If you don’t embrace who you are and accept who you are, you won’t be able to live a happy life. ~ Ciara

Simple Happiness

While I may be a deep and over complicated thinker who has difficulty slowing his brain down. The fact is I’m actually a simple man to make happy. There’s a funny parallel to people buying me presents, people are always lamenting I’m hard to buy for, but it’s not true. My interests are well-known to my friends and if you’ve been reading this or any of my other blogs you likely know most of them too. I like to garden, I’m into photography, I’m a Bigfoot fanatic and love cryptozoology in general. I like to read and write and am constantly accompanied by music in my life. I love to travel and experience new things and always love a surprise. So how hard can it be to find a gift, it’s a pretty big target. And yes, I’m about to turn sixty, feel free to take all of that as a hint. LOL

There are a lot of simple things that make me happy, a Pittsburgh Steeler game, a hike in any forest, the chance to be on the ocean, a good sunset, a crazy conversation with a little kid, a deep conversation with an intelligent person or a really good meal. Above all other meals for me is a really good New York style pizza (half pepperoni-mushroom) and a Coca-cola. The image above is from yesterday in San Francisco, a place called Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria and I reviewed it on the Pizza Page. Let me take away any surprise, it’s a damn good review.

It seems like a simple and silly thing, a good pizza and a coke, so let me go away from how I’m simply made happy and fall into my over complicated and complex thoughts to talk a little deeper about my love for pizza.

It can in one way be summarize numerically, 828-1170. People I grew up with will likely instantly recognize that phone number, it was the phone number for the Pizza Pit in Hudson. I talk about it in depth on the Pizza Page and will fight anyone who disagrees that it was the greatest pizza place ever. No seriously, I’ll come to blows over this. The Pizza Pit was a deep and important fixture in my childhood and is pictured below in the late 60’s or 70’s.

I’ve discussed it before and there is no need to rehash it tonight, I had a tough childhood. I grew up with a single mom and a lot of responsibility was laid on me. Also, in my blue collar hometown, Friday night was kind of pizza night. A lot of it had to do with what has best been described in a Scott Miller song, Daddy Raised a Boy, the line, “they drank a cold one ‘fore they changed their shirts.” I think the whole lyric around that line perfectly captures the reality of blue collar life, at least in the 70’s when I was a kid. Men stopped in for a beer after work, sometimes two, but on Fridays it often turned into a later night. As such, and since dinner in most blue collar homes was well-centered around the arrival time of dad, Friday night dinner time was very fluid. As such, most Friday nights it just became easier to either order a pizza, or have dad pick one up on the way home, thus Friday nights for most of us, was pizza night.

This was my reality well until my parents split when I was seven. Money was immediately tight and pizza became a big treat, while not every Friday but from time to time. A while after the divorce, as the world became a bit more stable, Friday night became bowling night, my mother’s one night a week to enjoy herself. This meant Friday night baby sitters, Chiller Theater horror flicks on TV and of course a pizza, sort of our consolation for mom being out. So as a kid, pizza became my big treat, it was one dependable bit of happiness for a kid who was not always all that happy.

It also corresponded with a traumatic event in my life. Early after the divorce, when my mother was unemployed, there was a night when I spilled my dinner. The dog of course pounced on it and when I asked for more, there wasn’t any. It was the one and only time in my life I truly experienced food insecurity and it shook me to my core. I was an extremely thin kid before that night, but the idea that food was not a given brought a laser focus in my mind as to what was most important, finding food to eat. Like I said, there was only one night when this was real, but I was determined to never let it happen again. Back in those days blue collar folks got their clothes from Sears and Roebucks. And they had three sizes for boys pants, regular, slims and huskies. Self-evident as to what those sizes are, the joke in my house was that I went from slims to huskies overnight, corresponding to shortly after my food event.

So food became an extreme comfort to me and as a bit of a natural born hustler, I found ways to make money constantly as a kid. I would do odd jobs, go to the store for people, babysit for little kids, mow lawns, rake leaves or shovel sidewalks. Occasionally gamble with my friends and if need be steal and sell something, I wasn’t always the upstanding citizen I’ve become in my later years. One place I could earn money was at the Pizza Pit, they would let me fold pizza boxes. I think we ridiculously got like a nickel a box, but the fact was in about an hour we could earn a couple of slices. The owner of the Pizza Pit liked me, or took pity on me, or both and he would always hook me up with a slice even if I showed up and they didn’t need boxes. The Pizza Pit became a big part of my life, hell they even sponsored the first bowling team I ever formed in our youth bowling league.

This relationship continued for years. When I would drive home from graduate school in Kentucky, a thirteen hour drive, I would call and order a pizza when I was just outside of town. I’ll never forget the time I arrived to pick up one of those pizza’s and Mr. Bijan chastised me, he’d found out that I stopped there before seeing my mom and he didn’t think that was right. So it was kind of a perfect storm with me and my connection to pizza, lucky to have great pizza, my own need for comfort food and a really kind pizza shop owner.

As I struggled through my twenties and thirties, dealing with anger and depression, pizza was always the one dependable way to give me a few minutes of joy. It also helped me balloon up to 250 pounds, which happily is weight I’ve lost. But pizza still remains the simplest joy in my life.

Living in California finding good pizza can often be a bit of a roller-coaster. There are not a lot of good pizza places in California, at least by New York slice standards. You can read more about exactly what that means on the Pizza Page. There are a lot of jokes and memes about pizza and sex being similar, when they’re good they’re great, and when they’re not, they’re still not bad. So yes, a pizza always provides me with some comfort, but the real joy is getting a really good New York style slice. It’s rarity for most of the time I’ve lived out of New York, over thirty years at this point, has made those instances even more precious.

So when I moved to my current job/home a few miles south of San Francisco, I set out looking for good pizza, as I do everywhere I’ve lived. However, in a city famous for it’s Italian North Beach and lot’s of Italian restaurants I had hope I’d have success. For a time there was a place in the Mission District, just off the BART line that kept in good supply. Arinell on Valencia was a good spot but they closed during the pandemic, happily this led me to find Gioia Pizzeria on Hayes, they could compete in Brooklyn and only seven-tenths of a mile off of BART. And today I found Amici’s a long three mile walk from BART and no slices, but certainly worth the walk for a ten inch pizza and soon they’ll be opening near Fisherman’s Whart, only a little over a mile from the BART line.

As silly as it sounds, having access to good pizza just makes me feel better about life. It’s that one dependable thing still, that I know I can have and know it will bring me comfort and joy. So sure, yeah, it’s just pizza to you, but it’s much, much more to me. It’s important, as the Ciara quote says, to know yourself, accept yourself and what you need to keep you happy. So I hope you can find what you need my friends to have happy days. ~ Rev Kane