Ithaca Blog

Sunday, March 30, 2014

This Is Not The First (Nor Last) Post Of Ours About Pizza

On Facebook tonight, we saw a posting from some friends about pizza in Ithaca. Whoa, baby. Getting such a posting past us without comment is like throwing a pork chop past a wolf: tough to do. All the other comments were like 30 words. Not ours. Since we spent so much time with it (actually, not all that much, we write fast about everything, but especially pizza), we figured we'd get double-duty off it by posting it here, too. (There are references to the line of chat you won't get; but the gist, you will.)

Pizza Aroma is indeed Ithaca's best. Also, owner Mauricio and his family are lovely, hard-working people, providing a great product and service in the heart of downtown. I don't know about the Dryden place - I will check it out, on the authoritative word of Mssrs. Dayhart and Hernandez, next time I am so far east - but let me tell you this, do yourself a favor, visit NY Pizza on Main Street in T-burg.

As the name imparts, this is the bona fide city-style joint. Super-thin crust, crack a slice into a V and it stays there, and you eat it one-handed as you drive home. This pizza - the texture, flavor, composition and melt - beats Bensonhurst and Cross Bay Boulevard.

Also, the place has the proper attitude for providing this essentially street comestible. They do not provide mimeographed menus, though this might be good for business: you know, their offerings, prices, hours of operation, phone number, to have in your home? F that. Memorize them. Neither do they open on Sunday, though this is a prime pizza day. Sunday is the day of rest, and family day.

I have accepted many invitations to do things I don't want to do in Trumansburg, in order to visit NYP, have a slice (remarkably gigantic and cheap) in the shop (comfortable, clean, business-like, NYC/Italia painted mural on the wall, soccer on TV) while they bake me a pie to take home. Word to the wiseguy.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Welcome, Internet, Connecting Me To Limbo

The guy setting it up for me said that it "is very weird" that I do not have Internet connection in my house until now.

I never felt the need for it. I have Internet connection at work, to do things like check bank balances and Facebook. I also have it in a small office I have downtown. But now I'm giving up the office space, so I need the connection for protracted projects. (I write, for the local weekly, and other things.)

I always thought it was good, that if I want to go online, I have to go to work - one place or the other - and not have the temptation of sitting around in lounge pants doing it. I have to put on real pants. I have to walk or bike (or, occasionally, drive) half a mile. Good exercise (under those first two options).

So now I have the service here at home. It's good, in that I can write and post this, at my kitchen table, pretty late.

But it's bad, in this. Last night I was writing, and looked up something important. But now I don't remember what. All I remember is that, somehow, I saw something on Google that said, "Sly Stone on piano, Richard Pryor on drums Mike Douglas Show 1972."

Dear reader, you are on the Internet, so you know where this is going, don't you? From that slight submerge, I emerged two hours later, having subsequently perused the Rolling Stones on the Mike Douglas Show; the Wikipedia biography of Mike Douglas (he is from Chicago); an interview with a glassy-eyed Keith Richards from about 1972; Keith Richards trying to work out the lead-in to "Carol" with Chuck Berry in a movie, where they fight; a visit to the website of the session's bass player, Joey Spampinato; an excited look at a Youtube posting of NRBQ, Spampinato's old band, at the GrassRoots Festival in 1993, where I myself, a worker at the festival, am seen sitting on stage enjoying the performance behind the piano player, with pigmentation in my hair, which no longer exists, beneath a "Brooklyn Gum" bike-racing hat from Italy, that I'd forgotten I ever had; then, somehow - I guess it was just in my head - a version of "I Don't Know" by Sonny Boy Williamson, from 1960's French TV, in black-and-white video.

Then I shook my head, as if to clear it of cobwebs. What was I first looking for?

I couldn't remember. So I closed my notebook and went to bed. Sorry, whatever I wanted to write about.

Tonight, this is it - writing to you before bed. No monkey business, no Youtube, no footage of John Lennon playing ping-pong with Miles Davis, no that nice song by Magnetic Fields, no Senor Wences, no nothing. Just this, to you, then bed.

Well, maybe Senor Wences. One second. Or Fyvush Finkel. Fyvush Finkel!