Photos for Saturday & Sunday Here
Saturday
I got the to Javits Center on Saturday morning just after 10 AM, and pretty quickly I realized that I should have gotten up earlier. There was an insane amount of people milling around, and the lineup in the Queuing Hall (still love that they actually call it that) was huge.
On Friday, I had noted that there were large gaps of space between the areas the line was moving in, making for about five columns of people snaking their way around the room. On Saturday, there were no gaps, and there were probably at least eight or nine columns, and they were moving veeery sloooowly. It took 46 minutes from the time I entered the Queuing Hall to the time I stepped onto the floor of the convention. On reflection, I guess that's actually not too bad, given the numbers.
The first thing I did was go straight for the Oni Press booth: I had decided to get the Scott Pilgrim books, having heard enough good things about them to want to give them a go. I ended up buying all five, after a moment's hestitation. The guy at the booth said "Just so you know, we'll probably be completely sold out of the newest volume before the day is out." I'm betting he was right. I did some looking online later, and apparently the newest volume is basically selling out everywhere.
After a few more minutes of wandering around, I hustled down to the panels area for my first panel of the day, which was "Writing for Comics and Other Media". I got there early to make sure I'd get in, plonked myself down on the floor beside some other folks, and pulled out the first Scott Pilgrim volume. I burned through it in the 25 minutes or so before the panel, and quite enjoyed it. Weird and funny -- perhaps a bit "indie cute" at times --and just overall entertaining.
Once we got into the room and got settled, the moderator spouted off some snappy patter and plugged his series of photo reference books for comic artists; a bit of verbal spam, but I didn't fault him, since, as he said, he was doing the panels for free, and the books are what lets him come to conferences and feed his kids. Also, he was short and to the point, and frankly the books looked good.
Once the panel itself got going, we were introduced to Christos Gage (who had been on the other Comics Writers panel on Friday) and Marv Wolfman, comics legend; Crisis on Infinite Earths, anyone? Heh. Anyway, it was a great panel, and a took a lot of little notes here and there with some good tips and information.
Once that panel was over, I stayed where I was, since the next panel in that room was the Comic Editors Panel. It was moderated by Glen Heardling, a Marvel and Wizard Magazine editor, and on the panel was Mike Marts (Batman editor for DC), Nick Lowe (Marvel editor), Scott Allie (Dark Horse Comics editor), and Rob Levin (VP of Editing at Top Cow). This was also a great panel, full of great info about how to approach editors, good ways for both artists and writers to present their work, and even some tips for those who are interested in becoming editors themselves. Lots of notes taken.
After the editing panel, I wandered the floor for a while again, going up and down the aisles of Artists' Alley, and trying (successfully) to keep myself from dropping a lot of money on commissions and original comic art pages. It wasn't easy, as there were some fantastic pieces both on display and in-progress.
I went back to the panels area for one last session that afternoon, "Breaking In and Staying In". This panel was held by Andy Schmidt (former Marvel editor, current IDW editor and the guy behind Comics Experience classes) and Michael Siglain (mondo DC editor). It was pretty good -- not quite as great as the editors' panel, but part of the reason for that was because the editors' panel had covered a lot of the same ground. That said, these two guys certainly had some great tips and suggestions for the audience. More notes!
It was just before 6 PM when the panel ended, and I was going to head home at this point, but decided to hit the floor for one last swoop. I ended up going by the Marvel booth, where they were just about to start a big giveaway session. There was quite a crowd shouting and waving for the items as he hadned them out. I didn't get any really cool stuff like figurines or shirts, but did get several comics, so cool enough!
Sunday
On Sunday, the line was a lot shorter, but it still took almost thirty minutes to get inside. There were tons of people with little kids, many of whom were in costumes. Lots of tiny superheroes, and even one wee Optimus Prime. Heh.
When I got inside, I wandered the floor for a bit, and while I was walking past the Penny Arcade booth, I stopped and said hello to Tycho, since I had scurried away without speaking to him after getting my sketch from Gabe on Friday. I told him the strip was great, and that I liked his writing, he said "thanks" and off I went.
I went by the EA booth and hopped on a Dragon Age demo again, this time playing all the way through the sequence they had set up. What an awesome game. I can't wait for it to come out this fall. The rep wouldn't, of course, commit to any specific release info, but he did say that if I can run Fallout 3 pretty well, that I "should" be able to play Dragon Age just fine. Yay!
