Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Best NYC Pizza

Colin Hagendorf, 28, of Brooklyn, reviewing his final slice at Davinci Pizza in Lower Manhattan.

[pizza1] 
 
Manhattan is home to some of the country's oldest and most celebrated pizzerias, but the great metropolis also holds many mediocre slices. Colin Hagendorf has tasted it all.
Mr. Hagendorf, a 28-year-old Brooklyn resident, may know New York-style pizza more exhaustively than any other living soul. During a 2½-year quest, he has sampled nearly every pie sold by the slice in Manhattan. The feat—involving 362 slice joints—is unmatched by any modern-day enthusiast, according to local pizza experts.

"It's become a chore," he admitted recently, over a lunchtime slice. Folding the pizza lengthwise, he watched glumly as the end sagged, unsupported by a doughy crust. A proper slice, Mr. Hagendorf avows, should crease when folded and droop only at the very tip, "just like Johnny Cash's nose."

"This pizza is cotton," he sighed. Still, he was pleasantly surprised at the taste and scribbled notes for a review to be posted on his blog, where he chronicles his pizza forays and rates slices on an eight-slice scale. 

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With his girlfriend, Christina Sparhawk, Mr. Hagendorf ate his final slice last week in Lower Manhattan. 

Mr. Hagendorf began his project with the aim of trying every slice in New York City's five boroughs. But with more than 1,600 pizzerias in town, according to a health-inspection database, he soon realized he had bitten off more than he could chew. So he narrowed his focus to Manhattan and set simple rules: only order plain cheese pizza; only eat at places selling individual slices; and no going back after canvassing an area to catch newly opened establishments.

Mr. Hagendorf began in August 2009 at Grandpa's Place near 211th Street and Broadway—in Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood—and worked his way down to the island's southern tip. He excluded from consideration national chains and cafeterias that don't make their own pizzas.
The results are chronicled on Mr. Hagendorf's website, Slice Harvester, as well as in printed 'zines he assembles at copy shops and sells for $3 apiece—only slightly more than the price of the average cheese slice. The reviews are deeply personal and occasionally blue, written in the confessional manner of a pizza-obsessed Lenny Bruce. Each pizzeria gets a grade, from zero to an exalted eight.

He bestowed the only perfect score on Pizza Suprema, a slice joint steps away from Penn Station. The place may be the only establishment to proudly hang one of Mr. Hagendorf's reviews, which can be profanity-laced, and he is treated like royalty when he visits.pizza3
Mr. Hagendorf says he hasn't gained weight as a result of the project and continues to eat pizza even when not conducting reviews.
"It comes out looking beautiful, grease shimmering above the cheese," he says of the slice at Suprema. "You need that grease!" 

For Mr. Hagendorf, the best slices display balance above all, cheese and sauce used in moderation upon a solid yet supple crust. He disdains many of the new wave of recession-friendly dollar-per-slice outlets. He also scorns purveyors of Texas-size slices.

"A good dollar slice is like finding the Ark of the Covenant," Mr. Hagendorf says. "The fixation on giant stuff is part of the current horrible state of American capitalism."
Mr. Hagendorf is a waiter at a Brooklyn diner and describes himself as "activist-y punk." He spent years working for tips as a puppeteer in Union Square. Before devoting himself to pizza, "my project was: I want to work as little as possible," he says. 

His slice-eating endeavor was born after a cross-country trip in 2009, when he grew outraged at a New York-style pizza served in Colorado Springs, Colo. After hearing him berate that, friends jokingly suggested Mr. Hagendorf market himself as a consultant for out-of-town pizzerias. He set out to survey the city's slice joints.

"I'm not sure what made me actually do this idea instead of just talk about it, which is what I've done with my ideas for years," he says.

He has learned that even in the home of the New York slice, inferior pizzas outnumber truly delectable pies. But mediocrity may be the price for having so many pizzerias.
[PIZZA-Ahed]
There are 1,676 New York City restaurants classified as primarily selling pizza, as well an additional 425 categorized under "pizza/Italian," according to a food-inspection database maintained by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Manhattan is home to 494 pizzerias and 97 other restaurants listed under the joint category. A spokeswoman for the agency cautioned that classifications are assigned by inspectors and are therefore inexact. 

