Personal Background

I was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in its Gravesend neighborhood for most of my life. It’s a great place to grow up if you like that semi-urban neighborhood feel... walking down a typical street one can see a few trees lining the sidewalks and teenagers playing stickball, basketball, and maybe the occasional hockey game. As an aside, I've heard that Gravesend was actually the third-oldest English colonial settlement in the New World, right after Jamestown and Plymouth.

Ah, yes.... you can get pizza at a hundred places named Tony's. If you want quality, my recommendations are Grimaldi’s and Totonno’s coal-oven pizzas. L&B Spumoni Gardens is literally a few blocks away from my house, but their pizzas are nowhere close to the quality of the first two -- of course, try telling that to the current owners, or the cops who go there for lunch! (Apparently Brooklyn doesn't have enough donut shops so the cops here get pizza instead.)