I went downstairs for the writing panel, and got right up front so I'd be able to hear (this was a bigger room than the other I'd been in). As the various authors showed up, one suddenly caught my attention: Amber Benson, aka Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cool. I had read on Twitter that she was coming to the convention, but hadn't realized that she'd be on one of the panels I was going to (this one didn't list participants). It was a good panel, in general, and as usual I got some good notes, but having a huge panel of eight authors can be a bit detrimental ... too many people answering questions sometimes. Still, lots of notes again.
From that panel, I went to a Marvel 70th Anniversary panel tha was supposed to be about upcoming projects. There were a lot of Marvel creative types there, though mostly writers I think. One project that got mentioned early on was one called Pet Avengers, written by Chris Eliopoulos, all about various Marvel animals... wacky! The other highlight of the panel for me was that Bill Hader and Seth Meyer of SNL showed up as surprise guests: they're writing a Spider-Man one-shot called "The Short Halloween". At the end of the panel, I went up to Hader and told him that I really liked the Vicent Price Special skits, and hoped to see more. He and Meyer shared a look and a chuckle and he said "You might get one next week." Keen.
After that panel, I gave one last cruise around the show floor, and stopped by the Marvel booth for another crazy giveaway time, but ended up pushing my way out of the madness, as it got a little too intense for me to take, for the sake a free comic or two.
Anyway, it was a great weekend, and I had a lot of fun. My resolutions for next year's NYCC (October 2010) are to either get some of the guys from SJ to travel down here for the show so I've got some nerds to wander around with, and/or to have made some headway about getting some work in the industry so I can get in with a Pro pass. ;)
That's it for me from the NYCC!
New York Comic Con: Day 1
Photos for Friday Here!
To get to the show, I took the subway to Penn Station and walked down 34th St, heading for the Jacob K Javits Center. As I got closer to the Center, and further away from the main Midtown area, the crowds on the sidewalk started to thin out, and eventually, once I was a block or so away, I noticed that aside from one solitary woman, everyone walking the way I was were guys, in ones and twos, and all of them carrying backpacks or messenger bags. Clearly, the geeks were converging on their Mecca.
Once I got around the corner and saw the Center, I was pretty immediately impressed: The place is huge. I got inside, and found my way down to the main Attendee lineup, at around 11:20. The lineup was enormous, and it snaked around the room. I saw a few interesting costumes in the lines, including one rather well-done Kid Flash costume. Nice.
At one point, the crowd went nuts, and I looked around and saw that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were up at a window overlooking the queuing area. They came down later and did some sort of acrobatic fight demo in between a couple of the loops of lines, but I couldn't really see them...
Once the line had finally started to move slowly toward the door leading up the convention floor, a group of faux-leather-and-chainmail-dressed ladies swooped in on the geeks to hand out cards promoting some odd-looking Comedy Central show that seemed to revolve around some sort of generic fantasy setting. Hmm.
Finally getting in to look at the show floor was pretty cool. It's huge, colorful, and pretty overwhelming to the senses. I spent a good while just sort of wandering around, looking at various company booths, before finding my way to the booth shared by PvP and Penny Arcade. I stood by the PvP side of the booth and watched Scott Kurtz do a sketch in a guy's book, and then bought a Skull plushie and snapped a pic of Kurtz with it. I moved around to the other side of the booth to check out the Penny Arcade goodies, and ended up buying a "I Roll 20s" shirt. I then asked Gabe for a sktech, and totally failed to talk to Tycho.
Which brings me to an aside: I had a terrible tongue-tied shyness problem all day. I could barely stammer out "I like your work" to Kurtz and Gabe, and didn't even manage to say anything to Tycho. I had similar problems in the Marvel and DC booths, where I completely didn't talk to anyone, except when I got a sketch from Jim Starlin (a Darkseid face!), when I managed a quick "Love your work. Can I have a little Darkseid sketch? Thank you!" Sigh. It was like being a teenager again. I'll try to be more forward for the rest of the con.
Anyway, I did another sweep of the main "big company" area of the hall, and stopped at Rockstar's display to try GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS. It was pretty cool! Very much like an old top-down GTA game, but with slightly nicer graphics, and a gameplay sensibility more like the modern ones. I could see getting it, if I still had a DS.
