Pizza in Cambridge

            With all the ramen shops and other culinary trends sweeping our city, at times it seems hard to find good pizza at a decent price. These are a few of my favorites, as well as some that simply hold nostalgic value for me. The list is by no means exhaustive; I’m sure there are some good places I remain ignorant of, and far too many have closed their doors in the last ten years. But here you go: just sprinkle some red pepper flakes and you won’t go wrong.

The Best

Armando’s (Huron Ave, near corner of Concord)

When in Rome,

do as the Romans;

when in West Cambridge:

eat at Armando’s!

            If you have never eaten at Armando’s; if you have never had pizza in Cambridge, or the Boston area generally; if you have never had pizza before, do yourself a favor and hop on the 78 bus from Harvard Station and tell the driver to let you off at Armando’s.

            Just make sure you have cash – you won’t need much though. Prices may have gone up ever so slightly in the last 5 years; but if you factor in Cantabriflation, it’s a better deal than ever!

            Seriously, what else is there to say that hasn’t already been covered in the local press? This is hands-down the best pizza in Cambridge, and the prices are unbelievably reasonable. Even if you only have your debit card, the $2.00 fee at the ATM across the street will hardly make a dent in what you’ll save compared to any place of remotely close quality around here. If only they would open a second location elsewhere in Cambridge for those of us not so fortunate as to get out there enough. But honestly, I could see New Yorkers or even Italians coming out here for the amazing food and great hospitality at this cozy gem of a pizzeria!

Pinnochio’s (Harvard Square)

            The only other place in Cambridge serving up quality Italian-style pizza worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Armando’s is Pinnochio’s in Harvard Square. In fact, their pizza is fantastic; it’s just not such a bargain and the place gets packed, all of which is understandable given that it’s Harvard Square and the food is really good. You will see photographs of celebrities on the wall who used to frequent the place when they lived or studied in Cambridge. They are not posing for the camera to keep atop the trends; they still come back for the food.

            Aside from the basic pizza pies which are second only to Armando’s, you will find a variety of Sicilian slices to choose from round the clock (they’re open pretty late) as well as my favorite steak and cheese sub anywhere, with thinly sliced succulent shaved stake and perfectly melted provolone instead of that American-cheese crap. It can be dangerous: when I worked in Harvard, I came in for my sub one day and the boss greeted me with,

                        “So, what, one of these a day keeps the doctor away?”

The Rest

Greek-Style

            Let no man say that the Greek pizza house is inferior; that greasy, pan-Hellenic aroma is so indelibly a part of my memory of childhood, it is still the height of bliss for me on a perfect Cantabrigian Summer’s day.

ABC (Mass Ave)

            Anyone who has spent any time living and/or working around Central Square, on a tight budget, who is not taken in with the fads of vegan, gluten-free, paleo etc. must surely have been to ABC. It can get crowded at lunch time but the delicious, crispy slices, quick and cheap, are more than worth it. Call ahead if you want a sub or, my favorite, the chicken fingers – absolute perfection, especially if you ask for a side of marinara sauce (far better than ketchup, in my opinion; my kids would disagree.)

Cambridge House of Pizza (North Cambridge)

            Some say that “happy childhood” is just a myth – a shame for them; for me it was very real, and this place was as close to Heaven on Earth as my mind could then conceive. Back in the 90’s they had arcade machines – I spent many hours playing Street Fighter II, but the owner’s son could always play longer as his father gave him endless quarters!

            Now he is running the place, and the arcades are gone, but the food and the wonderful smell remain the same, even as this charming part of Cambridge finally succumbs to the same gentrification that pervades the rest of the city. Like ABC, this isn’t diet food, although they do have salads. Come here for cheese pizza, chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks – but the Greek Pizza with feta and tomatoes is incredible, and when I was a vegetarian I lived off their veggie subs, better than most places make, with oil & vinegar and Provolone cheese.

Harvard House (Mass Ave, between Harvard and Porter)

            This is an underappreciated part of Cambridge. There used to be more pizza places around (3 Aces, which used to be nearby, is gone, and up Mass Ave in Porter Square, Pizzeria Uno is long gone – currently a Target) but the Half Shell and Harvard House are still serving good food to regular people every day. I will never forget the time in high school when I went to Harvard House with a friend, ordered us a large cheese pizza, and was so eager to eat it I consumed my half as soon as they took it out of the oven, severely burning the roof of my mouth. It hurt for days but was completely worth it.

