Hipster Holocaust- Slice of Life

 

Hipster Holocaust Chapter Sixteen- Slice Of Life

Fat Louie sat in Nino’s pizzeria with a large Nonna pie in front of him. It was a favorite. With no tomato sauce. The acidity gave him agita. He liked the plain mozzarella and ricotta pie. With extra ricotta just the way his Nonna used to make it when he was growing up on Henry Street. He would come over to stay with his Nonna while his mother went to work. He loved spending time with his Nonna. It was his favorite childhood memory.

Not like his memories of his father. That cocksucker. He wasn’t home all that often. He was either whoring around or in the can. A low-level enforcer for the Gallo’s his father was always getting pinched because they would leave him holding the bag. Never anything more than a lowly wannabee, his father made him ashamed. He didn’t have the balls to move up. To do a hit and become a made guy. The best he could do was be the muscle in collecting the vig from the longshoremen that the gang preyed on in the neighborhood. He only got paid peanuts, and the family lived on his mother's meager paycheck as a maid for a rich family in the city.

Fat Louie was on his own. He had always been on his own.  His father hated him and batted him around until he was big enough to punch back. His mother must of loved him, but she was so exhausted all the time that she couldn’t muster the strength to care what he did. When his Nonna died, he was twelve, and he just didn’t give a shit no more. He made his life out on the streets. He wasn’t popular at Sacred Hearts, his grammar school. All the kids mocked his stained and wrinkled clothes. The nuns didn’t give a shit about him either. By 1968, most of the Cabrini Sisters had left the convent, and the new secular teachers didn’t give two shits. He dropped out in the seventh grade. You would think that the government would have known he was a truant, but he just slipped through the cracks.

Twenty Dollars an hour for fast food workers?

I see where Cali has passed a law to give a twenty dollar an hour minimum wage to fast food workers. We went to few fast-food joints to my chagrin but my brother-in-law was in charge so what can you do.

One was place called Tender Greens and it wasn't too bad. You picked a protein, salad and a vegetable and they make you a plate. They give you a stick with a number on it and you sit down and the runner brings you your food. There is no waiter per se. There were a lot of workers but I bet half of them get laid off if this law stays in force. 

I kept seeing pizza joints advertising "New York Pizza" so I decided to give one a shot.

Not quite Heaven!

For the past couple of months I have been teasing the wife about going to a concert. You see she bought tickets with her three best girlfriends from when she was a kid to go see an Eighties band. The Psychedelic Furs.

Now this was a big production. Two of the girls were traveling from the bowels of Jersey to Long Island so it was a four hour trip with traffic. We have been talking about it for months. You know where would they eat before because Lisa needs gluten free. Just recently they have been texting about being worried about being crushed in the crowd but I told them not to worry because all of the fans would have walkers that would get in the way. Also they should be sure to bring their Depends to throw up on the stage.

You see the fan base was pretty old. Just not as bad as the band.

So they get all tarted up to go in their best concert going garb. You haven't seen anything until you see four sixty year old women dressed like Madonna. They went off happily on their adventure. I was happy too.  I was going to be able to order a regular pizza  that was not gluten free and watch a Western. Just like the good old days. In fact I ordered a pizza, a calzone and some mozzarella sticks. Why not go for the hat trick.

The girls get to the venue and go for dinner. The Mexican Restaurant next door was very good and had some really good gluten free options. So they had a few pops and a plate of fajitas and they were primed and ready to go. They walk down the street to the theater and what do they find.

The Fucking Furs had cancelled the concert.

They were freaking out. They proceeded to bitch slapped the people at the venue Old School Brooklyn Style. When Lisa texted me I said that there was only one thing to do. Go to the bar. So they did.

The joint had this speak easy type club that they got comped to and their first drink free. They took over the joint and made the bartender play eighties music and dance. A bunch of thirty year old's joined in and danced and sung all the words. When the girls asked how they knew it they said that it was their Mom's favorite music. They had to hold Lisa back from slapping the shit out of them.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I was eating my pizza extravaganza. You know what? I had been talking about this for months and it wasn't really that good. I mean the calzone was subpar and the pizza nothing to write home about. It just wasn't The House of Pizza or Spumoni Gardens quality. So I sat home and listed to the lonely saxophone while the girls drank and cavorted. 

Everybody got home safe although they had nasty hangovers. I had the shits from the pizza. But at least we weren't like the Furs.

Some bands are tragically hip.

Some bands are tragically broken hip.

So they have to cancel a long anticipated concert.

The fuckers.