Next up, I headed downstairs for my first panel of the weekend, which was about the business side of Webcomics, and featured Scott Kurtz, of PvP, and Robery Khoo, the business manager for Penny Arcade. It was quite interesting, though admittedly pretty far outside my area of knowledge. I just read webcomics, and don't really have any great desire to make one. Still, Kurtz and Khoo were both good at speaking on the subject, and Kurtz especially is a funny and charming speaker as well, so it was just fun to listen to him. I did enjoy it especially when the subject turned to webcomics vs print comics, and the idea that some "old media" artists have the opinion that making money from advertising or merchandising is somehow "cheap": Kurtz made the point that whether you're making your money by getting a pay cheque from a publisher or a comic syndicate, or from ads and merchandising directly, ads and merchandising are coming into play at some point. As Kurtz put it: "There's only one way to make money directly from your art. It's called counterfeiting."
After that panel, I got a tiny, expensive, but luckily pretty good, pizza, and then wandered the show for a little while again before the next panel I wanted to go to. During this short wander, I saw a lot of the dealers. They were selling a mind-numbing amount of comics and toys, and some of them had some crazy deals on trades and back issues. I might have to pick some stuff up; I think I'll wait until Sunday though. The other thing I saw at this point was the EA booth, where I found a playable demo for Dragon Age! I didn't have too long to park myself there, but I did fiddle with it for a few minutes, and it was pretty cool. Very Baldur's Gate with nice graphics, which is not a bad thing at all.
I got down to the Comic Writers on Comic Writing panel in time to get a seat near the front, and then we had to wait a bit for the writers to assemble, as some had to escape other panels and signings to get there. It was moderated by Peter Sanderson, a comics scholar, who works with the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Present at the panel were Tom DeFalco, Jimmy Palmiotti, Colleen Doran, Christos Gage, and Louise and Walter Simonson . It was a great panel, though I would have liked to have seen more time given to questions -- Sanderson had several questions that he asked each panel member to weigh in on, and with six of them, most of the hours went to answering 4 or 5 questions. Still, it was cool and I jotted down some notes about different comic writing styles, and a few helpful hints about dialogue writing.
By the time the writing panel was over, it was nearly 7:00, which was closing time for the main hall that evening. I was tempted to hang around for a DC Universe panel, and maybe even for the screening of the new Wonder Woman animated feature, but I quickly decided that it had been a long day, and it was time to head home. After all, the show runs from 10 AM until 8 PM on Saturday!
To get to the show, I took the subway to Penn Station and walked down 34th St, heading for the Jacob K Javits Center. As I got closer to the Center, and further away from the main Midtown area, the crowds on the sidewalk started to thin out, and eventually, once I was a block or so away, I noticed that aside from one solitary woman, everyone walking the way I was were guys, in ones and twos, and all of them carrying backpacks or messenger bags. Clearly, the geeks were converging on their Mecca.
Once I got around the corner and saw the Center, I was pretty immediately impressed: The place is huge. I got inside, and found my way down to the main Attendee lineup, at around 11:20. The lineup was enormous, and it snaked around the room. I saw a few interesting costumes in the lines, including one rather well-done Kid Flash costume. Nice.
At one point, the crowd went nuts, and I looked around and saw that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were up at a window overlooking the queuing area. They came down later and did some sort of acrobatic fight demo in between a couple of the loops of lines, but I couldn't really see them...
Once the line had finally started to move slowly toward the door leading up the convention floor, a group of faux-leather-and-chainmail-dressed ladies swooped in on the geeks to hand out cards promoting some odd-looking Comedy Central show that seemed to revolve around some sort of generic fantasy setting. Hmm.
Finally getting in to look at the show floor was pretty cool. It's huge, colorful, and pretty overwhelming to the senses. I spent a good while just sort of wandering around, looking at various company booths, before finding my way to the booth shared by PvP and Penny Arcade. I stood by the PvP side of the booth and watched Scott Kurtz do a sketch in a guy's book, and then bought a Skull plushie and snapped a pic of Kurtz with it. I moved around to the other side of the booth to check out the Penny Arcade goodies, and ended up buying a "I Roll 20s" shirt. I then asked Gabe for a sktech, and totally failed to talk to Tycho.
