Janet is in the “In-Between.”
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of 
“Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
After I was laid off in March I quickly realized that my job search would be different than the one I’d engaged in only the year before, and all the other job searches I’d undertaken in two decades as a recruiter. A significant number of my former colleagues were out of work, and senior level jobs in the industries I had experience in – consulting, law, and banking – were increasingly hard to find, and still undergoing contraction. I knew I’d have to take on some part-time work to fill the days between interviews, and I was lucky to find a wide variety of odd jobs that kept my spirits up even if they didn’t exactly fill my bank account. I “babysat” for the bird of parents whose children I’d minded years ago, I dodged flying clothing while doing a retail stint at a sample sale, I cater-waitered for a comfort food entrepreneur, I petitioned for a Democratic candidate for District Attorney, served as a guinea pig for psych and science experiments at Columbia, and hit the streets to cast shopaholic women for a reality television show.
I LOST MY JOB AND MY TUCHAS.
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
Pardon my Yiddish, but in the six months since I was laid off I’ve lost not only my job, but several jeans sizes, multiple handles d’amour, a second chin, and a good chunk of my tuchas. When I started at Goldman in 1999 I was a fit size 10, but after years of stressful traveling and eating the equivalent of my compensation in hors d’oeuvres and free recruiting dinners, I departed in 2008 as a robust size 14-16. When I left the law firm recruiting job less than a year later, I was still in that double digit realm, and beginning to drown my sorrows and fear in free pizza offerings, 99 cent pasta, and the creamy arms of the two most supportive and nonjudgmental men in my life – Ben and Jerry. These simple carbohydrates and consoling fats made me feel better, and I congratulated myself on saving money as I adapted to my new bonus-less $405 a week compensation structure.
It took me a few months to realize that in the depressing and rejection-filled world of unemployment, I needed someplace to go on a daily basis, something to feel happy about, and some way to regularly measure my progress and success beyond performance review feedback. After years of being an irregular weekend gym-goer, I decided to commit to a routine and get back into shape. To save money, I put my Chelsea Piers gym membership on hold, and joined a gym that was offering a free membership to the unemployed. I was grateful for the cost savings, and the gym had most of the machines I used, but it wasn’t the same as going to a large gym with many amenities beyond the standard fitness equipment. After three months I decided that the cost of the Chelsea Piers Sports Center was justified; it was a place that I could go for hours, and like the office I’d lost a place where I could both work intently and enjoy downtime in the presence of many other “colleagues.” I looked forward to the significant commute from my apartment in Park Slope because it got me out of the house each day, and interacting with still employed folks on the subway and bus, and relished the numerous celebrity sightings I could have when intermingling with other fitness buffs with irregular and “creative” hours. Canyon Ranch keeps calling me with inducements to come back, but I could use the Sports Center and its spa facilities to pamper myself in the same way without a trip to the Berkshires or Arizona.
In a few months, the effort paid off. I can now fit into almost every size 8 GAP has to sell – a size I hadn’t bought since high school in the 80s – and in one or two particularly generous cuts I can fit into a 6 without major damage to my circulatory system. I was never truly obese, and am well aware that the average American woman wears a size 14, but the improvements to my health and fitness levels have been truly amazing. My heart rate while resting and working out decreased so much that I had to switch machines several times to prove that there wasn’t a mechanical problem, and I can now push myself harder and get to levels that increase my weight loss and cardiovascular efforts. I used to be plagued by exercise induced asthma that necessitated frequent inhaler usage when I wound down from a workout in the locker room, and now that’s stopped. I won’t get into the embarrassing chafing that afflicts women who have too much of a good thing, but as a 36D I now suffer from very little of what I did sporting a 40 inch bra.
Don’t get me wrong. I find many larger sized women attractive – Jill Scott, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson – but for some reason don’t think that the same proportions work as well on melanin-challenged folks like me. Being heavier than I felt comfortable being also led to a particular brand of shyness and lack of self-esteem that everyone who knows me thought incompatible with my generally boisterous personality. I could never post an actual picture of myself on facebook. I had a Bette Midler headshot in place of my own. I generally shied away from pictures too, but when others captured a picture of me I would look at it with initial excitement, decide that I looked too fat, and promptly de-tag it. A few days ago, as part of a birthday celebration, my cousin whipped out a camera and had me pose for a variety of “glamour” shots. When I looked at the photos I still focused on the problems of my too short and ring-y neck and a midsection that looked a bit thick for my now very thin arms, but I didn’t hate them. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to make my neck longer at this point – those tribal rituals involving placing multiple bangles around the neck have to begin adolescence or earlier – but I was fine with the pictures and comfortable with actually looking like what I saw.
