like when you visit another country and you go to a restaurant that looks like it's cute and cheap and then it turns out that it's expensive and not very good and then you realize it doesn't even look cute and cheap and then you feel like a dickhead. Not that this place WAS that, it just reminded me of that.

I shouldn't have to say much about this slice if you are looking at the same picture as me. It was so hot it burned my mouth but the cheese still hadn't melted all the way, which means it is made of some foreign substance other than dairy. It was totally bland and WAY too salty at the same time. The sauce was like, this dry, flavorless paste and there was no grease to speak of so I felt like I was eating the desert. The crust was doughy and disgusting. This shit was just no good. Don't bother.

Rating:

Rudy's Pizza & Restaurant - $2.50
174 Hester St (Mott & Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012

Sal's Pizza Pasta Cafe: "I don't know how I feel about this place, but the pizza is good."

2011-04-06T02:02:00.001-04:00

Sal's Pizza Pasta Cafe has a great looking exterior. It's really a beautiful place, and you can tell there is a lot of love and devotion here. And a lot of care. Upon walking inside, the place is warm and homey. It feels good in there, and it feels like the people care. Then me and Martin noticed this newspaper clipping pasted to the wall:

It's an article about famous national villain George W Bush visiting New York City in the wake of September 11th, and it contains the following circled portion:

Among those who strongly felt Bush ought to come back to New York more regularly were the owners of Sal's pizza shop on Broome Street, which prepared the firehouse luncheon.

"If he came back a couple more times it would do wonders for the city," said Pete Arnone, a relative of the owners and the guy who keeps the books at Sal's. "His presence is saying, 'It's safe. We need to stimulate business.' If he starts coming back then a lot of other people will start coming back."

Business at Sal's, which dropped 70 percent in the week after the attacks, was back to its normal level yesterday, Arnone said.

The man who made the five presidential pizzas yesterday was Francesco Triolo. "An FBI agent was watching me the whole time I was doing it," he said, still beaming with pride later in the day. "He was a very nice guy, but he didn't let his eyes off for a minute. It was the first time I made pizzas under surveillance."

And then we looked around and noticed that the same article was photocopied and posted over every single table!

I don't really like that too much, to be honest. When I think of George Bush and pizza, I prefer the guy who ran into a pizza place and called him a "murderous, Zionist piece of shit," a few years ago. (Presuming, of course, that that guy wasn't an anti-Semite. Not that everyone who thinks a Zionist political stance is problematic is anti-Semitic, but the lines are blurry enough that I felt the need to disclaim.) There is something that totally unsettled me and made me feel a little bit like I was supping with the enemy or whatever.

But then I was just like, "you know, fuck it." Like, the other day I noticed a sign at my mailbox place that said, "TEA: TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY" and that shit is patently stupid, but I'm not gonna stop getting my mail there and I'm not going to stop thinking that the couple who run the place are nice people just because they disagree with me. I think this is an easy thing that most people grasp when they are really young, that you can disagree with people about something but they can still be okay people. But I have been REALLY PUNK for a long time, and as many people know, punx are a small and insular culture who are wary of outsiders, which is why so many of them feel comfortable living in Hassidic neighborhoods.

I can say with 100% honesty, that growing up in the punk scene and investing my whole self in it, at the expense of everything else in my life, at a very young age, netted me so many positive experiences, a loving and supportive community, and a self of self-assurance in my abilities that many people I know who didn't come out of punk rock lack. That shit is awesome! I think it also led me to make a ton of really poor decisions and to believe in a bunch of total crap because it seemed cool. Remember CrimethINC? That shit is fucked on so many levels!

Ugh, anyway, I guess my point is that even though this place had newspaper articles that mentioned GW Bush in it, it didn't bother me that much, even though I felt like it should bother me. Whatever, maybe I will elaborate on this another time, it's late.

This slice had the same audible crunch of Ray's, without any of the disappointment. They use quality ingredients here at Sal's, and they know how to make a good slice. Apparently this place has been here under the same ownership since the late 70s, so maybe they still make pizza with care and skill like they used to. There was plenty of grease and great ratios. The bottom had this burnt flavor that requires the most delicate skill to achieve and the crust tasted delicious and had an excellent texture. All in all, despite my possible political indignation, this was a great slice and maybe the last decent pizzeria in Little Italy.

