The Pizza Slices of My Life

This isn't just a ranking of the BEST pizza. That would be too easy (and for the record, the ranking would probably go Tacconelli's white with spinach and crushed tomato, then Vince's plain, then a whole slew of pizzas tied for third (some featured below)). Instead, I'm here to turn a simple discussion about pizza into a classic Emo Joe post. Turn away while you can!

Here are the best slices of pizza I've ever eaten in my life, and what extraneous circumstances made them so good. (Listed in an approximately chronological order.)

Pizza Hut's Free Personal Pan Pizza

I know, I know, my first great pizza love is the same goddamn pizza that tops every groan-worthy Buzzfeed masturbatory #90sKids nostalgia list. I am a living, breathing cliché. I also happened to grow up in the '90s, and I also happened to read books, and I also happened to have parents who didn't mind getting free pizza for their kids, so fucking sue me. You know the deal. You read some books. You list those books on a sheet. You bring that sheet to Pizza Hut once you read ten books, and you get your own little greasy slice of heaven. Pam scoffs when I list Pizza Hut as one of my hands-down favorite pizzas to exist, and I get why she would not take that seriously, but then again, I can't help it. I was conditioned to like this shit. This is Marketing for Kids 101. It's in my fucking blood.

Knockoff Ellio's at a Friend's House

Okay, so, yes, Ellio's itself didn't make this list, because, while I enjoyed the shit out of Ellio's in my youth, there was nothing special about it. It was a normal teenage lunch for me. However, I remember fondly a knockoff Ellio's at a friend's house in our pre-teen years. I just spent about five minutes trying to find a brand name. I could not. It might've been Pathmark store-brand, but I don't know for sure. I just remember that my friend's Mom used to make it for us whenever I was over their house. It was the same rectangular shape at Ellio's, but this, unlike Ellio's, had a thin crust around three of the four edges. And it was...more buttery? I dunno, I might be making some of this up. My point is that it was good.

And it was different. I don't want to overstate my experiences at my buddy's house, but I had some pivotal childhood experiences there, I think probably because his parents were a little less strict about what was going on down in the basement when we were hanging out. I watched my first R-rated movie there (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), played my first really violent video games (no idea), saw my first porn there (c'mon, we were like ten years old, it mainly consisted of doing some creative Ask Jeeves image searches). This is no reflection on my friend or his parents at all, but my experiences there tended a little wilder than I could have at home. And my memories of that specific unknown pizza brand are tied up with it.

(Practically) Free Rising Sun Pizza

At my Catholic grade school, we had "Pizza Thursdays." For $1 a slice, you could purchase pizza (from Rising Sun) for lunch instead of bringing something from home. Fuck it, I'll go to bat for Rising Sun Pizza; it's possibly the third best pizza in America, and DEFINITELY Top Five. Me and Pam fight about this all the time (all in good fun, our marriage isn't crumbling over pizza preferences). She thinks Rising Sun is generic bullshit. I think it's special, probably because, like Pizza Hut, I grew up on that shit.

Another thing that made it weirdly special was that it eventually became something that I felt like I EARNED instead of just getting it from my parents. My parents would, indeed, give me a buck every other week for the pizza. But I wanted more. So what I started doing was hawking lunch items around the cafeteria, and making pocket change to buy more pizza.

It would go like this, e.g.: Mike C., who was at my lunch table, didn't want the pretzel sticks his Mom packed for him, so he would give them to me for free. I would take the pretzel sticks around and see if anyone wanted to give me like a dime or a nickel for them. Higher ticket items, I would even maybe buy from people. Kristin S. from the table next to us brought Lunchables from home that she despised, so I'd give her a dime, and then turn around and go to another table and sell that shit for a quarter. Eventually I had a fabric pencil case full of loose change, which would be then converted into those sweet, salty Rising Sun slices.

Seriously, I was proud of those Thursdays when I could buy three slices of pizza... with my OWN MONEY.

Cafeteria Pizza at My First LSCHS Visit

If I thought peddling bullshit in my grade school cafeteria was serious business, then imagine how I felt when I visited my future high school cafeteria! Dude, my visit to La Salle College High School was so cool. We played video game emulators in the computer lab during my shadower's free period! Everyone was so nice! And the pizza in the caf was fucking BANGIN'. I had to go to this school. And I did, eventually, a year later. And sure, the pizza never really lived up to that day. But on the day I visited La Salle College High School as an eighth grade student, I saw my future, and it was as good as that fucking thick greasy bullshit pizza I had for lunch.

