Every time a family calls it quits, the city loses more than a great slice of pizza: It cedes a living piece of its history to the vast, unknowable past. (via EaterNY)
in Elmhurst, Queens, when the phone rings. On the line, a customer places an order for a plain cheese pie. “That’ll be 20 dollars, cash only,” Bagali says. She gingerly rises from the stool and makes her way behind the counter to roll out the dough, as she’s done thousands of times before. Bagali, who discloses her age as “39 and lots of change,” has been working in this shop with her 85-year-old mother, Rose, for decades.
The story of pizza in New York begins with immigration and assimilation. At the turn of the 20th century, Italian immigrants established the first generation of pizza shops. Names like Lombardi andand Totonno are synonymous with the advent of pizza in America. The introduction of gas ovens in the 1930s made the business of pizza portable — no more built-in brick ovens — and lowered the cost of entry. Twenty years later, pizza was not just limited to Italian American enclaves.
Lanzo and his sisters, who help run the shop, strive to maintain the sense of community their father created. Luigi’s is the neighborhood spot, where you can get a hot slice even if you’re a quarter short. It’s the place where everyone knows your name. “That’s the way it started and that’s the way it’s going to die,” Lanzo says.
Not everyone loves the changes they see. Lanzo laments the gentrification of Brooklyn’s South Slope. “Little by little, the character is going,” he says. “They call it progress.” The Varvaras were lucky their sons wanted to inherit the business. That’s not always the case. “A lot of the kids don’t want to take over today,” says Susan Bagali. As with any job in food service, the days manning a pizza shop are long, it’s physical work, doesn’t pay very well, and cultivating a relationship with customers isn’t as easy as it once was. “There are days when you don’t want to come in,” Bagali says.
Perhaps this explains the emotional charge that comes with the news of every lost pizza shop: The classics are the ultimate symbol of New York City. Just as the diner captures the American spirit, so too does the pizza shop embody New York. Spike Lee understood that when he used the fictional pizza shop Sal’s as the backdrop to his 1989 film, invoked the New York hustle when John Travolta stopped by the now-closed Lenny’s Pizzeria for a quick double-decker slice.
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