Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza
Colin Atrophy Hagendorf
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1476705887
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2015
Over the course of two years, a twenty-something punk rocker eats a cheese slice from every pizzeria in New York City, gets sober, falls in love, and starts a blog that captures headlines around the world—he is the Slice Harvester, and this is his story.
Since its arrival on US shores in 1905, pizza has risen from an obscure ethnic food to an iconic symbol of American culture. It has visited us in our dorm rooms and apartments, sometimes before we’d even unpacked or painted. It has nourished us during our jobs, consoled us during break-ups, and celebrated our triumphs right alongside us.
In August 2009, Colin Hagendorf set out to review every regular slice of pizza in Manhattan, and his blog, Slice Harvester, was born. Two years and nearly 400 slices later, he’d been featured in The Wall Street Journal, the Daily News (New York), and on radio shows all over the country. Suddenly, this self-proclaimed punk who was barely making a living doing burrito delivery and selling handmade zines had a following. But at the same time Colin was stepping up his game for the masses (grabbing slices with Phoebe Cates and her teenage daughter, reviewing kosher pizza so you don’t have to), his personal life was falling apart.
A problem drinker and chronic bad boyfriend, he started out using the blog as a way to escape—the hangovers, the midnight arguments, the hangovers again—until finally realizing that by taking steps to reach a goal day by day, he’d actually put himself in a place to finally take control of his life for good.
music and art, and here I am, Not Dead, and I’m, like, wandering around the country drinking different regional rotgut whiskeys? The gall. By December I had started working on the first issue of Slice Harvester Quarterly, the print form of the Slice Harvester blog, which had always been a goal of mine. I had been publishing zines since my adolescence, and it was something I missed—the late nights drinking coffee and listening to overloved cassettes; accidentally gluing my finger to the inside of
took me back behind the counter, and there were just tubs and tubs of lard.” My famous friend Phoebe—Cool Mom and Cunning Detective. Who knew? At this point you may be wondering whether eating so much pizza in one day compromised our ability to judge slices objectively, but I’d like to reassure you that it didn’t. First of all, we didn’t each get our own slice at every place. At most spots, Caroline and I split one slice while Phoebe and Greta split another. Second, as with all Harvesting
Kitchen, Tony stopped into Sal’s place for a slice. “It’s pretty good,” he said, “but the dough could use a little work. This sauce is unbelievable, though. You let me show you how to make the dough a little better and you’ll have the perfect piece of pizza.” Sal was a proud man, for sure, but he wasn’t an idiot. If a master baker wanted to help him tweak the dough, so be it. He and Tony went into the back, and Sal learned the Dara Family Secret Pizza Dough Recipe. And lo, on this day, Sal’s
the right choice. Through this whole process, my pizza eating had slowed to a crawl. I posted only one pizza review for the entire month of October because I was too busy dealing with my own life. In the first week of November, I put up a post letting everyone know that I had four more pizza parlors left to review in all of Manhattan, two of which I had already eaten at. I was immediately approached by Aaron Rutkoff, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who wanted to profile me for his
a book deal; Nina Pajak for telling her kid brother, Will Schwartz, to tell my kid sister, Emma Hagendorf, to tell me to respond to Jonathan’s e-mail a week later; Dan Stein for giving me an office in his apartment and letting me keep the desk; Mya Spalter for helping me through this whole scary process; Julia Masnik for being my agent and fielding my constant neurotic questions; Sarah Knight for being an incredible editor/adversary/friend. TO THE ILLUSTRATOR: Thanks, Joe Porter, for singing in