Modern “Hipster” Pizza

            The new pizza is very different from the traditional family-run Italian and Greek places. The quality of the ingredients is often very high, and some of their pies are incredibly creative. The staff are often young people and turnover is more frequent, so a lot depends on the staff to make your experience either great or mediocre.

All-Star Pizza Bar (Inman Square)

            I love the people that work here. If you are in the neighborhood and need a quick lunch, definitely grab a slice or two. The cheese and pepperoni are quite good, more-or-less that old Boston Italian-style. Every day they also have three other slice options, one vegetarian, one “funky” with meat, and now a daily vegan slice as well. I always peek through the window to see what the daily slices are; it’s not always up my alley but when it is it’s superb.

            The options increase if you want a whole pie; not only do they have a range of vegetarian or meaty pizzas, this is one of the few places to get some interesting vegan pizzas (made with Daiya shreds) for those who avoid dairy. Again, not my thing, but those I have tried were surprisingly good. Don’t forget if you order a pie for dinner to go two doors down to Inman Square Wine and Spirits for a six-pack.

Otto (Harvard Square)

            For dairy eaters, Otto offers even more options on slices than All-Star. Their name is Italian for “8”, signifying the eight slices a pizza is usually cut into, but also the eight different choices they always have available for slices or whole pies. I used to eat here every day when I worked close by, and I was sad when they stopped making the mushroom and cauliflower pizza—it was so good, and completely unique—although its replacement was good too. But someone told me recently that it’s back on the menu again.

Honorable Mention

Angelo’s (Broadway across from the Main Library)

           

            Make no mistake, this isn’t “fine dining”. But they have been feeding CRLS students for decades. Back when I went to Rindge about 20 years ago, we weren’t even allowed to go to Angelo’s during school hours—you’d have to go to Mass House on Cambridge Street (now Mona Lisa’s, not bad but not worth writing about either) and wait in line your whole lunch break just to get a slice of the greasiest yellow half-way-between Greek and Italian pizza I’ve ever had, but definitely filling and worth it, although you’d be late to class and receive detention, for no fault of your own.

            As for Armando’s, we would sometimes sneak in for very-basic Italian-style slices and, more importantly, cheese fries—an aluminum foil pan filled with crisp-yet-soggy French fries covered in a blob of artery-clogging melted cheese. The best! Just squirt some ketchup on and go meet back with your friends.

            Nowadays the kids are allowed to go, and it will be packed at lunchtime with these normal working-class students, mostly African American, whose parents don’t give them $20 a day for coffee and sandwiches at Darwin’s which used to be a Laundromat and, although I love Darwin’s, I never would have gone there for lunch in high school. But Angelo’s is for the students; I don’t even think they’re open on the weekends. But “Lou” is still running the place, and if you see him, tell him, “Robo Cop sent me!”

            He’ll understand.

-G.T. Evans

America and the Socioæsthetic Consequences of the Victorian Ideal

         America is still living with the socioæsthetic consequences of the Victorian ideal, as my title suggests. This is not a matter concerning only art historians, although they may be the best equipped to sort out and verify some of the root causes that I have identified. I think the biggest impact of this phenomenon is how we, as men and women (and even children) view ourselves, indeed, feel about ourselves, in a pluralistic America that often is portrayed as far more liberal and open-minded than is really the case.

         Probably the greatest shame is that these ethnocentric aristo-bourgeois values still grip the mind and heart of every girl in our society when she reaches a certain age. The so-called liberation of women has done nothing to stop them from feeling one of their main obsessions must be an undying effort to measure up to a very specific set of images, which for some of them is literally impossible to live up to, and for many more, still incredibly difficult and frankly unhealthy.

         I wish to unequivocally state that having light skin and hair can in no way ever make anyone more (or less) beautiful. Too many “academic” and historical books still describe some individual as being “beautiful”. I would think that by now, in a scientific age, we should all know that there is absolutely no objective criterion for “beauty”. Perhaps this very word should be abolished from our vocabulary.

