My cousin Steven is back with more thoughts on the pizza places in my neigh­bor­hood. I got this one in the e-mail this morn­ing, and, once again, he’s given me the go-​ahead to post away. Thanks cuz!

FRANCESCO’S, 531 Henry Street, between Pres­i­dent and Sackett.

The pizza here is totally solid. The crust is suf­fi­ciently crispy, and sup­ports a well-​balanced sheet of cheese over non­de­script but not at all poor sauce. Francesco’s is brightly but not flo­res­cent lit, and they have a beer and wine license. They also have a gen­eral Ital­ian food counter, which is very pop­u­lar. A good number of people— from the police to the teenager— ordered spaghetti with mari­nara and extra moz­zarella and sides of broc­coli and spinach. There’s a tele­vi­sion in the corner by the drinks refrig­er­a­tor that usu­ally plays sports. A cheer­ful man buses the tables, too. When I sat down with my slice, he rushed over and put a wad of nap­kins by my plate. That was a nice touch. And if you don’t feel like throw­ing out that bottle of Snap­ple fruit punch when you’re done, he’ll gladly rush over just as you’ve stood up, thank you for coming, and dis­card of it him­self. Believe it or not, Francesco’s might be the future of your typ­i­cal neigh­bor­hood pizza place.

My 23-year-old cousin from Man­hat­tan, Steven, recently vis­ited me in Brook­lyn, and he emailed me this review of a pizza place near my apart­ment (you’ll under­stand we vis­ited sev­eral of the local joints that day).  I thought, Steven, you’ve done a decent job, and with your per­mis­sion I’ll post it on Dig­i­tal Emu­nc­tion later tonite.  The good news is that Steven gave me the go-​ahead, just min­utes ago.

Though I was for­tu­nate enough to spend the last three weeks in north­ern Italy, in Genova and Milan, I can offer very few cul­tural reflec­tions of the touris­tic vari­ety. Despite having no pre­con­ceived plans against the oppor­tu­nity, I ended up vis­it­ing no muse­ums and saw pre­cious little art. I did, how­ever, visit so many book­stores, book­stands and open-​air mar­ket­places sell­ing books (and had to buy an extra bag to carry home the trove of books I pur­chased) that I feel com­pelled to offer a few com­ments on the strange phe­nom­e­non of being an Amer­i­can in Ital­ian book­stores. As with many expe­ri­ences trav­el­ing abroad, so much dif­fer­ent, but so much the same.

As Randy Newman sang: “I love L.A.”  Well, so do I.  I am 24 years old, and I can assure you that some­day I will live there, prob­a­bly when I am 40.  Just not yet, not so fast.  The good news is, there are so many ways to go to L.A. with­out actu­ally going—of course, the movies come to mind first, and then you can always slap a Steely Dan record down on the player and drive west on Sunset just like that.  L.A. is a mag­i­cal place.  Also a savage place, as one UCLA grad stu­dent who bears an uncanny resem­blance to a totally rav­aged Jim Carrey told me.  But what about L.A. books?  There are many, indeed—after the jump, I begin an anno­tated list, and I would be grate­ful for fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions, just chuck them in as com­ments, please.