Which brings me to an aside: I had a terrible tongue-tied shyness problem all day. I could barely stammer out "I like your work" to Kurtz and Gabe, and didn't even manage to say anything to Tycho. I had similar problems in the Marvel and DC booths, where I completely didn't talk to anyone, except when I got a sketch from Jim Starlin (a Darkseid face!), when I managed a quick "Love your work. Can I have a little Darkseid sketch? Thank you!" Sigh. It was like being a teenager again. I'll try to be more forward for the rest of the con.
Anyway, I did another sweep of the main "big company" area of the hall, and stopped at Rockstar's display to try GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS. It was pretty cool! Very much like an old top-down GTA game, but with slightly nicer graphics, and a gameplay sensibility more like the modern ones. I could see getting it, if I still had a DS.
Next up, I headed downstairs for my first panel of the weekend, which was about the business side of Webcomics, and featured Scott Kurtz, of PvP, and Robery Khoo, the business manager for Penny Arcade. It was quite interesting, though admittedly pretty far outside my area of knowledge. I just read webcomics, and don't really have any great desire to make one. Still, Kurtz and Khoo were both good at speaking on the subject, and Kurtz especially is a funny and charming speaker as well, so it was just fun to listen to him. I did enjoy it especially when the subject turned to webcomics vs print comics, and the idea that some "old media" artists have the opinion that making money from advertising or merchandising is somehow "cheap": Kurtz made the point that whether you're making your money by getting a pay cheque from a publisher or a comic syndicate, or from ads and merchandising directly, ads and merchandising are coming into play at some point. As Kurtz put it: "There's only one way to make money directly from your art. It's called counterfeiting."
After that panel, I got a tiny, expensive, but luckily pretty good, pizza, and then wandered the show for a little while again before the next panel I wanted to go to. During this short wander, I saw a lot of the dealers. They were selling a mind-numbing amount of comics and toys, and some of them had some crazy deals on trades and back issues. I might have to pick some stuff up; I think I'll wait until Sunday though. The other thing I saw at this point was the EA booth, where I found a playable demo for Dragon Age! I didn't have too long to park myself there, but I did fiddle with it for a few minutes, and it was pretty cool. Very Baldur's Gate with nice graphics, which is not a bad thing at all.
I got down to the Comic Writers on Comic Writing panel in time to get a seat near the front, and then we had to wait a bit for the writers to assemble, as some had to escape other panels and signings to get there. It was moderated by Peter Sanderson, a comics scholar, who works with the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Present at the panel were Tom DeFalco, Jimmy Palmiotti, Colleen Doran, Christos Gage, and Louise and Walter Simonson . It was a great panel, though I would have liked to have seen more time given to questions -- Sanderson had several questions that he asked each panel member to weigh in on, and with six of them, most of the hours went to answering 4 or 5 questions. Still, it was cool and I jotted down some notes about different comic writing styles, and a few helpful hints about dialogue writing.
By the time the writing panel was over, it was nearly 7:00, which was closing time for the main hall that evening. I was tempted to hang around for a DC Universe panel, and maybe even for the screening of the new Wonder Woman animated feature, but I quickly decided that it had been a long day, and it was time to head home. After all, the show runs from 10 AM until 8 PM on Saturday!
Fleur de Sel, Hedda Gabbler, and the freedom to be wrong
So we went to Fleur de Sel for lunch for restaurant week, and it was awesome. I would love to do more during restaurant week, but they often have the deals only for lunch service, and not at all on the weekend. Some places are doing 3 course recession specials on an ongoing basis, or doing pre-theatre specials, if you are seated before 6:30. All worth checking out...
We saw Hedda Gabbler at the Roundabout Theatre and man, did it stink. I do like Mary Louise Parker, but the play seems so unremittingly bleak. We got discount tickets thank God, but I'm still happy I saw it - you learn as much from bad theatre as you do from good, and the actors certainly did a valiant job. Can't wait to see William H Macy in Speed the Plow, apparently he's replaced Jeremy Piven until March. That play was great with Piven, but I am so excited to see it again with a new spin!
I got some headshots done this weekend, and I'm really happy with them so far. The woman was very gracious and patient, and made a huge effort to put me at ease. She also took some handsome shots of Baxter, and he's now booked for a spot on Law & Order with his headshot. Kidding, but she did get some fun shots of the kitties. I don't think I'll ever forget her out on the street with me, camera in hand, singing "oh, we got trouble, right here in river city!" and Nelly's Hot in Here. Demented sense of humour, I loved it...
