When I first moved into my apartment in Park Slope, we lived above an empty storefront that had previously been a travel agency and before that, according to my roommate, some kind of brothel. A few months ago construction started and recently an entirely-legal pizza place has opened up. Like Brooklyn needs any more of those.

The opening of the pizza place was awaited with a mix of excitement and trepidation: my one roommate worried that it would bring rats and flies (and, already having some serious mice and roach issues, we aren’t exactly bereft of vermin), that our apartment would smell like pizza, and then WE would smell like pizza, and wherever we went people would smell us and suddenly want pizza. But my other roommate and I were excited at the convenience. Who doesn’t like pizza to be so close?

The rats/flies/smell factors haven’t materialized… yet (”Wait until summer,” my roommate warns, “it’s gonna be gross.”). But the pizza place isn’t exactly a godsend, either.

First of all, it’s not very good pizza. It’s passable. If you’re starving, it isn’t repulsive. The cheese is rubbery and the sauce is entirely indistinguised. And there’s really good pizza just a block up. My roommate thinks it’s in poor taste for us to buy pizza a block away and tries to hide it when she comes back, but I, on the other hand, take the long way and march right PAST the guys downstairs, hoping they’ll see me with it and get a clue.

Second, it closes at 11:30 PM, 12 AM every night which, hello? Who eats pizza before 2 AM on a Friday, anyway? Isn’t that the best time to eat it? The OTHER pizza place has welcomed me at 2:30 and 3 in the morning and damn, was I ever grateful.

But last night I came home and was ravenous and couldn’t even think of taking any extra steps, so on my way up I bought a slice. My roommate returned an hour later, also starving, and went downstairs. Midnight found us sprawled out on our respective couches, indigested and grumpy and not entirely sated, either. We paid for our laziness. I think we both realized it’s worth the walk.

Does anyone else live above/near a food place they don’t like? Does anyone else’s corner deli charge way more for milk than the supermarket? Why do we feel these obligations to our local guys when they’re actually hosing us? Or am I the only one?