When my cousin sent me the pictures I decided that I would finally post an actual picture of myself. If any of my high school or college friends was looking for me, I was okay with their seeing what I ‘d actually become, and not leading them to believe that I had turned out to be a Vegas superstar who got her start singing in bathhouses. I’m not the most technologically savvy person, and after several tries to upload a picture into the profile space, I succeeded in posting it randomly where the updates go. It seemed awfully conceited to just randomly post a picture of myself, but while I was struggling to either take it down or add some commentary to explain why I was displaying myself devoid of any particular occasion, I got a comment. A man I knew from my old world of MBA recruiting conferences had hit the “like” button. Pretty soon I got three more “likes” and a string of comments. My former “competitor” from Lehman recruiting wrote “Wow! Girl, you are doing something right..you look fantastic,” and a former Goldman colleague mentioned that she just spoke to a mutual acquaintance who had seen me on the street, and noted that I looked great. “Congratulations,” she wrote following up on the conversation and the picture, “on the new Raiffa aesthetic.”
I’ve done a lot of things I’m proud of since I got laid off, and had the opportunity to revisit some passions that I tucked away almost as soon as I picked up my college degree. I’ve volunteered for NY Cares on multiple occasions and helped feed hundreds of New Yorkers whose problems put my relatively minor ones into clear perspective. I’ve indulged my undergraduate theater minor’s thirst for fame by appearing on Brooklyn BCAT television, NY 1, a Reuter’s piece on creative approaches to managing unemployment, and an episode of “Law and Order.” I’ve been quoted in articles published in three countries, and written more in blog posts than I have since I finished my 100+ page master’s thesis. I’ve enjoyed the positive feedback for my posts that I might have received if I’d ever pursued a writing career, but avoided all the criticism and rejection that a real writer might face. I’ve been able to utilize the skills I developed in two decades as a recruiter to help students at two Ivy League business schools with their resumes, and I’ve just picked up a third assignment for another top-ranked school. Of all the things I’ve done since leaving the 9-to-5 world the thing that has made me the happiest is still losing weight and making a habit of fitness. It isn’t completely free or even cheap; I’ve found that I need a top notch gym with world-class facilities to keep me motivated to go almost every day, and I’ve spent more on high protein and low calorie food than I ever could on a dollar meal diet from McDonald’s. It is still worth it. The endorphin rush I get from the elliptical beats back the malaise that comes from losing a familiar work routine and worrying about the future, and it’s still cheaper than therapy or heroin. There is no better time than this one to focus on making myself the most attractive and self-confident candidate for whatever I end up doing.
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I HUNG GEORGE CLOONEY.
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
Labor Day weekend can be a depressing stretch for those of us who no longer labor. It’s the last long summer weekend to travel and enjoy traditional summer activities you’ve missed out on, but every day is a weekend day for me now, and I can’t justify spending the money to travel. I was more optimistic and less tight-fisted on the 4th of July when I forked over the dough to go to an adult summer camp in Connecticut, but this holiday has just made me think about the change of seasons and the fact that nothing much is changing for me. Well, at least nothing is changing positively. This will be the first Fall in 12 years that I haven’t had a recruitment season to run or oversee, and I’ll miss the bright-eyed students , inspirational speeches about how this truly is the best time to start your career, and platters of free hors d’oeuvres. I used to be both excited and vaguely depressed about the arrival of the gargantuan September issue of “Vogue,” and regret that I wasn’t thin enough to fit into the wonderful new styles hitting stores nor rich enough to afford them; now I’m thin enough after months of having the time to exercise every day, but I don’t want to shell out the $4 to buy the magazine.
The extended weekend was already looking bleak by Saturday when I was sitting at my computer screen wondering what I could do without spending money or going anywhere outside of the five boroughs. I’d exhausted all of my usual at-home recessionary activities including “silver harvest,” a game of going through handbags, luggage, and pants to find nickels, dimes, and quarters, and then determining if I had enough to fill any coin wrappers to return to the bank, and “Atkins fashion show,” wherein I try on old clothes that no longer fit to see if months of carbohydrate reduction has made zippering or buttoning them possible. While debating my options or lack of them, I was startled by the phone ringing and an offer of work. It was the marketing research firm that pays contractors to go to the movies and take on other odd tasks like going to supermarkets and convenience stores to assess the upkeep of freezer cases. Was I interested in going to the Battery Park movie theater to hang a banner for “Up in the Air”? The assignment normally paid $10, but because this was a special last minute request they would pay me $15. There used to be a time – let’s say six months ago when I couldn’t eat my hourly wage in lunch – when the idea of leaving my apartment and traveling for over an hour roundtrip on a Saturday to hang a banner or attempt another manual task involving a ladder wouldn’t have done much for me. Unfortunately, it now looked like a very attractive offer. The banner was already at the theater, the marketing company rep told me, and all I had to do was hang it up and get a manager to sign off and say the task was accomplished. She also said I had to hurry and wanted to know how soon I could set off.