School has been pretty liberating in some respects. I've learned that it's okay to suck at some things, to stumble and make mistakes. I was in dance class yesterday, and the instructor made us get up and demonstate some steps. I was counting out loud while doing them, and everyone started giggling. I told them all to simmer down, and then we had a good laugh. I don't get uptight about struggling through things as much now, and a lot of freedom comes with that. I don't turn myself inside out when my acting teacher doesn't like what I do, because we both know that this is the place to experiment and fail, and take risks, and eventually succeed. It is by far the best thing I've learned at school, or anywhere for that matter, in a long time.
We saw Hedda Gabbler at the Roundabout Theatre and man, did it stink. I do like Mary Louise Parker, but the play seems so unremittingly bleak. We got discount tickets thank God, but I'm still happy I saw it - you learn as much from bad theatre as you do from good, and the actors certainly did a valiant job. Can't wait to see William H Macy in Speed the Plow, apparently he's replaced Jeremy Piven until March. That play was great with Piven, but I am so excited to see it again with a new spin!
I got some headshots done this weekend, and I'm really happy with them so far. The woman was very gracious and patient, and made a huge effort to put me at ease. She also took some handsome shots of Baxter, and he's now booked for a spot on Law & Order with his headshot. Kidding, but she did get some fun shots of the kitties. I don't think I'll ever forget her out on the street with me, camera in hand, singing "oh, we got trouble, right here in river city!" and Nelly's Hot in Here. Demented sense of humour, I loved it...
School has been pretty liberating in some respects. I've learned that it's okay to suck at some things, to stumble and make mistakes. I was in dance class yesterday, and the instructor made us get up and demonstate some steps. I was counting out loud while doing them, and everyone started giggling. I told them all to simmer down, and then we had a good laugh. I don't get uptight about struggling through things as much now, and a lot of freedom comes with that. I don't turn myself inside out when my acting teacher doesn't like what I do, because we both know that this is the place to experiment and fail, and take risks, and eventually succeed. It is by far the best thing I've learned at school, or anywhere for that matter, in a long time.
Upright Citizen's Brigade, Chinatown, Doubt
So here I am with my first post! (This is Suzy btw). Last week I did a 4 day intensive course at Upright Citizen's Brigade, their intro to improv 101. I learned a lot, but man, was it tough. You have habits all your life, and then someone asks you to break them to do a scene. At the start of the course all our scenes were combative, fighting scenes, where each person was struggling for status, or control. By the end, though, I think we all learned to open our minds a bit, let go of our agendas, and just wing it. Improv is a fantastic skill to have, but it's not easy. As part of our course requirement, we were all asked to attend UCB improv shows during the week. I saw 5 long-form improv shows on the Tuesday night, and found it phenomenal. Having done my own improv before, I saw their struggles and appreciated all the fantastic work they did. Those people were really creative, really in tune with each other. The way they picked up on each other's ideas was amazing. I will definitely see more UCB shows in the future.
After our own student UCB show (so nervous, but so glad I did it) Chris and I headed to Chinatown, in search of good takeout. As insane as it sounds, we can't get good chinese takeout in Brooklyn Heights. Wo Hop was good, but I think the search is still on for great takeout. We just haven't hit enough Chinatown places yet :) Also of note; when walking through Chinatown, several people would come up to us and just murmur different sales pitches, in these crazy low key voices. For example: "Gucci purse, Fendi purse, Coach purse?" or "Perfumes, Men's cologne, scarves?" So weird!
On Monday, I went to see a matinee of Doubt by myself. It was fantastic. Not the type of movie for everyone, but I loved it. Just watching the actors spin circles around each other in different intricate scenes had me totally mesmerized. The technical level of their performances was pretty inspiring. It made me want to study and learn more in my own courses. Speaking of which, they start next week. And so does NYC restaurant week. We've got reservations at River Cafe and Fleur de Sel for lunch... I think it's $26 for 3 courses prix fix at lunch... can't wait!
After our own student UCB show (so nervous, but so glad I did it) Chris and I headed to Chinatown, in search of good takeout. As insane as it sounds, we can't get good chinese takeout in Brooklyn Heights. Wo Hop was good, but I think the search is still on for great takeout. We just haven't hit enough Chinatown places yet :) Also of note; when walking through Chinatown, several people would come up to us and just murmur different sales pitches, in these crazy low key voices. For example: "Gucci purse, Fendi purse, Coach purse?" or "Perfumes, Men's cologne, scarves?" So weird!
