show time

For a few years, I've always seen this place on Hawthorne Blvd called "Pizza Show". It has this great amazingly garish and huge tacky neon sign which always made me curious what it was like inside, but I was baffled by the name. Pizza Show? Is it a theater? Some kind of Chuck-E-Cheese like place? (even though it was clear this place was older than any Chuck-E-Cheese...) Last week my friend Jeff was in town for some work and we had plans to get together for dinner - he mentioned he had a hankerin for pizza, so I sent him the Yelp listings on this place and he said he was up for it. The Yelp reviews tended to hate it or rave about it, with some fun stories about it dating back decades. We weren't sure what to expect. I'll admit that I was expecting some outrageous fifties tacky but fun place that hadn't ever changed - and was either awful or fantastic because of that. It really wasn't anything like that once we got inside. The waitress was brusque, but efficient. Beyond that, while the interior was interesting in some odd cartoonish but non-descript kinda way, it didn't have any specific style or period that it reflected. It turns out the pizza was pretty good, so on that level, it scored. Hey, it coulda been a lot worse. And I still think that sign is cool.