When I got to the entrance of the floor with the theaters I was told that the banner was several flights down at the box office. I soon found it on the ground outside the box office door, and saw that it was gigantic. I hoisted the relatively light but incredibly long box onto my shoulder, and set off for several banks of escalators to reach the main theater floors again. I was lucky that it was not near the start of a feature in one of the eleven theaters because I required quite a bit of space on the escalator, and was somewhat unsteady on my feet while wielding the box. I asked the manager for suggestions of spots to hang the banner, having no idea of how I was actually going to hang it, and was directed to a couple of empty walls that might be suitable. After opening the box and unfurling the banner 
I quickly discovered that none of the spaces I was directed to was going to be large enough; the image of George Clooney at the airport was 15 feet long, and would not fit even if it were suspended from the ceiling. The manager radioed a maintenance guy to assist me, and after almost giving up on ways to mount George, he told me that the best idea would be to suspend the banner from the railing above an escalator bank on the uppermost theater floor. As a novice banner installer, I had to let him do most of the work of threading the wiring through the banner and affixing it to the railing while I held on for dear life. I was convinced that I was going to fall over the railing because it was so heavy, killing myself for the promise of $15, or that the banner would fall down and take out a customer traveling up on the escalator. Then again, if I were going to be injured by having something fall on top of me, George Clooney would be pretty high on the list of desirable tumblers.
Having successfully completed my assignment largely because I found someone more capable than I was to accomplish the bulk of the task, I congratulated myself for once again showing that I am clearly suited for management. With two hours of weekend time killed, I then embarked on a stretch of street fair going and cheap eating to keep myself busy. I visited Brazil in midtown during the Brazil Independence Parade, and on Monday I journeyed up Eastern Parkway to take in the sights, sounds, and tastes of the Caribbean during the annual West Indian Carnival and Parade. I go to this event every year thinking that I can make it up the entire three mile route without being overwhelmed by claustrophobia and being beaten back by human traffic, but give up each time and end up having to take side streets to make it back home in one piece. On the positive side, the huge amount of vendor competition keeps the prices incredibly low. I had two ears of corn, one procured for only $1, and a bag of mango for $2 – a bargain compared to the offerings at many Manhattan street fairs where the price of zeppoles has soared to more than $5.00 for half a dozen. Since I went early I had a full afternoon for another cheap activity, and I journeyed out to Coney Island for the first time in several years. I highly recommend a trip to Coney Island for the unemployed; it takes a long time to get out there by train, and walking the boardwalk is good exercise, refreshingly cool even in hot weather, and free.
At Nathan’s I saw a big sign saying that the chain was hiring, and in addition to “free food” was offering an “excellent starting salary.” What exactly would be an excellent starting salary for Nathan’s? Could it best $15 an hour for hanging George Clooney? Is it just me noticing this for the first time, or are more restaurants and fast food chains advertising openings? Are these the only available jobs left? During this weekend alone I saw several advertisements beyond the Coney Island opportunity including one for Saturday openings at Bazzini’s in Tribeca (must have experience), and at McDonald’s around 14th Street. McDonald’s was enticing future flippers with the promise of “flexable hours.” Should I go in and see if they could offer flexible hours as well for former English majors? At the rate I’m going, my next in-between job may very well involve asking if fries are needed.
ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, JOBLESS.
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
Dear God, please let me get some type of job this week. I don’t even mean a job with health benefits, business cards, a subsidized cafeteria and colleagues whose clothing choices I can ridicule. All I need is a new odd job for a few hours that is just degrading enough to provide good fodder for my column, and keep me from applying to any more of the old jobs of people who used to report me. I’ve only been able to land one new odd job recently – four hours of cater-waitering where I served college age interns who are apparently more employable than I am – and I had to stand next to a guy serving lasagna while I was on Atkins. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the smell of it very much, and I appreciated that I was allowed to wear all black as opposed to the unflattering-to the-apple-shaped white cotton shirt look. It just wasn’t very much work. I’ve done everything that I can, God, to generate some extra cash and human interaction. I’ve volunteered for every focus group in New York at findfocusgroups.com, including one specifically for anesthesiologists. You’d think that actual anesthesiologists would have something better to do than participate in focus groups. I’ve submitted for every “extra” gig advertised by Central Casting for “Law and Order” and the movie version of “Eat, Pray, Love” including one that required the applicant to be of a different race and gender than my own, and several that would require me to spend more than I would make in a day to purchase a baby carriage, scuba diving equipment, or a full police uniform.