On Monday, I went to see a matinee of Doubt by myself. It was fantastic. Not the type of movie for everyone, but I loved it. Just watching the actors spin circles around each other in different intricate scenes had me totally mesmerized. The technical level of their performances was pretty inspiring. It made me want to study and learn more in my own courses. Speaking of which, they start next week. And so does NYC restaurant week. We've got reservations at River Cafe and Fleur de Sel for lunch... I think it's $26 for 3 courses prix fix at lunch... can't wait!
Lucali's
Finally, after several attempts, some lousy results and some decent-but-not-amazing results, Suzy and I have found a really fantastic pizza place in our area: Lucali's at 575 Henry Street.
We walked the fifteen minutes or so to the restaurant around 7pm on a Saturday night, only to find a small group of hopefuls standing around outside. In January. In temperatures well-below freezing. Yikes. On the one hand we were worried about a long wait, while on the other hand, we were hopeful that this meant the pizza was good.
We managed to get the attention of the hostess, left a name and cell number, and were told it would be "about an hour". We opted to wander the area a bit, rather than just stand there in the cold. We decided to get a bottle of wine to have with supper (Lucali's sells no alcohol, but has a reasonable $4 corking fee). We got a bottle of Spanish Rojo, the name of which escapes me, on the recommendation of the store owner as a good rustic wine to have with pizza.
After a lengthy wander through the aisles of a nearby market to kill some time (and warm up), we headed back to the restaurant around 8pm, roughly 45 minutes after we left our name. As we approached, we could see that the crowd out front had gotten bigger. We settled onto a bench to wait, hoping that the estimate we got from the hostess would be accurate. It was not.
Several groups of 4 or 5 were hustled in over the next twenty minutes, including one group that was under the name "Uncle Joe". A group of four who were huddled near us (and had been waiting there outside since 7pm, after calling ahead at 6!) said that they were pretty sure that the "Uncle Joe" party had shown up spur-of-the-moment, but had gotten in nearly right away anyway. That Uncle Joe must have some pull...
Anyway, after finally getting inside at around 8:40 (so cold!), we were seated at a nice table near the back, well away from the door and the icy wind, which was nice. We were right in front of the--well, I wouldn't call it a kitchen, per say ... how about "work area"--where the pizzas are assembled. Three or four guys were making pizzas and calzones and sliding them in and out of the large, wood-fired brick oven. The place has a nice atmosphere, simple but not cheap, and the whole room was lit by a couple of dim ceiling lights, plus candles on the tables and on the counters of the cooks' and servers' work areas. It was dim, but not at all unpleasant.
Our server opened our wine for us, and proceeded to give us the low-down on the food -- no menus here (which I guess is part of why the dim lighting wasn't an issue). Lucali's serves one size of pizza: a large thin crust jobbie that's enough for two; and two sizes of calzone: a "smaller" one that's enough for two, and a large one, which is apparently for bigger groups to share. The server also rattled off a respectable, if not overly large, list of toppings, most of which are $3 per to add and a few (like artichokes) that are $8 per. We ordered a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, garlic, and artichokes.
We had a little wine, and our pizza arrived very quickly, probably no more than ten minutes. They have meetal racks that let them put the metal pizza trays over the candles on the tables, to help keep it a warm, and to free up some real estate on the table, no doubt.
The pizza was absolutely fantastic. It was, of course, hot but not so hot that the cheese was in danger of doing damage to my mouth. It was very, and no matter which topping(s) I was getting with each bite, it was great, simply because the basic pizza itself--the crust, sauce, and cheese--was incredible. The sauce had a great, balanced flavour, with noticeable Italian spices that were never being overwhelming to the rest of the pizza. And though it was a thin crust, there was still a hint of chewiness, even around alot of the edges. Suzy said instantly "This is it." adn I knew what she meant: We have finally found the great pizza we were looking for since August.
In the end, the meal ended up costing $42 dollars with the corking fee, tax, and tip, which would put the pizza itself at around $30, I guessed. So, while it was almost certainly the most expensive pizza I've ever had, it wasn't a bad price for a great meal for two, and realistically it was only about 50% more than a large pizza with several toppings from any random pizza chain, and it was, conservatively, 500% better. Only the deep dish we had in Chicago comes close (but they are such different approaches to pizza I'd hesitate to compare them directly).