 

"pizza-making robots can have a hot pie at your door in 4 minutes"

Via Drudge:  While other pizzas — especially the bake-at-home kind you buy at the grocery store — are also made by machine, Zume is noteworthy because it makes fresh, customizable delivery pizza with high-quality ingredients, which it considers to be artisanal even though it is not made by hand. Zume co-founder Julia Collins already has Pepe and Giorgio, two robots, squirting pizza sauce onto the dough, and Marta, another robot, spreading the sauce. Bruno, a robotic arm, lifts the pizza into the oven. The dough is still made by humans. But now that Zume has the doughbot, as they’re calling it, it means that the only part of the pizza assembly process that requires a human touch is the toppings.

“Human beings are great at that step,” Collins said. “When we think of the end-of-arm tools that we would need to pick up a cherry tomato and then a nugget of sausage, it’s hard to find tools that manage that much variety. We don’t have any intention of limiting variety to serve the robots.”

With this technological upgrade, the company can now make and deliver 372 pizzas an hour. That efficiency comes from dramatically reimagining the way pizza can be delivered. Zume is the first company to reduce “dwell time” — a.k.a the 20 minutes your piping-hot pizza spends sliding around in the back of a Honda Accord. They have custom delivery trucks that can bake en route, so pizza will arrive fresh out of the oven. Through analyzing their customer data and using artificial intelligence, they’re also able to predict which pizzas will be popular in certain neighborhoods during certain times, so the truck can be preloaded and ready to serve.

“We’ve already guessed that you’ve wanted asparagus and ricotta pizza at 12:30,” Collins said.

It's all about the pizza!

So there are a lot of crazy theories flying around the internet and Reddit about the content and hidden meanings and symbolism of what has been released so far in the emails of Hillary Clinton, Huma and John Podesta. The most disgusting is of course the one regarding human trafficking and the sex trade specificly related to Jeffery Epstein and pedophile Island. The place where Bill Clinton went 20 times with sometimes leaving his Secret Service protection behind. Also Hillary went there about six or seven times as well.

Podesta has been the subject of speculation because of the "Spirit Cooking" involvement with Marina Abramovic who is the popularizer of this practice.  "Popularized by Marina Abramovic, Spirit Cooking is an occult practice used during sex cult rituals, as explained in the book “Spirit cooking with essential aphrodisiac recipes” by Abramovic." There is a post by Mike Cernovich which details this entire theory. 

"Hungry startup uses robots to grab slice of pizza"

"We're going to eliminate boring, repetitive, dangerous jobs, and we're going to free up people to do things that are higher value," said co-founder Alex Garden, a former Microsoft manager and president of mobile game maker Zynga Studios.

"We automate those repetitive tasks, so that we can spend more money on higher quality ingredients," said Julia Collins, Zume's CEO and cofounder. "There will always be a model here at Zume where robots and humans work together to create delicious food."

Charity Suzuki regularly uses the Zume mobile app to order pizza. She isn't bothered by the robot cooks.

"It's delicious. It's always hot and fresh when it comes," Suzuki said. "I can't tell the difference that it's made by a robot versus a human."

Pizza delivered in a box made of pizza...

from Vinnie's Pizzeria in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

What is this?

Woah!

View post on imgur.com

"Domino’s Pizza Delivery Man Stabs Customer"

KTLA5: Michael Charles Parker, 31, stabbed the 20-year-old customer around 11:35 p.m. Saturday in the 600 block of Mangrove Avenue, according to a Covina Police Department news release. The victim was stabbed in the neck and wrist areas during the altercation, which stemmed from the pizza’s late arrival, police said.

The customer tipped Parker about $3 — the pizza cost about $45 — and the delivery man stayed in the doorway, refusing to leave, Sgt. Gregg Peterson said. An argument then ensued, and escalated into a physical altercation that moved to the home’s driveway.

More Pizza Blogging....it's the Pizza Tour!

If you love pizza as much as I do you want to try all the different types and styles. One day last winter we went on the Pizza Tour and I have to say it was pretty great. I had low expectations because it was run by a very enthusiastic hipster named Scott Wiener but I to have to admit he knew his pizza. Even if he was a wiener.

We started at Lombardi's which was were pizza was invented. The first pizza shop to be licensed as such they are the shop from which all other pizza stores sprung. Which is appropriate as they are on Spring Street. They had a coal burning brick oven and we got to go to the back and see the oven in operation. The slice was made with California Tomatoes, Cows milk mozzarella and was very tasty if slightly undercooked for my taste. Your basic Margarita pizza. A superior slice and well worth the visit if you are interested in the history of pizza.

