New York is infamous for its pizza. Ask any local and an argument will erupt over the best slice from Joe’s to DiFara’s, but what of the quintessential dollar slice pizza? Prime for late-night drunk munchies or a quick lunch on the go, dollar slice pizza plays an integral role, whether you realize it or not.
When I was a kid, for $1 I could get a quadruple concoction of the best snacks from the deli around the corner from my school.
On a good day, it was a pack of Winterfresh gum, two bags of potato chips, and a barrel-shaped drink of neon-colored high fructose corn syrup. The dollar was RICH.
Nowadays, $1 can’t buy you much. That is, except for the quintessential dollar pizza.
With over 70 locations hawking the dollar fuel, New Yorkers rich and poor wait side by side for the pinnacle cheesy slice. Quality is equally diverse, with some places bordering on cardboard Elio’s and others nearing the “Hey, that actually wasn’t that bad and I’m sober” realization. Dollar pizza is more than cheap nourishment, it’s survival. Whether it’s New York City tears of terror from a bad breakup or drunken happiness after a late night, the comfort of dollar slice pizza is worth more than its weight of cheesy goodness.
My love letter to dollar pizza goes specifically to the Two Bros Pizzeria on 25th and 6th avenue during a particularly nefarious point in my life.
In 2017, I tried to pursue a full-time career as the founder of a published travel magazine (the first of many, many iterations of the site that you are reading now). I worked out of a coworking space for months on end trying to mash together the quotes of a Swedish illustrator living in Hong Kong into a Squarespace page that I had designed, (and redesigned meticulously to no end) until it seemed, no felt, PERFECT.
There were days that I would tell people about my idea (which changed twenty times over, I might add) and feel the ebbs and flows of my emotions based on their reactions. Other days I would be switching up the colors of my logo while the person at the desk next to me was in the midst of a heated phone call raising $80,000 for their startup.
As a broke startup founder, I couldn’t do anything but treat myself to the quintessential dollar slice pizza.
Suffice to say, I ate quite a few of my feelings.
Here, in this ten gauges too bright, fluorescent pizzeria, I would douse my slice in Kirkland Signatures red pepper flakes, elbow to elbow with a portly businessman overdressed for the Flatiron district, and tucked in between a teenage German tourist who folded his pizza backwards with cheese on the outside, finding comfort in that little slice that at least, maybe life wasn’t so bad.