         Yet, beauty is very real, and is one of those precious things that make life worth living. And it should be understandable that, if we leave the judging up to an elite of pampered white heterosexual men, many tall thin and blonde themselves, the arrived-at consensus would be that tall, thin blonde women were, all else being equal, the highest standard of beauty.

         But all else is not equal, so why are these standards, even in subtle variations, still regarded by anyone else as valid? In Renaissance Italy, still widely regarded as the pinnacle of Western visual art, the ideal, with exceptions of course, tended more towards a full figure, still “white” if not always so pale, and more often incorporating hair that was dark and/or curly. If we subtract the factor of skin color, these characteristics may be closer to how a large proportion of adult women in the world actually look, at least where food is plentiful.

         Of course, to the aristocracy food is always plentiful, and the Mediterranean has long been a region where consumption of grain is abundant; we must consider these factors as Renaissance art in the Mediterranean was of course patronized by the aristocracy, powerful clergy and wealthy burghers. Part of the shift in outlook since the 19^th century reflects the growing influence of a self-conscious middle class.

         I believe, however, that much of the pendulum swing of power was also ethnic and regional, and started earlier, with Gothic, Dutch and Flemish artists such as Cranach. Their angle tended more towards realism, though, and we do not see much of the pseudoclassical idealization that affected England, and still less the Ottoman-inspired decadence that pervaded France, both in the 19^th century. At least the French for some time still favored curves, as the perverse decadence of Fragonard, the sensuousness of Ingres and other masters, down to the bawdy sensuousness of Renoir, can well attest. But as French painters became increasingly reliant on working-class prostitutes as models (and, one assumes, frequently as muses) they gradually came to reflect an underfed, underdeveloped and perhaps underage anatomy that somehow became instilled as something inherently sexy, a prejudice which still poisons our culture.

         For Paris somehow achieved a symbolic status as the center of art, culture and literature until being eclipsed by the British Empire, and for some time after, as post-Elizabethan England, like its model, Imperial Rome, has always been, dare I say it, lacking in true culture.

         But while France, from the time of its last few kings and even more so since the Revolution, has indulged every sort of vile licentiousness known to civilization, and held them up to the world as a matter of pride, England had for some time been psychically torn between these excesses of liberty and a prudish, holier-than-thou-could-be moralism. In a sense the Victorian age was almost an attempt at conciliation between these two, not that history is really ever so Hegelian as that, or simple. Still, there was a markéd effort to promote arts and culture, often aping classical and French models, but always modifying, with diligent discretion, all depictions of human anatomy and behavior.

        

         Aside from the limited ways in which female beauty was portrayed in this cultural environment, there is an even more striking contrast between the Victorians and the artists of Classical Greece: the reluctance to portray the beauty of the nude male body. The social consequences of this in our own time are highly significant, although they have been largely ignored.

         In many parts of this country, homosexual lifestyle and gender fluidity are increasingly tolerated, even to a point where questioning this acceptance can lead to social blacklisting in certain circles. Without question this is great progress towards respecting the rights, safety, and privacy of all individuals. However, even as the “enlightened liberals” learn to be less homophobic, it is clear that many of them still have ingrained homo-erotiphobia.

         I present this neologism not to downplay the prejudice that still affects many people whose orientation falls outside of what was once considered “mainstream”, but to show how, even as the mainstream expands to include them, they, and particularly their desire, are still fundamentally considered “other” in a crucial respect. I believe many open-minded heterosexuals can celebrate queer individuals in our world, and yet refuse to open themselves to an æsthetic, and even erotic, appreciation of the beauty of their own gender.

         In ancient Greece, this was not the case, as it was taken for granted that most men would seek a wife, many would have mistresses and affairs as well, but also a healthy number of these men, whose basic “straightness” was never in doubt, would either have homoerotic encounters, or at least attend athletic competitions for the spectacle of male nudity. Even in the Renaissance, while openly gay liaison may have been taboo, in many of the great works of art, the seductive potential of man’s body was never far from the surface. Indeed, even the figures of women were often based on male models, as it was (rightfully and wisely) considered scandalous for women, in that, more civilized age, to pose for artists.

         But that is a tale for another time. 

          @dGabeEvau

On the Decline of Culture

         The cultural dilemma of modernity is very real; this we must not deny. However, culture itself being necessarily a subjective metaphenomenon, most proposals for solving this crisis, and indeed almost every argument framing the question has proceeded from a narrow and exclusionary idea of what constitutes culture and which aspects or values must be preserved and why. This is understandable, if no less lamentable.

