Dear Jon: The Campus Pizzeria

How long do alums get to lay claim to their favorite old haunts before giving way to the winds of change?

By Yale Hollander for Five O’ Clock, a Harry’s Magazine

Dear Jon,

There is much sturm und drang roiling the alumni of my collegiate alma mater as our legendary, just-off-campus pizza parlor has met the wrecking ball — or bulldozer, if one wants to be precise.

Well, if one wants to be entirely precise, the building that until recently housed the legendary, just-off-campus pizza parlor has been reduced to rubble, but the pizza parlor itself has temporarily relocated to an adjacent building.

I say temporarily because the building that was situated in the spot that is now a field of brick dust, splinters, parmesan, and red pepper flakes will be replaced by a mid-rise student apartment complex that will feature as its first floor’s principal tenant, the very same pizza parlor with a floorplan and interior finish that will be a faithful reproduction of its late predecessor, including the original ovens and the not-very-comfortable wooden booths.

“But it won’t be the same!” cry the alums who are aghast that a pizza joint that has held forth in its virtually sacred location for the past 42 years — going all the way back to when our young nation was still in the throes of the Nixon administration! — was not deemed a historic landmark and given a permanent stay of execution. These same outraged masses don’t seem to mind the fact that the establishment has opened two full-blown, totally-off-campus locations elsewhere in town and has been hawking frozen approximations of its pies in far-flung supermarkets for years.

While I cannot muster outrage over this redevelopment development, do not place me in the callously indifferent column, either. I spent plenty of time and money in that place during my college days and savored many a return trip in my post-graduate years. The pizza is great. So great, in fact, that I’ve been known to drop a nearly unconscionable nine bucks or so at my local grocer for one of those frostbitten disks of cheese-laden nostalgia. But it’s been twenty-five years since I graduated college, and to be quite honest, I don’t think I have the right to make any kind of claim to the commercial landmarks of my undergraduate days.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my alma mater and I love my old college town, but there comes a point in time when one must recognize that college is principally for the students, not the alumni, and progress will ultimately permit the present and future students to have their own memories and cherished landmarks — some of which will also likely be consigned to the literal and figurative dustbin of history when the time comes to move forward.

Jon, I come to you with a proposal: I wish to establish an eight-year statute of limitations for outrage regarding the demise of collegiate hangouts. These demi-monuments should remain relatively intact and undisturbed for at least two complete, four-year undergraduate cycles. That will allow one to have some social currency with all of the alums with whom one attended college plus all of the alums with whom those people attended college. By the time the statute of limitations expires, the graduate in question will be approximately 30 years old, perhaps a bit young to pine for the “good old days” but clearly too old to be clinging to their college town as they bellow visceral antipathy into the gusting winds of change.

Give the kids their space, because none of them want to be hanging out among the old creeps, which is what you will be perceived as regardless of your sincerest nostalgic intentions. Want to grab a slice with your old college buds one Friday night? Fine. Do it at 5 p.m. when the current students are all pregaming or disco-napping.

The bottom line is that you didn’t want your college hangouts polluted by a bunch of sad, middle-aged, hangers-on while you were trying to have fun, so why would you impose that tableau on today’s batch of the best and brightest?

Eight years, Jon. I think it’s a fair window within which one can relive a little bit of one’s near-past before fossilization sets in. Please help spread the word.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the alma mater’s getting ready for the opening kickoff and I’ve got a piping hot disk of cheese-laden nostalgia ready to come out of the oven.

Until next time,

YLH

Originally published for Five O’ Clock, a Harry’s Magazine. Words by Yale Hollander. Illustration by Tim Lahan.