Jacob Lawrence Changed the Frame of How We Look at History

Jacob Lawrence

Struggle: From History of the American People

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA

Through April 26, 2020

(Click images for larger size)

One of my mantras when teaching or discussing is that how it looks depends upon who is viewing it. Change the frame, you change the game.

In his lifetime, few African Americans were as acclaimed as Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000). He grew up in Harlem and because he launched his first major show when he was just 23, he is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance even though it had faded by then. That’s just one of the many ways in which black artists have been stuffed into convenient boxes. Call it a white frame. Jacob Lawrence powerfully depicted the conditions of black folks, but he was also an American artist. Like many people of color, he was at his incisive best when he challenged America to live up to its own ideals.

Between 1949-54, Lawrence spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library, where he researched American history and looked at how it was illustrated in textbooks. He finished his tasks in the same year the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in its landmark Brown v. the Board of Education decision. Lawrence began to paint his version of history: 30 panels that focused on American history from the Revolutionary War era through to the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. His paintings covered the big events, but often from the perspective of individuals pushed to the margins: slaves, Native Americans, and soldiers who marched behind those glorified in textbooks. Change the frame and you change the game.

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem has reunited the panels for the first time in 60 years–or at least most of them. Five panels are either missing or too fragile to travel. By the 1950s, abstraction was all the rage. Lawrence was affected by the movement, but his panels are a distinct hybrid of a lot of things, including representationalism, cubism, and expressionism. You won’t stand before them trying to figure out what you’re gazing upon. Instead, something more profound is at work. The figures are recognizable as human beings, but Lawrence did not paint them true to life because he wanted viewers to focus upon other things. There is a theme that runs through the series and it is painted red, a reminder that blood was shed. The burning question is, whose blood?

The first panel (top) is of Patrick Henry exhorting a crowd in ways reminiscent of John Calvin preaching from a high pulpit. He asks if life and liberty must be purchased by slavery and chains. You will notice that blood drips from a high, but upon whom is it falling? We need to talk about that. Two panels later, we see a panel captioned “Rally Mohawks!” but these “Indians” are white Sons of Liberty dumping tea into Boston Harbor–their disguise a sort of red minstrelsy. Ah, but four of the six Iroquois tribes–one of which was the Mohawks–fought on the side of the British during the American Revolution. And why not? It was the colonists who warred on them, not the British Crown.  

Nor does Lawrence allow us to forget that slave blood is part

of the story of American struggle. The second panel takes a look at the Boston Massacre. In legend, the first colonist to die was Cripus Attucks, a man of African and Native American heritage. Panel 5 was inspired by a 1773 petition to Massachusetts colony. A man known to us only as Felix was critical of fellow African Americans willing to take up arms. He noted that his people had no property, wives, city, or country.

 

Poor whites also come in for sympathy. His summer soldiers panel depicts those who actually bore arms, not the rhetorical patriots that Thomas Paine decried. They suffered badly for their patriotism. It was their blood that flowed in pitched battles with Hessians. We get the sense that violence is endemic in the white soul in Lawrence’s powerful; peek at the Aaron Burr/Alexander Hamilton duel. Burr appears only in shadow, but with his gun trained on the dying Hamilton. Blood again in the Battle of New Orleans, a skirmish that actually too place after the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 had been signed. Black blood is drawn in Lawrence’s look at an 1810 Georgia slave rebellion, and we know that Native blood will flow in his concluding panel on west of the Appalachians expansion. (See below for these two panels.)

This is simply an amazing collection. All of the action, drama, and heroics associated with the birth of the United States is there. Lawrence’s colors are bold, his figures vigorous, and the struggles intense. I can do no better than to quote myself to end this review: Change the frame and you change the game.

 

Rob Weir

Gordon Parks Exhibit is Masterful

 Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950

Addison Gallery of American Art

Andover, MA

Through April 26, 2020

I’ve long had ambivalent feelings about Black History Month. First, it’s held in February, the shortest month. Second, it makes it seem as if black history is a diversion to be considered briefly and then pushed back to the margins. In the spirit of extending contemplation, let’s consider two exhibits that are so good that you will dwell upon them early and often.