Drunk Vince's

Vince's in the "Great" Northeast is the second-best pizza in history, but that shit was NEVER as good as it was reheated after a night drinking in the woods. When you're hungry after a night of sucking on Lionshead bottles and you come home and there it is, three plain slices from Vince's, sauce on top / cheese on bottom, wrapped in plastic wrap, ready to slip into that (quiet enough) microwave and become a drunken fourthmeal. Nothing better capped off an epic teenage summer night than this treat.

Mack and Manco's on Senior Week

If we're ranking Shore Town Pizzas, I don't need a gun to my head to decide. It's Sam's all day. Mack and Manco's in Ocean City was always, to me, some wannabe shoobie pizza. But I'll admit, it holds a special place in my heart anyway. After I graduated from high school, me and every fellow private school kid I knew spent a week in Ocean City, NJ, and, um, I'm not going to go into too many specifics here, because I was intoxicated for most of it, and you don't wanna know that shit more than you have to.

But, okay, so the point I'm trying to make here is that I knew pretty much everyone in town that week, and so while I lived with some of my best high school friends, when we left the house, there were acquaintances everywhere. And one day, pretty much my whole high school graduating class was right there on the beach, drinking warm shit beer out of solo cups. And a few random people and me went up after a few beers, up to the boardwalk, and split a Mack and Manco's pie.

If I had to rank every member of the '07 Class on how well I knew him, from 1 to 250, the kids I went up to Mack and Manco's would probably be sub-175. It wasn't like they knew each other better than they knew me; it was literally whoever the four hungriest guys on the beach were, deciding to go to the boards and get some pizza. We split a couple pies, laughed about all the bullshit that had happened that week already, took a few sips from a clandestine flask, etc. It was a cool lunch with three dudes who I knew but didn't really know, ya know?

And I'm trying to think of another time in my life where a situation like this would occur. I feel like, as I get older, we're getting more insular. We're paring away friends, not adding them. You feel like you start to know fewer and fewer people. Certainly there are fewer and fewer people with whom you'd feel comfortable randomly sharing a Mack and Manco's pizza with on a sloppy Tuesday afternoon. In some regards, it was the most comfortable I ever was in my own skin, that week. The booze helped, sure, but there's a reckless abandon that comes with being eighteen and having your whole fucking life ahead of you. It was pretty nice.

Little Caesar's in Kev's Truck

Say what you will about Little Caesar's pizza, but you cannot deny one thing. It's fucking CHEAP. So cheap, that two kids working minimum wage jobs can afford to feast on any given night and still have money left over for beer afterward. The night wasn't important—some fucking New Year's Eve, an off year, we drank some beers and talked to some girls and in general had a mediocre time (I was going to meet Pam in exactly four months, so it was an "off" time in my life in general, those months prior to meeting my wife)—but what was important was that we were chilling with friends, and we were on our own, together. Sitting in Kev's truck. Eating GREAT (shitty) pizza. Ready for a GREAT (shitty) party. Life was pretty okay.

The Infamous Chicken Bacon Ranch

A lot of these pizzas are from times in my life when I was growing as a person. This excellent pie is all about becoming comfortable with stasis. The past couple years have been full of great times, but mainly it's been about a steady job, a fulfilling marriage, some wild weekends, and otherwise marking time till a third member joins us. I'm okay with all this. The fact that I'm okay with that has been well-documented here.

I'm okay with it, even though each week has become that cliche "grind" that we always thought as teens we could always outrun. I work hard during the week. I clock in and clock out. The whole notion of needing to kick one's feet up after a long work week? That shit is a cliché because it's true, man. My week ends Thursday nights, and when I kick back and relax, it's at Maeve's apartment, and it's with a beer, and it's with a Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza from Liberty.

Typical corner store pizza type place. There is crust, and there is cheese. There are chicken bites. There are bacon shavings. There is ranch dressing crisscrossed right on top of the finished product. There is no fucking better way to end a grueling week at the office.

Sam's for St. Valentine's Day

I don't say it enough here at PoYB: I fucking love Pam. She's the best. Wife. Friend. Future Mother. Etc. St. Valentine's Day is a day when you're supposed to make those feelings loud and clear to your beloved partner. I'll admit, I'm at about at a 50% success rate as far as treating her right on St. Valentine's Day goes. I've had some off years. But peak K*** St. V's was when we decided to say fuck it and drive down the shore for lunch. There was no traffic on the way to Wildwood (it was the dead of winter). We pulled up to Sam's, and split a pie. And yo, that place, for a February weekday, was fucking CROWDED. Can't blame the crowd. The pizza is really that good.

This is the permutation of my and Pam's relationship that I enjoy the best: going on an adventure, something a little weird, probably life-fulfilling in small subtle ways, always together. That was a nice day. That was a nice fucking pizza. I love Pam, I love pizza, I love life.