A brief history of the twenty dollar pizza

First time in my life I tasted pizza was when I went to summer camp at the Guelph Bible Chapel. I'd won a free week at camp thanks to having memorized the most bible verses! I was maybe 12 or 13 years old and the camp was pretty cool... they had go-carts and everything! Then one day in the lunch hall it was "Pizza day." I'd never heard of pizza. It was gross. Fast forward a mere five years or so, and pizza had become a staple of every up-and-coming stoner's diet. By then I was spending a lot of time in the North-East corner of Guelph, where I had some pals within a block or two of Marco's Pizza at the corner of Woodlawn and Victoria. I remember this happening a thousand times over; a bunch of potheads got the munchies and would throw coin in the pot to get a large with the works. That typically ran twenty bucks or so. That was fifty years ago. The other day I'm driving through downtown and I see PizzaPizza has a sign in the window; Large Pizza $20. OK... we're definitely in the get-the-fuck-outta-here zone with this shit! We're no longer eating pizza... we're eating lab-generated crap designed to resemble pizza. And we buy it...

The great pizza pie mystery

Here's something I don't get.

Back in the day, and I'm talking 40-45 years ago, when you got the munchies on Friday night, you'd order a pizza. In Guelph, you'd order that pizza from Marco's Pizza.

This was of course long before the big chains took over the world of pizza.

So 45 years ago you'd canvas your drunken buddies for cash contributions, and you'd eventually coral that twenty bucks required to get that large with pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and hot peppers.

Here's what mystifies me; order a large from one of the big chains today, with pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and hot peppers, and it's still twenty bucks!

But plug that twenty bucks in 1970 into the Department of Labor Inflation Calculator and today's pizza pie should be well over a hundred dollars!

What the fuck is going on?

Obviously, they're cutting corners somewhere...

Selling out Canada's dairy farmers for cheaper pizza

Not that the pizza is going to be any cheaper; the bottom lines at the big pizza chains will be a little bit plumper.

The fact that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz can call this a "good news story" for Canadian dairy farmers tells you everything you need to know about where the Harper gang stands on supporting Canada's dairy farmers.

The price of pizza has done something amazing over the years. Pizza could be our barometer showing how well we're doing in the race to the bottom.

I remember back in the early seventies, hanging at my buddy Johnny's place on Ferndale Ave in Guelph. Just around the corner was a Marco's Pizza, one of the first wave of pizza joints in town. From time to time the drunken louts and teenage pot-heads who congregated in Johnny's basement (Johnny's mom's basement, to be precise) would pool their resources and order a couple of large from Marco's.

We'd stumble over to pick them up, and I remember two large was over twenty bucks.

So how is it that in some of the big chains today you can still get two large and be in the twenties forty years later?

The big chains came in and so did cardboard crusts and industrial bacon and mushrooms.

Nevertheless, folks kept buying pizza and the price kept going down even though Canada has dairy price supports in place that keep cheese prices high and small-scale dairy farmers in business.

Say good-bye to all that.