So in summary: We walked for thirty minutes and waited for an hour and a half (half of that outside) in January to eat a $30 pizza at a restuarant that doesn't sell alcohol -- oh, and only takes cash. But, man, we will be going back there again while we are living in NYC, no doubt many, many times.
That said, next time, we'll call to put our names down before we get there. Especially in the winter. Brr.
We walked the fifteen minutes or so to the restaurant around 7pm on a Saturday night, only to find a small group of hopefuls standing around outside. In January. In temperatures well-below freezing. Yikes. On the one hand we were worried about a long wait, while on the other hand, we were hopeful that this meant the pizza was good.
We managed to get the attention of the hostess, left a name and cell number, and were told it would be "about an hour". We opted to wander the area a bit, rather than just stand there in the cold. We decided to get a bottle of wine to have with supper (Lucali's sells no alcohol, but has a reasonable $4 corking fee). We got a bottle of Spanish Rojo, the name of which escapes me, on the recommendation of the store owner as a good rustic wine to have with pizza.
After a lengthy wander through the aisles of a nearby market to kill some time (and warm up), we headed back to the restaurant around 8pm, roughly 45 minutes after we left our name. As we approached, we could see that the crowd out front had gotten bigger. We settled onto a bench to wait, hoping that the estimate we got from the hostess would be accurate. It was not.
Several groups of 4 or 5 were hustled in over the next twenty minutes, including one group that was under the name "Uncle Joe". A group of four who were huddled near us (and had been waiting there outside since 7pm, after calling ahead at 6!) said that they were pretty sure that the "Uncle Joe" party had shown up spur-of-the-moment, but had gotten in nearly right away anyway. That Uncle Joe must have some pull...
Anyway, after finally getting inside at around 8:40 (so cold!), we were seated at a nice table near the back, well away from the door and the icy wind, which was nice. We were right in front of the--well, I wouldn't call it a kitchen, per say ... how about "work area"--where the pizzas are assembled. Three or four guys were making pizzas and calzones and sliding them in and out of the large, wood-fired brick oven. The place has a nice atmosphere, simple but not cheap, and the whole room was lit by a couple of dim ceiling lights, plus candles on the tables and on the counters of the cooks' and servers' work areas. It was dim, but not at all unpleasant.
Our server opened our wine for us, and proceeded to give us the low-down on the food -- no menus here (which I guess is part of why the dim lighting wasn't an issue). Lucali's serves one size of pizza: a large thin crust jobbie that's enough for two; and two sizes of calzone: a "smaller" one that's enough for two, and a large one, which is apparently for bigger groups to share. The server also rattled off a respectable, if not overly large, list of toppings, most of which are $3 per to add and a few (like artichokes) that are $8 per. We ordered a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, garlic, and artichokes.
We had a little wine, and our pizza arrived very quickly, probably no more than ten minutes. They have meetal racks that let them put the metal pizza trays over the candles on the tables, to help keep it a warm, and to free up some real estate on the table, no doubt.
The pizza was absolutely fantastic. It was, of course, hot but not so hot that the cheese was in danger of doing damage to my mouth. It was very, and no matter which topping(s) I was getting with each bite, it was great, simply because the basic pizza itself--the crust, sauce, and cheese--was incredible. The sauce had a great, balanced flavour, with noticeable Italian spices that were never being overwhelming to the rest of the pizza. And though it was a thin crust, there was still a hint of chewiness, even around alot of the edges. Suzy said instantly "This is it." adn I knew what she meant: We have finally found the great pizza we were looking for since August.
In the end, the meal ended up costing $42 dollars with the corking fee, tax, and tip, which would put the pizza itself at around $30, I guessed. So, while it was almost certainly the most expensive pizza I've ever had, it wasn't a bad price for a great meal for two, and realistically it was only about 50% more than a large pizza with several toppings from any random pizza chain, and it was, conservatively, 500% better. Only the deep dish we had in Chicago comes close (but they are such different approaches to pizza I'd hesitate to compare them directly).
So in summary: We walked for thirty minutes and waited for an hour and a half (half of that outside) in January to eat a $30 pizza at a restuarant that doesn't sell alcohol -- oh, and only takes cash. But, man, we will be going back there again while we are living in NYC, no doubt many, many times.
That said, next time, we'll call to put our names down before we get there. Especially in the winter. Brr.
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