Made To Order, Built To Last

Posted by Adam Kuban, December 16, 2004 at 10:00 AM

The last time Slice was at Di Fara, our eagle-eyed metro editor, Seltzerboy, noticed the shop's crew writing orders on a nifty new notepad (above). On previous visits throughout the years, we had observed proprietor Dom DeMarco simply jotting down orders on whatever was at hand—often a paper plate or the take-out box a pie was destined to inhabit on its journey home.

At one point during this visit, Dom's daughter left the pad unattended while she was in back. We saw our chance and moved in, enticed by the words "DiFara's Freehand Recipe." Would we be able to copy Dom's secrets and return the pad before Maggie reappeared? Sadly, no. She came back out front and caught us ogling the deck of papers, which, upon closer inspection, carried a free-verse poem rather than the culinary key to perfect pizza.

The poem's author was listed as "The Sticker Dude," and its words not only painted an accurate picture of the Di Fara experience but also had us saying, "This Sticker Dude dude must be a Di Fara fan." Our hunch was that the pads were an unsolicited token of appreciation for Dom's pies on the part of the dude.

A quick e-mail to Joel "The Sticker Dude" Cohen, who runs Ragged Edge Press, confirmed this:

You've basically figured out the scene. I'm a printer/poet/graphic artist and a fan of Di Fara Pizza, and was inspired to do the memo pad after seeing an interview with Dom in the New York Times. The pads were a gift, not ordered.

Mr. Cohen, who was labeled with this nickname after selling stickers at Grateful Dead shows, says he manages to make it out to Di Fara about every two weeks—whenever he's in the neighborhood.

Slice has plans for stickers and T-shirts at some unspecified time in the near future, and though we're often stubbornly D.I.Y., if we can't pull off the merch ourselves, we'll see about availing ourselves of the Sticker Dude's services. It's always good to give business to a kindred spirit.

On another note, while perusing the Ragged Edge site and learning about the genesis of the "Sticker Dude" moniker, we were reminded of The Pizza Tapes, a collaboration of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia along with David Grisman and Tony Rice. Legend is that, in 1993, a pizza delivery boy stole the freshly recorded tapes of the Garcia-Grisman-Rice sessions off Mr. Garcia's counter while bringing pizza to the outsized guitarist. The tapes made their way into the Dead-tape trading scene shortly thereafter. Mr. Grisman was initially peeved, but in 2000 he released an official album of the recordings, its title a nod to the crazy-fingered knave who nabbed the jams. Its cover, a nod to the classic take-out pizza box.

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Tags: Di Fara, Music, Pop Culture Pizza