Rating:

Sal's - $2.50
369 Broome St (Elizabeth & Mott)
New York, NY 10012

Pomodoro Restaurant & Pizzeria: "Glory days, ain't comin' back."

2011-04-04T22:21:00.002-04:00

Pomodoro Restaurant & Pizzeria is a worthless shithole. Walking into this place is like walking into some shitty college sports bar in New Brunswick, NJ. Sometimes when you play a show in New Brunswick they take you to these places to eat before the show and you are surrounded by like, The Rape Culture in the form of the kind of frat guys that Dead Milkmen/Dead Kennedys songs are about. And you start wondering what the hell they are thinking living in this shit city. But then the show happens and New Brunswick is like, the most fun place in the Northeast to play a basement show besides Worcester and you realize that the price you have to to have these houses and excited kids and fun shows is that you have to live in the epicenter of the Patriarchy. And then you start thinking that maybe there's a thing about awesome punk scenes can only happen when they are an antagonist to like, some dominant shitty culture. Which is the root of the ultimately flawed and unsustainable nature of punk as a utopian culture. Because like, there is this thing that happens when there isn't a shitty college frat culture or like, lame rednecks or an oppressive police force where punk scenes turn into garage rock scenes, which are just punk scenes with none of the good politics. Whatever, this place was a bummer, do you get that?

This slice had a good crunch and that's it. The sauce tasted like Elio's. The cheese was crap. There was no grease. The slice wasn't hot enough. The crust was bland. My notes say, "tastes gross. I'm disgusted." Martin said, "it seems kind of dusty." And he's right. This is like a ghost town in your mouth. There is a barren emptiness in the spectrum of flavors from this slice. Holy crap, what a waste of time.

Rating:

Pomodoro Restaurant & Pizzeria - $2.85
51 Spring St (Mulberry & Lafayette)
New York, NY 10012

Ray's Pizza: "This is the actual original Ray's!"

2011-04-01T23:43:00.002-04:00

After the total disaster that was Lombardi's, me and Marty were ready for all of the worst possible outcomes of eating at another "historic pizza parlor." This time we were at Ray's Pizza, which is the oldest pizzeria bearing that moniker, and is also the most famous. So really, this place should be called Famous Original Ray's and the entire FOR chain should change their name to Nondescript Replicant Ray's.

This place is kind of dire. There is no music, which can be a good thing at times, but you can hear a certain amount of hopelessness in the clanking of metal and the slicing of pies. The employees looked bummed. Martin had this to say, "I could picture a nice hangover here. Like if you woke up in this neighborhood for some reason and came for a slice here. The desperation in the place could match the desperation in your body and mind."

This slice was pretty alright, though! When I folded it, it made a beautiful and discernible crunch. However, somehow despite the perfect auditory signifiers of this slice's texture, it was a little bit too chewy anyway. The sauce was really watery, but delicious, and the cheese was great quality even if there was a little too much of it. Despite these qualms, which were small, and which I only listed for the sake of full transparency, this was a good slice! What can I say? I'd eat here again.

Rating:

Ray's Pizza - $2.65
27 Prince St (Elizabeth & Mott)
New York, NY 10012

Lombardi's: "Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood"

2011-03-31T12:24:00.001-04:00

Last week I ate pizza with my esteemed friend Martin Munroe, older brother to my esteemed friend Rudi Munroe, younger brother to my esteemed friend Tanya Munroe, and pretend older brother or cool or cousin or something to me. The night before we were set to meet up, he texted me and said, "I'm really excited about this. Wanna dress up like it's a date?" I agreed and the next day I dicked around in my apartment reading bell hooks until too late, took a shower and then didn't have enough time to get a proper date outfit together, so I changed clothes 4 times and finally settled on black jeans, black t shirt, black leather jacket, black cap and black sneakers. I turned out to be way under-dressed for the weather. Martin got into the same train car as me going into the city. He was wearing a suit, and suddenly I felt like I was under-dressed for the weather and the occasion. He presented me with a Sam Cooke tape, and said, "This tape is unlistenable. Right now my tape deck is hooked up to my DVD player and I have to play CDs through there and there is a buzz that I can't seem to get rid of." He then produced two CDs from his bag, "But you can just remake the tape for yourself."