First, there is a stunning display of photograph from Gordon Parks (1912-2006) at the Addison Gallery on the campus of Phillips Andover Academy. One might quibble over the identity

of the greatest African American photographer, but Parks is probably the most famous. He was self-taught and was just coming into his own around 1940. This was a heady time for working photographers. Parks began by shooting portraits and documenting street life in the Twin Cities and Chicago. He excelled at both. That’s not as easy as it sounds. As anyone who has tried to do serious camera work can attest, there is a world of difference between the formal demands of portraiture and capturing the spontaneous activities associated with everyday work, play, and domesticity.

Parks faced the additional challenge of making portraits of black subjects. He used back and white film stock, a medium that required careful balancing of light and shadow, especially the latter. Shadow is often the key to making a dramatic photo, but it takes skill to give enough shadow for impact but not so much as to lose definition in dark faces. Parks’ portraits were indeed masterful. They also imbued his subjects with great dignity, a quality he much preferred to whimsy. He brought that same approach to his street scenes. Some of those images are playful, but he always maintained the subjectivity of the people in his viewfinder. That is, they are unique individuals, not archetypal characters.

 Parks drew the attention and admiration of Roy Stryker, the powerful head of the New Deal’s photographical division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Government work was a good gig to secure, even in the waning days of the Great Depression. Parks’ images can certainly stand up to those of more heralded white shutterbugs such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, or Margaret Bourke-White. He was also able to parlay his FSA assignments into new ones with the Office of War Information.

When World War II ended, new opportunities arose, including commercial promotional work for Standard Oil. Steady work was also available for picture-heavy publications such as Life, Look, Ebony, and Glamour. As much as by circumstance as by plan, Parks documented the lives and deeds of black luminaries who happened to be friends: from Langston Hughes to Marian Anderson and Richard Wright.

Again, though, he had an eye for dignifying subjects powerful and humble. Perhaps his most famous shot was his version of American Gothic, an African American cleaning woman at the US Capitol standing in front of a large American flag with a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Ironic commentary was another Parks signature. In the case of American Gothic, few today realize that Parks got to know Ella Watson, his subject. He took many other pictures of Watson­–some of which appear in the exhibit­–and documented her heroism. Although she made just $2000 per year, Watson–a deeply religious woman–supported an adopted daughter and several grandchildren on her earnings.

Parks would go on to become a major voice speaking out against racial injustice. The Addison Gallery exhibit presagesreally sees– the humanity within a person, it becomes untenable to countenance violations of their personhood. The New Tide is a title suggestive of Parks’ career and political arc. It is a very powerful and large exhibit. Make your way to Andover to see it; be prepared to surrender to its might.

this aspect of his career in a subtle but powerful way. Once one sees–

Rob Weir

Sorrow to Anger: Wasted Money = Wasted Lives

Terrorist cell

 

Cancer cell

      Which is more dangerous?

 Something happened to make me break my non-politics diet: a friend died way too early. Out of respect for the family I will not mention her name, but the cause was breast cancer. My shift from sorrow to righteous anger compels me to name those complicit in her passing: the military and fat-cat plutocrats.

I was once believed that cancer would be vanquished by now. When I was a child, there was nothing America couldn’t do. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but overall optimism prevailed. It took a hit during the Vietnam War, but there were still Great Society programs that worked on domestic shortcomings. That America still built highways, parks, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, dams, and sewers. It didn’t take care of all its citizens as well as it should, but I dared hope it would tackle civil rights and gender discrimination; after all, it protected union members, the elderly, and the poor. It was an America that believed in science and had already eradicated polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, and smallpox. Women seldom died in childbirth and they at last gained access to birth control options. TB was scary, but it was no longer an automatic death sentence. With DNA sequencing underway surely we were on the cusp of wiping out horrible diseases like ALS, Alzheimer’s, TB, and cancer.

What happened instead was precisely what President Eisenhower warned against in 1961: the military-industrial complex took over. America became a nation of tin soldiers, expensive toys, and war profiteers. I shall not add my name to the rolls of those who pretend to love our camouflaged warriors. When I see someone in uniform, I see wasted money that ought to go to something productive, not destructive. I don’t believe soldiers are protecting my “freedom.” I read history books; I know that the US military hasn’t won a war since 1945. Spare me your “what about” questions. They are like tin soldiers: hollow. Every U.S. military engagement since World War II has had the net effect of making the world less safe. This includes the “war on terror,” which has created more enemies than it has eliminated. I cannot say, “Thank you for your service.”

