ManicDDaily

(Not actually like the appetizing wonderful pizza at Ray's.)

I was very sorry to read this morning that Ray’s Pizza on 27 Prince Street, the certifiably first Ray’s Pizza, the Ray’s Pizza that was so ahead of the pack that it didn’t have to assert its pre-eminence in its name, and more importantly (on a personal basis), the only Ray’s Pizza I ever regularly frequented, is closing.

There’s still the possibility of a move, but, after 52 years, Ray’s will no longer be open at 27 Prince Street, which sits between Mott and Elizabeth, one block below Houston (for non-New Yorkers, pronounced House-ton).

I have to confess to not having been to Ray’s for some time, but when I first moved to New York, I lived at Mott and Houston, about a block away, and Ray’s was a source of salvation.

At that time–late 70’s – early 80’s–Mott and Houston (now mainly yuppie and traffic-clogged ) was kind of menacing. There was a large juvenile detention center across the street, which, because it was a squat building with a concrete playground/basketball court, allowed for a lot of sunlight, but also cast a kind of shadow over the area. Of course, the streets were already shadowy–the Bowery a block away, legions of “squeegee-men” on the street corners. (They were the guys who were usually paid NOT to clean the windshields of cars waiting for stoplights.) Roosters crowed from boarded buildings/vacant lots; crack vials littered the sidewalks.

To the south, there was Little Italy. Safe enough–if you watched yourself (it probably also helped to be a certain racial type)–but shadowy. That part of Mott Street was still lined with Italian social clubs, little hole-in-the-wall places with one curtained window upon whose ledge stood a plastic Virgin Mary. Inside and out was a shifting (if rarely physically moving)  group of heavily-jowled men wearing black coats and fedoras.

Picturesque, though also a bit sinister–Umberto’s Clam House where Joey Gallo was killed execution style was several blocks down as was the Luna Restaurant (where supposedly the hit men were eating before going after Joey). A bit closer to home, a Chinese Laundry torched.  (I remember the face of the Chinese proprietor after the fire, like a sheet badly folded–lengthened, flattened, lined.)

And then there was Rays.

The pizza was delicious. Fresh, crusty,saucy, cheesy, not too much of anything to overpower, just enough of everything to savor.  (The crust was so good that I remember a girl visiting from Long Island asking everyone else in the place if we wanted ours.  She couldn’t justify another slice, but was desperate for more crust.)

The place was comfortable too, pleasant. There were exposed brick walls, which for someone from suburban Maryland, seemed incredibly exotic.  In the summer, some of the chairs and tables were shifted out to the sidewalk.

Ray (Ralph Cuomo) was a big guy at that point. (I think I mean in all senses, i.e. large, expansive, later dying in prison.)

The black-hatted, black=coated guys came in to Ray’s too, not for pizza so much as endless cups of espresso.

Still, the place had kind of a family atmosphere.  I won’t say that I didn’t ever see anything that didn’t make me gasp, and my husband kick my leg to shut me up.  But Ray was friendly, polite; no one was ever rushed.  A lot of artist types sat there endlessly arguing about Ross Bleckner.

There was the regular slice, the white slice, the pesto with olives slice, and for a while, weirdly, the white slice with pineapple and ham.

All so good.  (Well, I don’t know about the pineapple and ham.)  I left Mott Street to travel a year in India and spent a fair amount of that year trying to decide which slice–the regular or the white–would be the first thing I’d have when I got off the plane back in New York. On the clackety Indian trains, waking up to swat a mosquito at my ear, sometimes even when suffering from some traveler’s stomach bug, I would contemplate this question. It was an incredibly difficult decision, even though I knew, of course,that either option would be absolutely great.

I wish the current manager of Ray’s, Helen Mistretta, the very best of luck.

(PS – this post does not mean to imply any connection between Ray’s Pizza and any of the activities described in Little Italy–I’m just thinking back to a time generally.  All I know about Rays–great great pizza.)