We got off the train and went to Lombardi's, which was the first pizzeria in America and is now an Applebee's. Maybe it's a TGIFriday's. It could even be a Chili's for all I know. One thing is for sure: Lombardi's is not the Ground Round. What am I trying to say in all this rambling? This in a nutshell: Lombardi's is a bummer tourist trap hell hole and if you want a decent pizza and a real New York experience go to John's or something instead. However if you want a polished and scrubbed "New York Experience" that is actually as close to a New York Experience as having a drink at the Coyote Ugly in the New York, New York Hotel in Las Vegas. What a bummer. They were playing an early Frank Sinatra record over the stereo system and Martin looked at me, looked around and remarked, "Sinatra sounds kind of corny right now, huh?" Which sort of says it all.

And this pizza was a bummer. The dough was good, but that's it. The sauce was too red and tasted like cans, the cheese was like lumps of flavorless plasticy rubber. And it was $15.50! What a rip! Ugh, I am getting mad just thinking about this bullshit. Fuck. Anyway, we took a couple of bites and both agreed that we could not possibly finish this thing. Martin seemed troubled and offered to go outside and pretend he got a really frantic phonecall and fake that we had to leave urgently. That seemed over complicated to me, so I just told the waitress I was having a crisis without leaving the table, and asked her to box up the remaining pizza. Martin was like, "BUT WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO WITH IT THEN?!" and I was all, "I don't know, we could give it to someone who looks hungry or something." And then we paid our exorbitant bill and left, totally unsatisfied. Martin carried the bag of leftover pizza around with him all afternoon and I think I even managed to ditch him with it when I left the city. He probably still has it.

UPDATE: Frequent contributor and general pizza knowitall Ron Wasserman left this informative little tidbit in the comments, but I felt like it should be present in the main review as well:

"Slice Harvester, you forgot to point out that this place has only a tangential relationship with the "first pizza place in America." The original Lombardi's closed down several decades ago. This one has only been open 10 or 15 years? Or maybe less.

The tangential relationship is that the owners perhaps are semi-distant relatives of the original Lombardi, or at least they say so. Who's really going to check! And of course, it is a given that they got absolutely no piazza making instruction from the late-great man."

Rating:

Lombardi's - $15.50
32 Spring St (Mott and Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012

Rocket Joe's Pizza: "It's lonely out in space on such a timeless slice."

2011-03-29T17:26:00.001-04:00

Rocket Joe's is a place I have deliberately avoided for so many years now that I have lost count. For a while I biked down Delancey almost every day going to work, and I would always pass this place and bemoan the fates of the poor fools that were suckered by their pretend 1950s awning and neon lights. How corny! How dare they?!

But the place isn't that bad! The pizzaman looked like a Polish Jason Newsted with a labrett piercing, and he was really nice. Something about him just screamed, "after I get out of work I am either going to work out listening to Godsmack or go to a Deftones concert" and that made me really happy!

This slice was surprisingly good. The cheese had a good cheese flavor, the crust had a good crunch and there was enough grease and salt. The sauce had a decent tomato tang but was a little sweeter than is ideal, and there was a little too much of it. This slice was kind of too wet. At times I felt like I was eating an enchilada. And the crust was good and crunchy, but there were sesame seeds on it! I am still so shocked when I see them that I don't know how to feel, although you all know how Slice Harvester feels about change or deviation from pizza conventions. But sometimes it takes a buddy to frame things in a way that makes me see their beauty, and so it was when Sam took a bite of the crust and said, "it's like all of a sudden I'm eating a bagel." I love bagels!

Rating:

Rocket Joe's - $2.00
61 Delancey St (Eldridge & Allen)
New York, NY 10002

Photos from the City Reliquary are in!

2011-03-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

Pictured above, me and my beautiful wife, Mrs. Cha Cha Harvester.