If only the tin soldiers were the root cause of waste. That dishonor goes to the Pentagon, the plutocrats, and the politicians who stir the Kool-Aid the masses drink.  Who else drew up military budgets that (in adjusted dollars) rivals what was spent during World War II? Who profits from all manner of broken toys: Strategic Defense Initiative (aka/ “Star Wars”), stealth helicopters, laser cannons, the neutron bomb, the Future Combat System …? More than $100 billion has been spent since 1995 on junk that doesn’t work. Yet we still build tanks that can’t survive IEDs and aircraft carriers that are sitting ducks in the age of long-range missiles and drones. The United States has 170,000 troops stationed in 150 foreign nations. That’s not a typo. There are more than 55,000 in Japan and some 35,000 in Germany, two nations wealthy enough to take care of themselves. Explain why we have troops in Australia, Britain, Italy, or Spain. We even have some in The Netherlands–presumably not to protect its “coffee shops” or brothels. When did the Department of Defense revert back to the Department of War? Why aren’t troops deployed at home rather than abroad? Why do we spend more on war than the next seven top national defense budgets combined?

This travesty exists because military suppliers make a financial killing. Do Connecticut politicians care if we need another electric submarine as long as the bases are hiring? Will a South Carolinian pol ever call for reduced training at Parris Island? Yet even they are the tools of the billionaire investors whose pockets are lined by the death industry. A non-woke electorate allows the power elite to set economic priorities and that means more guns and to hell with butter. The electorate was asleep at the wheel during the Obama administration when it buzzed through $763 billion on defense in 2009. The Orange Fool now in office wants to go even higher, though the national debt is over a trillion dollars.

This pisses me off. An economy centered on the death industry also kills off the battlefield. It means there are only crumbs to rebuild infrastructure–like clean drinking water–or invest in science. In 2019, the National Institute of Health budgeted $39 billion; the Pentagon got $686 billion. No wonder we’ve not cured cancer. If you’re keeping score, there were 1,015 American terrorism-related deaths in 2019. (All the terrorists were homegrown.) By stark contrast, 606,880 Americans died of cancer. My friend passed decades before her time because America did not keep faith with her. My faith in America has become agnostic on a good day. Today is not a good day.

The Portable Veblen a Zany Romp

The Portable Veblen (2016)

By Elizabeth McKenzie

Penguin Books, 428 pages.

★★★★

Once in a blue moon a novel tumbles from my to-be-read pile, leaps into my hands, and can’t be put down until I finish. Such a book is Elizabeth McKenzie’s utterly charming The Portable Veblen. It is a romantic comedy, but one with more brains than Viktor Frankenstein’s lab. Get this: Its characters include squirrels, two sets of dysfunctional parents, a doctor who wants to be a big-shot player, Big Pharma, and an eccentric young woman named Veblen. And, yes, she is named for the economist Thorstein Veblen, whom she idolizes, though she has no idea why her parents saddled her with such a weird first name. Not that there’s much her mother, father, or step-father do that makes a whole lot of sense.

This is a hard book to review, as almost anything I say will sound ludicrous. Go with the strangeness. Imagine the oddness of A Confederacy of Dunces but with a sweet central character and a mere soupçon of its misanthropy. Veblen Amundsen-Houda is a child of nature in her late 20s who really thinks that a squirrel is trying to communicate with her. She lives in a quirky little cottage in Palo Alto, does some translation work, and is a “freelance self.” Her boyfriend, 34-year-old Paul Vreeland, a neurologist, has just proposed to her. But this is not your standard wedding plan makes people crazy kind of story. There’s more than enough actual craziness with which to contend.

Both Veblen and Paul are the offspring of good hippies/bad parents. Veblen’s mother, Melanie, has an IQ of 185 and the narcissism to go with it. You name the subject and Melanie has an opinion about it, which she shares without filters whether or not you want it. Her biological father, Rudgear, is an institutionalized crank, and her step father, Linus, a calm and well-meaning person who embodies the term “ineffectual.” Veblen’s relentless optimism drives her mother nuts. Melanie worries that her daughter might have some of her father’s insanity genes but then again, Melanie can find fault in everything and everyone, including herself.