The 2010 Yellow Pages phone book lists 412 distinct Manhattan eateries under its "pizzeria" section, according to a hand count by Michael Berman, a Brooklyn-based photographer and pizza-focused food writer. Mr. Berman, 44, recently combed through past phone books stored on microfilm at the New York Public Library as a way to track the growth of the city's pizza industry.

In 1958, the phone book listing for pizzerias showed 117 in the five boroughs—and just 10 in Manhattan, Mr. Berman found. By 1970, the total number of pizzerias in New York had surged to 861. 

Scott Wiener, 30, who runs New York pizza tours, credits the commercial gas oven with giving birth to the modern slice as a unit of sale. The dial-controlled technology and lower temperature made the oven easier to manage and allowed slices to be reheated without risk of burning bits of cheese on the cooking surface, which fouls the taste.

"It's that oven that made pizza by the slice a big deal," Mr. Wiener says. "It makes more people into pizza makers. You didn't have to be an experienced baker."
With his final slice consumed last week in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Hagendorf has eaten slices at 362 pizzerias. Of those, he's ranked 75 as good or great. 

He hasn't gained weight as a result of the exercise, and continues to eat pizza even when not conducting reviews. He now plans to go through his archive and produce a best-of retrospective. "There's a huge body of work," he says.
New York pizza aficionados watched with interest as Mr. Hagendorf approached the finish line.

"A lot of the time I kick myself for not doing it first," says Adam Kuban, who started chronicling New York pizza in 2003 on his website, Slice. "But at the same time I'm glad I didn't have to endure it." 

