What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

On 14th Street across from Stuyvesant Town is this pizza joint called: Pete's-a-Place. It was the first thing that caught my eye when my broker and I visited the neighborhood during my apartment hunt. The moment I saw the "cheesy" sign of this little greasy pizza joint I knew I was going to somehow end up living in East Village, perhaps not too far from this place.

And that is almost exactly how it happened. As much as I hated the 14th street, I loved the Stuyvesant town and my beautiful one bedroom apartment in it. My apartment was located in the far south-eastern corner of the development and I barely if ever heard any traffic or street noise, and I loved loved loved that. If I wanted I could be in the middle of Manhattan hell in less than 5 minutes, but when I wanted some quiet, I could have endless hours of it at home. You have to understand that for most Manhattinites with my level of income this was a rare luxury.

It turns out I ate at Pete's-a-place only once. Their pizza was possibly the worst pizza I have tasted since Mr. Gatti's chain pizza. It was the kind of food that you eat real fast because you can not bear the fact that you're actually eating it. When you're hungry and you've spent your fair share of lunch money for the day, you kind of have to eat what you got. And if what you got is the pizza equivalent of a bucket of lard, you have two options, go hungry for that afternoon or you just gulp it down hoping that your body will be less discerning than your taste buds and your sense of smell. I chose the second option that day...

I must have walked by that joint every day for the remainder of my days in New York. Every time I walked by I swear they never would have customers inside. I am surprised that they actually stayed in business. Maybe, just maybe they were some sort of horrible mafia using the pizza joint as a front end to some unheard of way to make a quick buck.