Paul is also the product of offbeat parents. Bill and Marion Vreeland are former nudists and far too flaky to settle gently into middle-class life. Paul also has a mentally challenged younger brother, Justin, who does highly inappropriate things that Paul thinks are enabled by his lenient parents. Paul is akin to Alex in the 1980s sitcom Family Ties. He is so desperate to escape his past that he has become serious and strait-laced. He’s quite smart, though, and has invented the Pneumatic Turbo Skull Punch, a device that can relieve traumatic brain pressure. Because of its potential for combat triage, Paul has been courted by the military and Hutmacher, the Big Pharma firm that procures all things medical for the Department of Defense. Paul senses the opportunity for wealth and influence, yet he loves Veblen for her innocence and eccentricity.   

Some matches are made in heaven, but that of Veblen and Paul seems more like it was imagined as a Saturday Night Live sketch. Or maybe not; Elizabeth McKenzie’s writing is much funnier and incisive that anything on SNL in the past few decades. So how can a smart, kind-hearted, free spirit like Veblen–who believes in her namesake’s withering critiques of the leisure class–expect to find marital bliss with a Type-A go getter who hates squirrels, desires a conspicuous consumption lifestyle, has an occasional explosive temper, and seeks to tame her wildness? Yeats once wrote, “the center cannot hold,” and that’s a pretty good way of expressing the coming crisis.

Remember, though, that this is a romantic comedy. I cannot do justice to how any of this plays out without spoiling the fun, so I won’t try. One tantalizing tidbit: key moment involves butt dialing, a squirrel, and a motel room. The Portable Veblen is where family dynamics, social science, and absurdism overlap. It is both poignant and laugh-out-loud hysterical. In a twisted–very twisted–way it’s also about taking the back roads to moral clarity.

Give this one a test read. If nothing else, you will conclude that it is so offbeat that it beggars comparison. My guess is that, like me, you will find it irresistible. You may also find yourself unexpectedly smiling the next time a squirrel raids your bird feeder!

Rob Weir

1917 is an Absolute Masterpiece

1917 (2019)

Directed by Sam Mendes

Universal Pictures, 119 minutes, R (war violence)

★★★★★

The Friday before the Oscars I confessed I hadn’t seen most of the films up for Best Picture, but it would be okay by me if Parasite won. Irony is often a harsh mistress. Less than 24 hours later, I saw 1917. Parasite is a superb movie, but 1917 is a masterpiece, and I’m talking masterpiece in the sense of being the first English-speaking movie of the 21^st century that warrants that label.

Director Sam Mendes’ take on World War One builds upon Peter Jackson’s 2018 restoration They Shall Not Grow Old to give us a look inside the trenches that feels and looks right. I’m sure there are some military uniform and hardware cranks out there who will tell us that Mendes got some minor details wrong, but 1917 is intended to be more metaphorical than historical. It has been many a moon since I have seen on the screen such a powerful depiction of the utter senselessness of war.

On the surface, 1917 is one of the simplest plots imaginable: a race-to-beat-the-clock movie. In April of 1917, aerial reconnaissance revealed that a German withdrawal from their position was a faux retreat, a strategic pullback designed to lure British troops into a deadly trap. This left just 24 hours to get a message to the new front to call off an assault on what is assumed to be a lightly defended German position. More than 1,600 lives depend on a stand-down message getting to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) before the lads go “over the top.” In World War One, that meant summiting their trenches to charge across “no-man’s land” toward the enemy. When barbed wire, mines, machine guns, and heavy artillery were in play, “butchery” would be a more accurate term than “warfare.”

Two men are charged with delivering the message, Lance Corporal Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), the latter of whom is especially motivated as his brother Joseph (Richard Madden) is a member of a unit in extreme harm’s way. If this sounds like a thriller, be assured it’s nothing that simple. There is neither glory nor honor in a surreal quest that begins by leaving a safe position and finding a path through a no-man’s land filled with blood-drawing wire, burnt out tanks, decaying horses, deep mortar holes, and maggot-ridden corpses. All of that just to jump into rat-filled German trenches presumed to be enemy-free. Survive that, reconnoiter every tree and farm house one encounters, cross a broken-bridged canal whose opposing bank has buildings in which the enemy can hide, make one’s way through a sniper-infested burning town, endure untold other obstacles, and hope to arrive before soldiers rush into the teeth of certain death.

