No more New York Pizza. An email correspondent today advised me that it burned down on Monday night…
For those of you not in the know (which would be about 98% of you), New York Pizza was probably my favorite drinking establishment in Greensboro. It was a great place: a pizza joint with bar on a corner of Tate Street, UNCG‘s pathetic excuse for a college strip. It was dark and dumpy, it had a great jukebox, the pitchers were cheap, and there was always plenty of greasy stomach padding to be found…
But the best thing about the place was the crowd. It was one of those rare places which small cities seem to generate more readliy than big ones: an all-purpose joint where college kids, trailer trash, musicians, homosexuals, and burnouts sat and drank and talked and smoked. Usually with no problems, and often with a great deal of interaction among the different groups…
It was not a trendy place; in fact, it was little more than a dump, but it was usually a far more pleasant place to be than Greensboro’s dismal, tight-assed, disco queer bars or its assorted fratboy and redneck hangouts. In recent years, it had become the only bar left on Tate Street, not so much through gentrification, but more through the sanitizing influences of the nearby university, the fascist College Hill neighborhood organization, and a higher drinking age…
I’m told they’ll rebuild, but I have my doubts. Even if they do, it won’t be the same…