Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria in St. Louis and A Love to Remember

I was just surfing the web when I came across a St. Louis Blog. Well, it was a site about St. Louis that happened to have a blog. To me, it looks like people post questions there about St. Louis but no one seems to answer them. Clearly, this is not a well-traveled site on the web. BUT, someone asked a question I just had to answer – one which brought back so much nostalgia for me personally. Someone posted the question: “where oh where has my favorite pizza place in St. Louis gone – it is called Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria. Anyone remember it?” Well, because I worked there for 3 years during high school and college I know ALL ABOUT Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria. I know how the place did, in fact, have the best pizza St. Louis has EVER known. It was New York Style Pizza and operated on Hampton Avenue across from Peaches (remember that one, too??? – now who among us does not have their old LPs stored in the wooden crates from Peaches???) in South St. Louis during the 1980s. You could buy a whole pie (pizza) or just buy it by the slice. The pizza was so good and the ingredients so fresh and the crust – just that perfect blend of dough and crunch. The owner, Steve, was from Brooklyn, New York and he came to St. Louis to show his Daddy that he could be a real businessman in this fine City of ours. And it worked for a fairly long time. But then one day, Steve got a C rating from the City Health Department instead of the typical “A” you see on most establishments’ doors. Now, before you get grossed out – the C rating was really no big deal. The City Inspector wanted him to have refrigerated prep tables for the pizzas and pizza ingredients. No big deal, right? Well, Steve took great offense at the City telling him how to run his business so rather than take a few minutes and few dollars to do what the City wanted, he up and moved the restaurant up by St. Louis University and the Fox Theatre. It was right there on the corner of Grand and Lindell. Not the best location but Steve was certain that the SLU college kids would devour his pizzas by the truckload and he could continue on with his great success. Unfortunately, the SLU location of Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria closed within the same year it opened. It had such a long run when it was on Hampton but his faithful and loyal customers of South St. Louis just weren’t willing to travel that far and to “that neighborhood” just to get their pizza fix. Last I heard, which was in the early 90s, Steve packed up his stuff and moved back to Brooklyn. So, what was once a fantastic money making machine filled with great pizzas and tons of customers on Hampton Avenue became a catastrophic failure on S. Grand Blvd. I have so often thought to myself over the years “If only Steve had made the minor improvements the City suggested we might still have fantastic New York Style pizza in St. Louis. And, no – sorry folks – Racanellis just doesn’t even come close to how damn good Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria was. Racanellis can be gross and slimy and too greasy and their crust is NEVER crispy. Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria had the key to successful New York style pizza – fresh ingredients and the 500 degree oven and the dough made fresh daily. I can still remember watching "my guy" (yes, I found my very first true love within the walls of Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria) toss the dough up in the air while smiling at me and it just melts my heart to think of that memory. All the employees had their own “soda cups” we kept marked with our names on them in the back near the sink. I would come in to work after school and invariably Michael (my guy) would have made it to work before me and he would tape little notes inside my soda cup for me to read when I got to work. At the time, my family life was a mess, my parents were divorcing, my mother was refusing treatment for her out of control alcoholism etc, and I had confided all of this domestic discord in Michael. So, somedays, there would just be a note in my cup that would say “Keep Smiling, Beautiful. Things will get better because they can’t get any worse.” And do you know I still have those love notes tucked away in my sentimental scrap book? Isn’t that ridiculous? But I am nothing if not ridiculously sentimental. And, after all, he was the first man to propose to me so why shouldn’t I have kept all of his silly little notes? He proposed when I was 23 and he was 25. I was still in the “bar mode” and wanting to play while he wanted a marriage and children immediately so we parted ways. Rumor has it, he soon married someone who has my very name (how weird is that?????) and has 2 kids with her now. He actually lives just down the road from me and from all obvious signs has fulfilled all of his dreams: he became a successful pediatrician, has the wife, the 2.5 kids, the picket fence and has accomplished everything he said he wanted when we were teenagers. So often I have wanted to talk to him again just to reminisce and laugh about old times. I see him driving on Jamieson every now and then and he has become a very beautiful man from the gawky teenager I once knew. I wonder if he ever thinks of me. I wonder if happiness really does exist for him behind that picket fence. And mostly I wonder about his Mother. When Michael and I were dating and engaged (spanning 8 years, dating for 7 – engaged for 1) she called me her best friend and I felt very close to her as well. We would go out together and people thought we were sisters or friends because she was so young looking (she was in her 40s at the time). But inside that woman was a sadness and a loneliness as vast as the grand canyon. And that frightened me to death because I looked in her eyes and saw my own future with her son ending the same way with sadness and loneliness. Her son was just as emotionally absent as his father was to her and I knew that that was my future if I married Michael. So I ran instead. I ran from the sadness I saw reflected in her eyes. Did I do the right thing? I know for a fact I did the right thing for me but I have often wondered how my actions of breaking off the engagement affected Michael’s family. Does his mother miss me or did she just pick up with the new *place my name here* and pretend I never left? Did they get along as well as she and I did? Did the new *place my name here* ever see the mother’s aching sadness and loneliness but decide for herself that that was the price she was willing to pay to marry a doctor? Dunno. I will probably never know the answers to these and many other questions that plague my mind. But I do know that along with the demise of our relationship came the demise of a fantastic little pizza parlor on Hampton Avenue known as Brooklyn Bridge Pizzeria. What a loss to the city losing that pizza place was and still is today. Nothing will ever replace the memory of that ooey, gooey, wonderful pizza or the memory of those sweet little notes Michael always placed in my soda cup. I hope he does have happiness behind that picket fence but my guess is he more than likely merely has the illusion of happiness behind that picket fence and still has no clue what the difference between those 2 things is. As for the Mother’s picket fence? I drove past it the other day and just sat outside their house (trying not to appear stalkerish) yet wondering if she ever found anything more than sadness and loneliness in her life with the Patriarch of the family. What I wouldn’t give to hold her hand and tell her that everything is going to be okay because it just can’t get any worse for her. What I wouldn’t give to call her up, go to lunch with her and explain to her that the aching sadness and loneliness I saw in her eyes when I was only 23 saved my life and paved the way for me to find great happiness and be spared her lot in life. For that reason, she will always be my hero, my guardian angel, and one of MY best friends ever.