Mendes’ direction is flawless, Lee Smith’s editing is nothing short of brilliant, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography a dazzling array of contrasts between human-made ugliness, natural beauty, darkness, shadowy light, and the utter mundanity of death. Novelist Tim O’Brien wrote in The Things They Carried, “It can be argued … that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty…. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope….” If that line baffles, watch the journey through the burning carnage of the northern French village of Écoust-Saint-Mein and you will understand. I also cannot imagine a more perfect ending for the film than the feather with which Mendes knocks us senseless.

Chapman and MacKay are not household names, but Mendes choose them wisely. In keeping with contrasting imagery, he plays the baby-faced Chapman off against the blank-faced MacKay to convey wordlessly themes of innocence and hopefulness versus wrung-out jadedness and amoral resignation. (I would not care to be in a poker match with MacKay!) By avoiding cinematic idols, we see the character within the character rather than fixating on celebrities in uniform. It is all the more effective in reminding us that the tools of war are usually ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. When World War One ended, much of the Western world wrestled with cynicism. What, it was asked, was the point of all the bloodshed and destruction? An old Edwin Starr song answered the question of “War, what is it good for?” Response: “Absolutely nothing.”

Oscar got it wrong once again. I’m sure that Mendes and his crew can take solace in having won most of the other big awards–from American Film Institute honors, critics and producers awards, and the Golden Globes. We the viewers ought to ask hard questions about why the “war to end all wars” was but a prelude to a sanguinary future.

Rob Weir

Lynne Hanson: February 2020 Artist of the Month

Lynne Hanson

Just Words

Jan Hall of Folk Roots Radio dubbed Ottawa-based Lynne Hanson, “Canada’s own queen of Americana.” Wish I had said that! Hanson is my favorite kind of female vocalist: one with a low voice who sings effortlessly and has no need for affected coolness. Just Words, her 7^th studio recording, makes it easy to understand why Hanson has won two Canadian Folk Music awards, two Acoustic Project alt-country awards, and raves from all who have heard her.

Ironically, she’s not really a folk or a country artist. You’ll hear those influences in her music, but you’ll also hear splashes of rock and big waves of the blues. Her voice will put you in mind of a blend of artists such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams, and Mary Gauthier. Think Carpenter’s silky controlled contralto, Williams’ toughness, and Gauthier’s sense of detached resignation. Fittingly, “True Blue Moon,” the album’s single release, tells of a romantic dalliance with a poet that the narrator knows cannot last: Forever is for diamonds/And for poets like you/Happy ever lasts as long/As a rainbow in June/I’ve tried to pretend/This story won’t end/But they always do…. If that’s not resignation enough for you, “Lollipops and Roses” implores: When I die won’t you bury me/With lollipops and roses next to me/Cause I’ve been riding this bitter train so long/I’m in need of something sweet….

Hanson knows that good art and pain are a better fit than most of us are comfortable in contemplating. Her “Long Way Home” reflects upon heartbreak’s detritus–loneliness, booze, losing track of time–but is also a veiled commentary on her own 8-year struggle to stay sober. You have to have been kicked around a few times to muse on such things. For-real living is one of many things that makes Just Words a mature album whose highs and lows ring true. “HigherGround” is swampy and bluesy song with a bit of backwoods gospel peeking through the leaves: I’ve been a lover/I’ve been a leaver/I lacked faith/Been a true believer/What I learned/You wanna get to heaven/Gotta take the higher ground. “Every Minute In Between” is a reminder that the lower ground is usually the path for a broken heart. The title track is equally unvarnished–a look at how hard it is for girls to get past paternal and social expectations.

Hanson shines both as a solo artist and as a band animal, and who could not love the name of her frequent ensemble: The Good Intentions?  As a singer, Hanson is the real deal. Watch her carefully in this video for “Clean Slate.” It is, first of all, a memorable mishmash melody of folk, pop, and Americana that exemplifies why it’s hard to categorize her music. More significantly, observe how she moves from verse to chorus. The transition is so seamlessly smooth that it takes a moment to notice the increased power of the latter.  

