Cheap Eats

By L.E. Leone
 

People Do

THERE'S NO EASY way to get a divorce. There's one way I think where one party files, or sues, and the other party just doesn't respond. That other party was going to be me. As anyone who has ever sent me an e-mail knows, not responding is my specialty. Unfortunately, filling out paperwork is not Crawdad's specialty. So weeks passed and still I had nothing to not respond to.

Meanwhile, we talk on the phone, visit each other, hang out. We are in perfect agreement over the fact and the terms of our separation. But because shit needs to happen legally – and this is what bums me out about marriage (the institution), divorce (the institution), and humanity (the institution) – you can't just do things, person-to-person, peacefully. You have to get the goddamn stamp of approval from the state. And the state, being an institution, can't have pizza. Peace, I mean. It doesn't compute. They can only assume that one party is screwing over the other party, or if one party isn't, then that party will eventually come to its senses and try to screw over the other party.

Paranoia is contagious. I don't watch TV or go to church, myself, so I'm fairly immune to it. Crawdad too. But because of some of the people around us ... Just kidding. It's all our fault. We never should have gotten married at City Hall. We should have done it at the Feather River, with drops of blood or blades of hair and a funny dance, bugs and fishes for witnesses. Because what you do by the book you have to undo by the book. And this book, the book of marriage, marriage by the book, is all about distrust, dishonesty, and discord. Or, in short: economics.

So we have to go to a mediator, who insists we have to both talk to lawyers before she will fill out any paperwork. I'm trying to understand as little of this as possible. Under "reason for divorce" you have two choices (typical of our species to stop there): "irreconcilable differences" or "incurable insanity."

"Gee, do we have to choose?" I said.

Ever the Gemini. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the funny part yet: I have to list my assets. Um ... chickens? I do have a pretty nice cowboy hat. Manny Ramirez's rookie card. An old Batman lunchbox and a Get Smart thermos.

I have intellectual properties. Let's see, 541 reviews, 83 poems, 64 short stories, and 26 1/2 songs ... at two cents apiece that's, let's see ... NET WORTH: $14.29. But hey, you never know. There's always the possibility that someone will someday pay heaps o' honey for the movie rights to my review of Fat's Famous Deli, or Ed's Diner. Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the man who orders a sandwich.

And this is why we need lawyers and mediators and such, because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I should point out that Crawdad's eyes are rolling right along with mine. Still, when we left the mediator's office, we did not go out to eat together the way we did that day almost six years ago when we walked out of City Hall, onto almost the same street. For one thing, Gravy's is closed. For another, Crawdad had to get to work.

On my way to the woods I stopped for pizza at this Pizzeria Uno-ish place on Lombard Street. You could tell it used to be a Pizzeria Uno by the way it looks, the postcard mural of Chicago on the outside wall, and the lettering of its name: Pizzeria SFO. Ah, wouldn't it be grand if there were a West Bay Zachary's, only undiscovered, and right on my way in and out of the city?

I went on in and asked outright: "Are you Pizzeria Uno?"

"No," said the host. He was holding a baby. Good sign. Institutions don't have babies. People do. A bad sign was a plaque on the wall behind him, some award or praise for Pizzeria Uno. He saw me seeing it. "We used to be," he said, "but they closed all their northern California restaurants."

"So you're not a chain?" I said.

"Nope. Independent."

"I'll have a small deep-dish," I said, "with sausage, spinach, and olives." Eight bucks. Cheap, compared to Zachary's.

While they were cooking it, I walked in and out of all their rooms. Not Gravy's, not my cabin, the place is full of nooks and crannies, a little glassed-in privacy room, a go-down-some-steps one, with old-time newspaper ad tablecloths, a fenced-in corral, nice bar with sports on TV. Took a shit in their bathroom. Clean. Plumbing, everything works.

No, the pizza's not nearly as good as Zachary's, which makes it more authentic, because, as you know, neither is any of the pizza in Chicago. 
 

PIZZERIA SFO. 2200 Lombard (at Steiner), S.F. (415) 563-3144. Sun.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Takeout available. Full bar. American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible. 

L.E. Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).
 

November 17, 2004