The folks at the City Reliquary posted some pictures on their blog from the other night! Take a look.

And here are the few that I took, or that were taken on my camera:

With Pa Harvester, husband to Ma Harvester and father to me. He is surprisingly proud of his disreputable progeny.

My Two Bills: Cashman and Scanga. Wonderful Men, the both of them.

Martin Munroe, my big brother from another mother.

More surrogate siblings: Danskin and Mr. Milo

Former/future boss and fast friend Eric The Red owner of Second Chance Saloon, patron to the arts.

Ciao Bella Pizzeria: "This place sucks!"

2011-03-24T20:28:00.001-04:00

Ciao Bella is a funny place. It's really cutesy on the inside in this way that is vaguely charming but simultaneously totally insipid. Kind of reminds me of spots in the West Village in the 90s when I would go visit my Aunt and Uncle on Hudson St. It's remarkably like Hell's Kitchen Pizza, actually, except Rev. Horton Heat runs this place instead of Rob Zombie. If you're unfamiliar with Rev Horton Heat, he is like an even worse Mike Ness. Anyway, think more Tiki Bar Hot Rod Convention and less Hot Topic Hot Rod Convention. I accidentally wrote "Hot Rob Convention" back there for one of those, but I think if someone actually hosted that contest, we'd have to just give the prize to a young Robert Zombie. What a babe he was!

This slice was nasty. Nyasty, even. Everyone was pretty excited for some reason. I don't know why, but it there was this air of expectation and hope, despite everything. Like when you've been stuck at the side of the highway for days trying to catch a ride somewhere but you're with someone you enjoy spending time with and sure, maybe you guys are fighting about cigarettes or something, and there's no rides and the cops have hassled you twice, but you know you're gonna make it to Kansas City in time to run into Black Rainbow on tour and see all your friends. That was the kind of hope we felt in this place, lord only knows why. And you know what this slice was like, this slice was like waking up that next day, after the day of hope against hope, and realizing that you're gonna have to spend your last money on a bus ticket because there are no rides EVER AGAIN and your friend is a worthless scumbag who would sell you out for a half pack of Top Menthol. This slice was tiny, tasted like corn syrup, and had the stingiest, practically nonexistent crust. It had a decent crunch, but that was ALL it had going for it. Maybe the cheese or dough tasted good, but all I could taste was the shitty saccharine sauce. Stay away from here.

Rating:

Ciao Bella Pizzeria - $2.45
125 Allen St (Delancey and Rivington)
New York, NY 10002

Famous Original Ray's: "ENOUGH ALREADY!"

2011-03-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

This FOR location is, fingers-crossed, the last Famous Original Ray's I will have to eat pizza at. And if that's the case, it would not be a sad day for me. I haven't had a very good run at these places. I've been to this one before. Usually I skip over it when I'm hungry on Houston and go to that Mediterranean place next door and get a falafel or a doner. Because I've never really like the pizza here!

This place on this day was feeling pretty promising. They were playing Hot 97 a little too loud, the kid working behind the counter looked like the red herring trouble making teenager in every Law & Order episode. I was ready to enjoy myself here, despite everything! But the pizza, like all other Famous Original Ray'ses, was on the better side of mediocre and boring.

This slice had the telltale signs of an FOR slice. There was sauce of such a synthetically bold and bright hue poking through the holes in the unmelted cheese-like substance they call mozzarella. The dough was a little too thick and was loafy and crummy. The taste was off--the sauce too sweet, the cheese bizarre. But the slice did have a decent crunch! And the crust was a lot less bland than most other FORs. Ultimately, I am not so fond of a slice like this, and nor were Scotty or his cousin Sam who met us here. But Sam insisted that this slice's shortcomings actually make it the perfect drunk pizza. Its flavors are too strong for the normal, sober palate, it's dough too thick and crappy. But to the drunk it is perhaps the perfect mix of heavy-handedness and bodily fulfillment. Like they said in those tootsie pop commercials, "the world may never know."

Rating:

Famous Original Ray's - $2.56
195 E Houston St (Ludlow & Orchard)
New York, NY 10002