Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[DGuller]

I recall having a teacher from Italy in high school.  He said that Italian pizza is nothing like the pizza pies in the US, so it's not a silly possibility at all that GIs could've introduced what Americans know as pizza to Italy.

[Gups]

I remember hearing the GIs introduced pizza to Italy during the war too.

 

I mention it as its weird, but it is broadly true.
https://eccentricculinary.substack.com/p/pizza-isnt-italian
Before the war Italian "pizza" was a very localised and very different dish to what we know today. This was reimported from the US.

Incidentally though I'm crap at cooking and not really much of a foodie I have been on a bit of a culinary history kick this past year. Its really interesting stuff.

It's actually an interesting article but it doesn't say that at all.

It does say:

(a) Pizza is not an Italian dish but a Neapolitan one. It wasn't really eaten elsewhere in Italy.

Let me repeat that: Pizza isn't Italian.

Pizza is Neapolitan. It's a distinct speciality of Naples, developed at at time when Italy didn't even exist as a nation. Saying pizza is Italian is like saying haggis is British. It might be technically true, but not really.

This seems a bit of a shaky premise to me but OK


(b) Although there was pizza in the US before the war, it didn't become very popular until afterwards.

By the start of the Second World War, pizza had a decent toehold in the Northeast, from Philadelphia to Boston, with a scattering of early-adopters in San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago, mostly Italian places that served pizza as a sideline. There were also one or two oddball spots with their own pizza traditions, such as the Lackawanna Valley in Pennsylvania, where the Old Forge-style pizza took root in the 1920s, thanks to Italian coal miners. Outside of that, pizza was rarely eaten.

That changed after World War II, supposedly when GI's who'd spent time in Naples came home to the States. Unfortunately, that's probably another one of those just-so food stories, made up to account for the sudden popularity of the dish. The better answer is that a lot of GIs came home looking to make a fast buck and pizza restaurants, with their high margins, were one place to do that. So, the rise of pizza had more to do with fast money and the U.S. military than with any new-found appreciation for Italian culture.

(c) Pizza started to become more widespread in Italy from the 1960s due to demand from American tourists.

So, pizza didn't spread to the rest of Italy until the 1960's, after it had taken off in the Americas. And it happened mostly because American tourists to Italy were desperately trying to find the "real thing" in places where it had never existed, which is why there's a credible claim to be made that pizza, as it currently exists, is really an American dish.

[Norgy]

God I hate old person memes. And my generation, generation X, fucking loves pointing out how badass they are compared to the yoots.

Very lame. Especially when you consider all the bullshit we had to put up with from the olds when we were growing up.

Yes, to both points.
I do dislike aging. But it is better than the alternative. And we are in no position to lecture anyone. It wasn't "better" before. It was, well, different.
"Oh, so you take the cocaine before the ecstasy now?" is a much more positive way of looking at it.

[crazy canuck]

Well not only different, but there were things that were definitely better.

We really did play outdoors all day with the only rule being we had to be back home in time for supper. 

We could do all kinds of stupid things and no one would know because our lives were not being recorded.

We could find jobs, rental apartments and eventually buy homes with relative ease.

In summary I think we Gen Xers do a disservice to the Gen Zers by underplaying how much better we did have it.

[Valmy]

We really did play outdoors all day with the only rule being we had to be back home in time for supper. 

Well...I was playing D&D, Nintendo, and PC games by Sierra while my silent generation parents whined how kids today stay inside instead of playing outdoors all day like they did back in their day. Damn pre-Boomers.

[Jacob]

Is Gen X being dicks to young people a thing now?

I used to think the Gen X attitude was "leave us out of it" when boomers and millenials were yelling at each other.

[Valmy]

Is Gen X being dicks to young people a thing now?

I used to think the Gen X attitude was "leave us out of it" when boomers and millenials were yelling at each other.

Gosh I hope it isn't a general thing. But there is this Gen X group on Facebook whose stuff I see from time to time and it is basically just that. Gen Z couldn't handle the HARDCORE experience of growing up in the middle class suburbs of the 1970s and 1980s!!!111

Like...come on man. The most hardcore thing I had to do was wake up early on Saturday to see cartoons.

[Josquius]

We really did play outdoors all day with the only rule being we had to be back home in time for supper. 

Well...I was playing D&D, Nintendo, and PC games by Sierra while my silent generation parents whined how kids today stay inside instead of playing outdoors all day like they did back in their day. Damn pre-Boomers.

Again I need to rant at how I'd love it if kids could play outside these days but they made our country's in such a way that they can't.

[Grey Fox]

I've always seen these GenX bragging meme has a way for them to talk about the trauma of having Silent/1st wave Boomers parents that did not care one bit about them or what happened to them.

[crazy canuck]

We really did play outdoors all day with the only rule being we had to be back home in time for supper. 

Well...I was playing D&D, Nintendo, and PC games by Sierra while my silent generation parents whined how kids today stay inside instead of playing outdoors all day like they did back in their day. Damn pre-Boomers.

You are also much younger than me.

Non of those things existed when my friends were going outside to play.

[crazy canuck]

Is Gen X being dicks to young people a thing now?

I used to think the Gen X attitude was "leave us out of it" when boomers and millenials were yelling at each other.

I don't think it's that.  More like the Boomers fucked us over to and be careful who you pick a fight with because we were raised to be feral. 

[Duque de Bragança]

God I hate old person memes. And my generation, generation X, fucking loves pointing out how badass they are compared to the yoots.

Very lame. Especially when you consider all the bullshit we had to put up with from the olds when we were growing up.

Don't worry, in time the yoots will do it as well. 

[Norgy]

I think we spent an almost infinite amount of time outdoors just to avoid our parents' failed marriages.
I know I did, at least.

We became a bunch of cynical bastards. Because there will always be that socially inherited part of you.

Which, obviously, makes being a psychologist a viable business.

[HVC]

Oldies played outdoors because their best toys were things like pet rocks

[grumbler]

Oldies played outdoors because their best toys were things like pet rocks

Whippy sticks were much better toys than rocks.  Except for driving off the saber-toothed tigers.