Call Just Words an album that hurts so good. Use those last two words to describe Lynne Hanson. 

Rob Weir

Mystic, Connecticut: Small Towns

Mystic, Connecticut is home to the Mystic Seaport Museum, a sort of watery version of Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. It’s a treasure, even if it is a scrubbed and sanitized version of a 19^th century seaport town. There’s always something going on there, including a spring sea songs festival.  

Mystic Seaport is so famous that many visitors skip its host town. That’s a mistake. Mystic is actually a village that’s part of the city of Groton. It has a population of just 4,200 but it feels much bigger because it’s surrounded by Groton, New London, Stonington, and other settlements that collectively contain about 275,000 residents. Mystic, though, gets my vote for the most coastal charm. It has 3 historical districts and a thriving downtown. There is also an aquarium, an art museum that’s separate from that of Mystic Seaport, a historic house museum, and a cantilever swing bridge that lots of people photograph. It’s really just an industrial-style arched bridge that’s sort of ugly, but it connects the Groton side of the village with the Stonington side.

Above all, the bridge is a visual reminder of Mystic’s past. The Mystic River–the name is a mishearing of the Pequot word missi-tuk–empties into Long Island Sound. The Seaport Museum may be cleaner than it would have been during the great Age of Sail, but this slice of Connecticut has always looked to the ocean. A sub isn’t a sandwich around these parts. Anytime military budget cuts are discussed, Connecticut politicians mobilize! Groton has a submarine base and is home to General Dynamics/Electric Boat, which builds subs. Both employ a lot of people. In New London you’ll find Pfizer, a firm that practically defines the term “Big Pharma.” New London is also home to the Coast Guard Academy, Connecticut College, an expensive private institution, and a University of Connecticut branch campus whose tuition is roughly two-thirds cheaper.

I mention all of this because they also symbolize the region’s class divide. Like Mystic Seaport, downtown Mystic is gentrified. The outskirts are dotted with the ranch houses and the humbler homes of those who work in the region’s industries, as well as the grand homes of inherited riches and manicured developments filled with McMansions for new-money professionals. The movie Mystic Pizza got that right.

Though it’s easy to bemoan gentrification, those parts of town are nicer places to hang out. Name another village of 4,200 that has 80 shops downtown. They exist (and come and go) largely by offering things hard to find on Amazon. There are untold numbers of gift shops, artisan galleries that encourage browsing if not buying, and numerous specialty shops. Some of the more unusual ones sell Polish pottery, Tibetan goods, marine supplies, spices, and handmade chocolates. My return trip will definitely include a trip to the Mystic River Chocolate Café.

Mystic is a good foodie town. I’ve not been there, but I’ve heard good things about Bravo Bravo, an Italian eatery, though there are so many pizza shops, you might want to branch out. Some of the downtown restaurants are pricey, but there are several pubs, a microbrewery (Barely Head), 3 bakeries (Lighthouse, Li, and Sift), and a butcher shop if you’re in a DYI mood.

What everyone wishes to know about, though, is Mystic Pizza. In the interest of public service, I checked it out for you! First, though, don’t believe everything you see in a movie. The joint shown on the screen was a set in a building a few doors down from the actual restaurant, which is owned by the Zelepos family. (They really are of Portuguese descent.) It’s been on Main Street since 1973, but the movie brought so much spillover fame that the interior was redone to approximate the set. Hey, why look a gift slice in the mouth? The inside is a bit darker than the faux site, but a TV screen on a back wall shows the movie on what appears to be a continuous loop. Walls are also festooned with pictures of celebrities, especially classic film stars and baseball legends.

Mystic Pizza sells thin crust pies. My wife, two friends, and I devoured a large pizza with vegetables (onions, green peppers, mushrooms, broccoli pieces) and pepperoni. (Yeah, it’s an odd combo, but you try pleasing four people!) We split fries as an appetizer that were sprinkled with herbs and came to us crispy and piping hot. The pie dough was baked to perfection and the ‘za was tasty, though my palette failed to detect a “special sauce.” It didn’t rock my world enough to keep me from trying another nearby joint, but the experience was a blast.

Rob Weir