pizza with a friend (lyn)

Shari is taking me out to lunch for my birthday.  On my way to meet her, I pass hordes of people dressed in green.  In a city of so many Jews (of which I’m one), I had no idea there could possibly be so many St. Patrick’s Day revelers.  The bars are overflowing with people.  The sidewalks are jam-packed.  People in absurd get-ups and painted faces are everywhere.  We see one guy walk into a beauty salon and ask if someone there can wax his head.

Shari and I are outcasts in our muted colors.  Not a stitch of green on me.  Shari choses an excellent brick-oven pizza place called Al Forno.  We meet around two and the restaurant is crowded, though not nearly as crowded as Doc Watson’s, the Irish Pub next door.  The outside line is so long, you would think Saint Patrick himself was bartending there.

We eat inside to avoid all the noise, not knowing then that two screeching toddlers would be more offending than the drunken crowd outside.  We split a salad and then order a thin-crusted, amazingly delicious tomato and basil pizza (I shamelessly eat two slices).  We don’t finish the pizza, so I take it home.  I know Alexander will be happy to see it when he arrives starving, later tonight.