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

American and British Toilet Slang

from


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_toilet_slang


Defecation

  • A sewer snake to release
  • Abort a baby
  • Anaconda action
  • Arsefire
  • Back one out
  • Backing the big brown motorhome out of the garage
  • Baiting the trap
  • Becoming the porcelain assassin
  • Blasting a dookie
  • Blinking
  • Blow one out - Also flatulence
  • Blow the load
  • BM
  • Boo-Boo
  • Boom Boom
  • Bomb the porcelain sea
  • Building a log cabin
  • Burn a mule
  • Caca
  • Carpet Bombing Afghanistan
  • Chocolate time!
  • Create a custom extrusion
  • Cripping a crapple
  • Crowning
  • Curling one off
  • Cutting rope
  • Deceiver of Farts
  • De-corking the borking
  • Deucing
  • Dirty squirties
  • Doing brown
  • Doing some spring cleaning
  • Dominating
  • Doo-Doo
  • Doodey
  • Download a brownload
  • Dr. Benjamin Fartlin
  • Drop a double deuce
  • Dropping a dook
  • Dropping a bomb
  • Dropping a deuce
  • Dropping a hoopsnake
  • Dropping a jolst
  • Dropping a load
  • Dropping a loaf
  • Dropping a Purtle
  • Dropping a Washburn
  • Dropping The Dangle
  • Dropping anchor
  • Dropping bass ("base" as in the opposite of treble. Not the fish.)
  • Dropping logs
  • Dropping some friends off at the pool
  • Dropping the Browns off at the Super Bowl
  • Dropping the Cosbies
  • Dropping the kids off at the pool
  • Dropping the Mexican Boll Weevil
  • Dropping the weights
  • Dropping wax
  • Faxing a shit to the toilet machine
  • Feeding the seagulls (politer version of "Feeding the shitehawks")
  • Feeding the toilet
  • Fertilising the plants (refers to defecating outdoors and on the ground, such as while camping)
  • Filing some papers
  • Filling the bowl
  • Fire away
  • Freeing me chocolate hostages
  • Giving birth
  • Giving birth to a chocolate baby boy
  • Giving birth to a healthy brown baby
  • Giving birth to the black eel
  • Giving birth to the Spineless Brownfish
  • Giving birth to an African
  • Going Boom Boom
  • Going poop
  • Going to meet Jim Davidson
  • Going to number two
  • Going to have a talk with Mr.Hanky (South Park [2] Refrence)
  • Going to the restitorial
  • Growing a tail
  • Hanging a rat
  • Hungry Hungry Hippos
  • Inagurate Barack Obama to the White House
  • Inserting a SEAL Team
  • Kurt Bevacqua
  • Launching torpedoes
  • Laying a brick
  • Laying a brownie
  • Laying a cable
  • Laying a Hank
  • Laying a turd
  • Laying some wolf bait
  • Lengthening the spine
  • Letting loose
  • Letting the toilet know who's boss
  • Letting the dogs out
  • Lift tail (used commonly among members of the furry fandom)
  • Logging
  • Logging into the toilet and making a huge download
  • Logging out
  • Load your pants
  • Loafin'
  • Lose some weight (Also used in urination)
  • Making a banoogie (referring to an unusually large defecation, often clogging the toilet)
  • Making a tail
  • Making an appointment with Dr. John
  • Making gravy
  • Making logs (or a log)
  • Making waves
  • Makin' bears
  • Monopoly!
  • Montezuma's Revenge (traveller’s diarrhoea)
  • Number two (a portable toilet company advertises itself as "Number One in Number Two"; a Midwest plumbing company proclaims, "We're Number One in a Number Two Business.")
  • Pebble-dashing the porcelain
  • Pinching (off) a loaf
  • Pinching a yam
  • Pinch-hitting for Kurt Bevacqua (a reference to the old brown uniforms worn in the 1970's and 1980's by the San Diego Padres.)
  • Poo-Poo
  • Poopy Doo
  • Poppin a gooky
  • Producing some output
  • Pump a clump of dump out of my rump
  • Pull a few cones (Think Mr Whippy soft serve ice cream, and the cones)
  • Punching a growler
  • Punishing the porcelain
  • Punishing the toilet
  • Put food in the dog's water
  • Releasing a depth charge
  • Releasing a Dungbomb (from Harry Potter)
  • Releasing the chocolate hostages
  • Releasing the hostages
  • Releasing the Kraken
  • Releasing the hounds
  • Ride a pony and trap
  • Ring of fire
  • Sacrificing to the Toilet/Porcelain god
  • Saturday morning special
  • Scatter bombing
  • Shitting bricks (Houses or apartments as substitutes for higher quantity.)
  • Showering the room with roses
  • Shtounga
  • Slopping gruel in Oliver's bowl
  • Speaking with the arabs (When whoever is listening asks "what" the toiletee replies "Mustapha Crap!")
  • Spray-painting the porcelain
  • Squirt juice
  • Stalling a brown sedan
  • Streaming Nixie (naval expression referring to an anti-submarine device towed behind a ship by a long, thick, possibly brown cable)
  • Studying one's Process Design notes (refers to Environmental Engineering Process Design, a course taught to civil and environmental engineering undergraduates and that deals with, among other topics, the design of wastewater treatment facilities)
  • Taking a brew
  • Taking a crap (see also Mr. Thomas Crapper)
  • Taking a dump
  • Taking a Nixon (used by Kinky Friedman in his detective novels)
  • Taking a poo
  • Taking a Shatner (as in Captain Kirk; would also accept "dropping" or "doing" a Shatner)
  • Taking a shit (a coarse expression, not a euphemism)
  • Taking a slam
  • Taking a Tarzan (crapping in the woods/forest)
  • Taking the Browns to the Superbowl
  • Taking the Cosby kids to the pool
  • Taking the mains offline and ejecting the warp coil
  • Taking the morning curl
  • Throwing up backwards
  • Tuesday Afternoons
  • Turtle time (see Turtle Action)
  • Uni(I've got to take an uni)
  • Unlikely Traveler (Defecation, usually on vacation, when you defacate in your pants away from a toilet)
  • Unload
  • Unloading a batch of cigars
  • UH-OH! (Peter Griffin again; is incontinent at awkward moments)
  • Visiting Boston
  • vote for president.
  • wrestling a leprecon
  • Take a Critical Ambient to the Lab
  • Upgrading my Thetan Level

Thursday, November 3, 2011