I Dream Of Pizza A Pizza Blog, Established In 2008
Two and a half years ago I posted a short piece on I Dream Of Pizza about a pizzeria that closed its doors in Red Hook, Brooklyn (Anselmo’s Owner Lashes Out Against Landlady).
Of course, pizza places shutter all the time, but what was unusual about Anselmo’s was a rant posted by its owner on the pizzeria’s website. An excerpt:
My landlady is telling the people of Red Hook that i have been in prison and jail. She’s right. I was in prison for manufacturing explosives. It’s public record and I’m not proud of it but i got out and moved on with my life thanks to my best friend and business partner. And I did go to jail this summer over a fight at my restaurant at 3am in the morning when Craig (i refuse to say full name) an ex drug dealer and (suspected child molester) that lived in one of my landlords building across the street was mad that i took his girlfriend from him after he came from a bar went in and pushed and hit one of my employees asking where i was. A friend of mine beat him up by the time i got there (Charges dropped on my friend). But he told cops two months later i beat him up .So after realizing his girl wasn’t coming back to his physical abuse they arrested me two months later.
To this day, my post about Anselmo’s has been visited by more readers than almost any other I Dream Of Pizza post over the past four years… which goes to show just how absurd this is.
Fast forward to 2012. Brooklyn-based writer Vinnie Rotondaro just published a story for the website Narratively New York looking at the life of the man behind this post: Roger Fischer.
It’s a lengthy piece, but well worth the read. In case you don’t make it to the end, Fischer is currently being held on Rikers Island for allegedly robbing at least 10 different stores on Staten Island. For a man who publicly admitted to manufacturing explosives on the website of his shuttered pizzeria… it’s probably not so far fetched.