Then we went to Luzzo's on First Avenue which had a wood burning oven. This Neapolitan slice was much sweeter as they used Buffalo Milk mozzarella and tomatoes from San Marinzano in Italy. The slice tasted much sweeter and lighter and is highly recommended in my book.

Next we jumped on the bus to Brooklyn which is pretty funny because I thought we were going to the Bronx. I don't get to the Bronx all that often so I was looking forward to some new joints but they changed the tour at the last minute.

So where do we go but to J&V Pizza which is just like a million other pizza joints in the city. The funny thing is that it is right across the street from the OTB where the wife used to work and the owners used to come in all the time and bet their asses off and lose the weeks take. They served a Grand Ma square slice that was very crunchy and not up to the rest of the slices. They had other slices that were better but the one they picked was not up to par.

But the joker in the deck, the O Henry ending is the last stop. Sam's in Carroll Gardens. Three blocks from the store. I go on a tour to see history and they bring me back to my house. You see I grew up with Louie who owns the joint since we were pissing our diapers on Tompkins Place where we both born. I haven't been in there in about twenty five years. Now I know I had a beef with him but I forget what it was. It was either the time his cat sat on my veal cutlet parmigiana or the time he was screaming at his 90 year old waiter and my buddy's wife got all upset. I don't remember which. So I haven't gone in there in years. Actually about seventeen years. So we pull up in the bus and we all get off and we walk in the joint. Louie looks at me and goes "You live in the neighborhood forty freaking years and you have to take a bus here?" Hey waddayagonnado?

Oh the tour guide was shitting his pants. Louie and I growled at each other a while but it was no big deal. We have been friends for over fifty years after all. I honestly don't go down that part of Court St anymore so I really just forgot about it. I promised I would be back soon. Things got back to normal and we caught up on the news of all the old timers we used to know. Who was dead. Who was in jail. Whatever. Old times.

We could have just gone home but we rode the bus back with our friends to have dessert in Little Italy. It was a fun day. I highly recommend the tour if you are in NYC and want a slice of life.  A pizza slice. The kid who runs it is cool. You will have fun.

Pizza blogging!

What would Jesus order?

I think a regular Neapolitan margarita pie. You know one with just mozzarella and red sauce. None of those fancy four cheese thingy's.

No thin crust. No Chicago deep dish. No white pizza. Not even a Grandma pie. Just your regular pie.

Jesus is a regular guy. Plus you know he would bring the wine. Just sayn'

One more Pizza Pie Post Please

 

Remember the fundraiser Chip posted about earlier, its over 3/4 of a million dollars by the way. And it's got some people really ticked off. Among them, an Alix Bryan, who works for a local news station says she "reported" (to the authorities?) the fund for fraud "just in case". (see tweet above)

 

"Just in case", isn't that the crux of the Memories Pizza witch-hunt. Nothing like what the Social Justice Warriors are claiming the RFRA law will do has even happened yet. But they are out to intimidate and disrupt peoples livelihood, on the slim chance someone may discriminate, "just in case".

 

Public accommodation for me, but not for thee. It's a two way street in this country and thank the lord for that this good Friday. and thanks for reading this rant.

Memory Pizza

If you, Memory Pizza, decide to re-open rather than just take the gofundme money and enjoy a nice retirement or at least a nice relaxed time for awhile, then I bet $100.00 I can improve your pizza in two easy steps and three more less easy steps improvement beyond that. You can just go ahead and use these ideas and I'll trust your Christian ethics about them improving your pizza immediately. I know they will.

1) Dough aging. Whatever it is you are doing aging your dough at least overnight will improve it noticeably, and in a contest with all other things equal, your aged dough will win. It makes regular dough into country dough. It adds character. It begins fermentation as there is enough time to incorporate cell generations and cell death. The yeast cells begin to consume the dough, but slowly. They actually begin to mess their own quarters and that translates to flavorful bread with character. Two or three days fermentation and the effect is more pronounced and the dough takes on characteristics of sourdough. That improves the flavor greatly but also alters the texture negatively. The more like sourdough then the more like cardboard when baked into pizza because more is consumed by the organisms. In that case then, mix fermented old and worn out dough with brand new fresh dough for spectacular pizza dough with the best properties of both.

2) Dough composition. 20% semolina flour with 80% high protein (bread) flour. Bread flour becomes stringy with just a few turns. It's the sturdy stuff that bagels are made of. Semolina is larger granules without the husks almost like cornmeal except wheat. The wheat is cracked open and smashed to tiny diameter but not pulverized to dust as flour. It's yellow.

Those two things right there will win the bet.

