Pool & Pizza

Pool is for the rich.
Pool is for the poor.

In the grimiest, rat-infested, warm beer, lousy food dive, you'll find a pool table with a couple of guys playing.

In the Central Park penthouse apartment, in the living room with an oriental rug, original Van Gogh and hundred-year-old wine, you'll find a pool table with a couple of guys playing.

It's a magic game to say the least, and I don't even like playing that much.  But respect is given where respect is due.  What else exists to serve the richest and the poorest simultaneously?

Enter the pizza place on 49th and 2nd.  The pizza isn't religious conversion epic good, but it's good and it's close to my office.  A quick look around and you'll see one of the two UPS drivers for this area.  (The other prefers the cookies at subway next door).  A couple of construction workers have every spice known to man at their table, but they keep passing the shakers to the suit&tie boys next to them.  Both tables are so engrossed in their lunch/conversation that they don't notice how profoundly different they are despite more-or-less sharing a meal.

Only in a place with a sensibly liberal attitude and a diverse population could you find a perfect (multi-cultural) salad at a pizza joint.  From the Italian who served it to me, the Mexican who made the pie, the Romanian girl who rang up the sale, the black guy who paid before me to the U.N. rep who held the door for me and the Albanian driving the cheese delivery truck... I am a happy New Yorker.