         But the existential threat to the preservation of humanity’s greatest collective asset, culture, is not to be found in some particular group of people; not in a particular race or ethnic group — when Western music was showing serious signs of decadence in the early twentieth century, African Americans and (largely Jewish) European immigrants to the United States revitalized that tradition and extended its influence unimaginably—nor in a particular religion different from that which shapes and determines our own cultural values — the historical mutual influence between the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is the foundation of our common heritage, while fascination with the unique religions native to India has inspired Western philosophy and literature (to say nothing of philology) since the Enlightenment—nor even is it to be found in a particular social or economic class — while it is true that the great bishops and lords of the Renaissance had terrific taste, in time new markets, from the rising bourgeoisie down to today’s consumer society have brought demand for new forms of cultural product when past perfections became formulaic and stale.

         No, these prejudiced arguments will not do. Which should not lead us to adopt a blind, dogmatic faith that democracy and pluralism will ensure the integrity of our cultural traditions, for in this is concealed a lurking danger. Out of an abundance of often conflicting values, esthetic, moral, and social, the threat is not any particular culture but the emergence of relativism, skepticism and a growing, if still unformulated and unconscious belief that culture itself has no value.

         Music matters, for one thing. I remember when I was a high school student at the dawn of the millennium in Cambridge, and Harvard Square had three major record stores, in addition to several mom-and-pop’s used-record stores. HMV stands out in my memory; not only could I find CDs by my favorite death metal bands, or purchase VHS tapes of Stanley Kubrick films that no self-respecting adult would ever watch again, there was also a closed-off classical section where one could enjoy baroque concerti in a soundproofed room while browsing through these great works by composers who were largely unfamiliar names to me at the time. That these seemingly disparate strains of culture can coexist in the digital capitalist world may seem strange, and to some may be discomfiting. Truly, this was a cultural buffet; and too many listeners were starving. Even Britney Spears said in a Rolling Stone interview around that time, “If you only listen to one type of music, I think you’re kind of a boring person.”

         At least the options were there. Now, HMV and Tower Records are gone and only Newbury Comics remains. And while vinyl is making a comeback, CDs are left in a cardboard box on the sidewalk. With Spotify, Youtube and other online sources of music streaming, the options seem greater than e’er before. And yet, these services tend to reinforce and curate a certain aesthetic homogeneity, while at the same time removing the more positive aspects of cultural identification that musical genres gave to different groups throughout the last few decades of the twentieth century.

         Far more lamentable are the atrophy of literary and historical standards. To these regards, Boston was once-upon-a-time the cultural centre of America. Some say the decline of New England was due to the influx of immigration that weakened the spiritual dominion of the Protestant Brahmins. In truth the WASP abdicated his tenuous hold on letters in the pursuit of wealth as the financial industrial apparatus set up shop. Immigration itself seems rather to have strengthened New York’s cultural foothold. Still, with so much rich history here in our own neighborhoods in Cambridge, Boston and Concord, it would serve us well to keep that tradition in mind, even as we could do more to celebrate ethnic communities and their rich heritage, for example in Cambridge, the Ethiopian and Chinese communities that descend from two of the oldest civilizations on Earth.

        

Above all, our city must expand our commitment to the underserved and marginalized beyond the narrow focus of sociology and political science, to embrace the seminal impact of African Americans, West Indians, Hispanics, Jews, the working class, and others upon the fabric of American society. We see a great insistence on the importance of science, technology and maths; indeed, they are useful. But Nietzsche said of gold that it was valuable because it was rare, and useless. The value of the arts and humanities cannot be measured, and though they are of great use to man, they are not easily subordinated to an utilitarian function. Therefore does the builder of cosmopolitan neoliberalism refuse them; or at most appropriates their vestige superficially as trappings for the abomination of desolation. 

@dGabeEvau

post-Election Day blues

post-Election Day blues
City Council, same old news
signs still up, shall soon make way
for pum'kin pie and golden hay

bright sun shining, brand new day
brisk November come what may
"Citizen, spare me your views
keep to yourself
post-Election Day blues

(now part of my collection of poems All Seasons )