3) Oven and baking surface, preferably stone, should be hot as can be. Wood fire oven best of all but usually not practical. Hot as your oven will go. Experiments were conducted by a team of cooking geeks for the book Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, Good Food where the lock was disabled on a self-cleaning oven to get the temperature high as possible. They also found that an upside down cast iron pan works very well for pizza baking surface but limits the size to individual pizzas.

You don't need an official pizza-peel to slide the prepared pizza onto the dangerously hot stone, a cookie sheet works as well as a peel. You can get the pizza to slide with cornmeal ball bearings or semolina flour ball bearings, or else parchment paper, just let the paper toast between stone and pizza then use the paper to help retrieve the cooked pizza.

4) For really top end pizza, buffalo mozzarella and maybe this isn't a great idea for a small town shop due to expense, on the other hand, why shortchange yourself? So, certainly for your own personal pizza, try it at least once. This is the mozzarella that pizza is made for. It kicks up the effort to a whole new level.

5) Fresh herbs. The whole idea is brilliantly toasted bread with olive oil and fresh herbs. Everything else is extra, like sauce and protein and cheese, that brings pizza from focaccia closer to toasted sandwiches like croque Monsieur or tortilla piled with these similar elements and either roasted or toasted. Fresh herbs are important for their breathy element.

Notice I didn't mention real garlic nor authentic tomato sauce. They're important but they don't affect every pizza and they don't guarantee you win. Some pizza won't have them. But all pizza will be improved with my suggestions. So just go ahead and give me $100.00 because I already know all this wins.

Pizza Pie that's Not Amore

“I don’t have a problem with gay people, I do not condone gay marriage and that’s what I said,” he said. “I don’t turn anybody away from the store, I don’t have a problem with gay people. I just don’t condone the marriage.”

O’Connor said he’s never been asked to cater a wedding, and that the response was hypothetical in response to questions posed by the news crew.

“It’s hard to speak when things get taken so out of context and this thing goes sky high and just blows everything up,” he said. “I’ve got a family to think about, too.”

Twitter has it that the Pizzeria had to shut down because of death threats.

50 States, 50 Pizzas

Zagat Survey has prepared a list of fifty pizzas that are (Zagat believes) worthy of our attention.  The list includes one pizza from each of the fifty states.  Whether your state has 800,000 or 80,000,000 citizens, it is represented in the Zagat Survey by only one pizza. 

I know what you're thinking.  "That has to be a reeeeeealy goooood pizza!!"   Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Let's go to the list and find the one in your state.

Nice photos.  I can smell the pizzas.  Hmmmm....the one identified for Wisconsin, where I live, is a restaurant I've never heard of located in a touristy area.  Ack.  It has a green and gold Green Bay Packers motif.  And it has cheese curds.  How trite.  I don't think I'd drive there for this pizza. No way, not going to do it.

Who are these Zagats, and how did they choose these restaurants? 

The Zagat score is basically a rating system for restaurants by diners.  It was created by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979.  A restaurant registers with Zagat, then promotes Zagat's website to customers in hopes that the customers will go to the Zagat website and rate the restaurant.  This is not very scientifical.  No wonder some of the pizzas look not-so-good.

My favorite pizza comes from this place.  Pizza of the gods.  Baked in a wood-heated oven.  A crust so thin it crunches like a cracker.  No cheese curds.  No team colors.  Just crust, sauce, fresh mozz, fresh tomatoes and fresh basil.  A moment of silence while I give thanks.  

Do you recognize the place listed for the state where you live?  Have you eaten there?

Meatzza

El Pollo Raylan requested a recipe for this the other day after I mentioned making it. I threw this little number together after one of my summer hosts asked for a low-carbohydrate, pizza-like concoction. It's of course not a substitute for pizza, but it's good and fun to eat. I usually despise portmanteau words, but I've heard this sort of thing called a "meatzza", which seems apt.

Click "Read More" for the recipe...

What's The Best Pizza?

I had some good pizza the other night at "Pitfire Artisan Pizza" in NoHo (North Hollywood).

I even peaked inside their oven and I think they were cooking things the requisite distance from the requisite type of fire, so it's probably kosher according to Spinelli and Trooper York.  Our party tried six different ones. The White Pie was my favorite, NTTAWWT

So where is the absolute best pizza?

Speaking of Compliment

"Domino’s Pizza Is So Used To Complaints, It Can’t Take A Compliment."
 
For Example...
 
A John Doe says... 

Best Pizza Ever (smiley face) Keep Up the good work guys!  

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Domino's Pizza - So sorry about that! Please share some additional information with us at (weblink) and please mention reference # 1409193 so we can have this addressed.  

Like - Reply - Yesterday @ 8:16am