DO YOU LIKE CALAMARI? WELL, DO YOU?

Because we don’t. After enduring ninety-four minutes of Jackass 3D, all the while struggling to fight my gag reflex [while Sophie took it all in with ease]—it was time for some grub! Yes, you heard right. We’re back!

Apparently pizza is Sophie’s favorite ‘food group’, forget your fruits and veggies, dairy, grains, meat and poultry… this kid has done her research and has successfully come up with the pizza food group because it combines most of them in one. Cutting corners a bit, but I’ll let this one pass. And where else to get good pizza than North Beach Pizza, where the west gets a taste of the east… or whatever their slogan says. Anyway, pizza is pizza to me, its either good or Domino’s bad. And tonight’s was good! This outing was full of awkward turtles. Let’s just start with our entrance, that’s if we came in the right way, we’ll never know. We opened the same door people were exiting from, but no one seemed to notice us… we grabbed what looked like menus by the counter, a group of waiters were joking around the register—they seemed to be speaking in a secret language. Sophie and I exchanged concerned glances as we stood around, pretending to enjoy the sights. There was an empty booth right next to the door—an awkward [and cramped] seating arrangement, but we didn’t feel like weeding through all the people who blocked the walkway to get better seating. A waitress finally caught sight of us and rushed over bringing us a different menu. This confused me, but Sophie told me not to worry.

We finally settled on the Margarita Special, don’t worry folks, I know better than to get my under-aged cousin intoxicated[as far as her mom knows… just kidding]. It was a cheap pizza because it was thin crust, but it came with basil and tomatoes so hells to the yesss. We ordered a medium that rang us up at $15.55 and if I remember correctly, the dollar bills were running a tad short that night. The wait was long and excruciatingly slow, we were trapped and in some ways hostage to unnecessary akwardness; innocent bystanders of mockery and torment. The group of waiters had scouted us as defenseless prey, a tall hulkish guy with long gross hair addressed us. He reminded me of a ring leader for bad guys; big and dumb, and his english was bad. He asked us if we like calamari. I gave the dude a stone-cold stare and shook my head in negation while Sophie chuckling a bit [totally defeating the purpose of my bitchiness], confused at his remark said “no”. They reconvened in a fit of laughter. Minutes ticked by, and Sophie had turned her attention—very slyly towards our neighboring couple, where a controlling wife/girlfriend gave her husband/boyfriend grief for eating too much pizza. Soon afterwards our pizza arrived and took its place at the center of our table. Mouths agape, we took our plates and served ourselves accordingly. It was a light pizza, but the cheese and fresh basil taste made up for it, and unlike really doughy pizzas, this was crisp—kind of like a burnt tortilla. But without the charred taste.

The good thing about thin-crust pizza is that you can pack it in. We got through about half of it before reaching our limit. The remains of our pizza was boxed and we got the bill. Sophie and I calculated our monies and our hearts simultaneously sank. The tip. We got sidetracked with the movie. If the pizza was roughly $16, tip should be around $20ish, right? Well, we didn’t have that much. We stuck $18.50 in the pleather sleeve and rushed out with our pizza gripped firmly under my arm.