September is approaching, the thick fashion magazines full of things I can no longer afford to buy are arriving (although they are all slightly less thick this year due to a decline in ad pages), and I’m neither going back to school nor back to work. Late August is an ideal time to take a vacation, but I can’t really justify taking one when I haven’t been working for five months. I’m probably out of the process for the law firm since I never heard anything after the second round weeks ago, the recruiter for the bank moved to Florida after my first round and has said nothing but that I’m still under consideration, and I’m still waiting to hear about an in-person interview at the university after two phone screens. I can’t do the mystery shopping for the bank anymore because bankers now keep calling me at home hoping to get me to invest with them, and I can’t disclose that I was only soliciting their advice for the promise of $15 up to 5 times a month. Although it’s made a wonderful impact on my figure and rapidly deteriorating sense of self esteem, I’m also growing weary of going to the gym every day and pretending that I’m a Victoria’s Secret model diligently preparing for a lingerie runway show.
God, I got turned down for inclusion in the “New York Times” article on dramatic decisions people were making because of unemployment because my desperation wasn’t even desperate enough. Should I email them and say I’m thinking about selling a kidney or moving into a neighbor’s doghouse? The only call I’ve gotten from a headhunter in weeks was about an interview with the scary hedge fund that tape records its interviews and demands that candidates pick a position on a topic and argue with them. The most excitement I’ve had recently was receiving an 
unexpected big Fedex envelope. When you are unemployed the delivery of mail can be the highlight of your day, and the appearance of anything large or unexpected can be as thrilling as the arrival a of thick Admissions envelope during senior year of high school. It turned out to be from the university I’ve been working for part-time and remotely, and informed me that I am now eligible to participate in their retirement plan. I haven’t seen any type of payment from them yet and have no idea of when one is forthcoming, but they are already concerned with my retirement. Dear God, I’m in a late summer, late recession rut.
Alright, I’ll admit to not being particularly religious. Most of my few displays of faith have been for the benefit of family or ex-boyfriends, and even the promise of an elaborate themed party with a troupe of paid dancers couldn’t persuade me to do the Hebrew study necessary for a bat mitzvah. Desperation is, however, beginning to set in. I’m approaching the six month mark, the barometer that’s used in the press these days to measure particularly long-term unemployment. It took me six months to find my last job, but that was when I was gainfully employed already and I had many, many more interviews and options to choose from. My tenure in the last job, of course, was barely longer than the exhaustive process I went through to get the position, my arrival as the new Director of Legal Recruiting being somewhat badly timed to coincide with the cessation of all demand for attorney recruiting. I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to be more entrepreneurial, although the last entrepreneurial business plan I had was my burning pre-teen desire to open a restaurant in my bedroom.
Luckily for me, I’m finding more friends who are becoming entrepreneurial, and I’m working to hitch myself to their wagons. One such opportunity came up recently, and although I’m not certain how attractive the service will be in this economy, the startup costs seem relatively minimal and the tasks fairly simple. My former banking colleague, Jen, is starting up a lifestyle management service to help busy professionals and small businesses with tasks ranging from event planning to correspondence to cleaning out their closets. She’s lucky enough to be employed now by an executive headhunter, but the work is part-time, and her husband’s finance career (like almost everyone else’s in the industry) is not as lucrative as it once was. “Take a look at the list of services we can provide and tell me if you can think of anything to add,” she asks at lunch. “Is there anything that you can do that should be on the list?” She’s given me a preliminary description of what tasks will require liability insurance and trigger certain tax implications, but I ramble off a whole list of anything I can and am willing to do to generate business. There isn’t much that I won’t do these days. “I can birdsit and babysit, walk dogs, feed cats, and read to the elderly. I can plan and host corporate events, create and review resumes, sell your gold for cash, distribute flyers, go to people’s houses and help them with dinner parties, and give tourists walking tours of Brooklyn. Do you think there’s a market for non-sexual escort services, or is that too gray an area?” She dismisses many of my suggestions, but jots a few down enthusiastically. “There is one thing I won’t do,” I say, piquing her interest since I’ve basically offered everything short of outright prostitution. “I won’t clean out anyone’s closet. I’ve been out of work for nearly six months and I haven’t yet cleaned out my own.”
Jen makes a point of telling me that the service will help support charities and be environmentally friendly; it will help individuals and companies donate unwanted goods to nonprofits, suggest online ways to cut down on paper usage, and aim to accomplish all tasks through mass transit. That gives me an idea. “Why don’t you make a special effort to contract with laid off people who have skills in certain fields? That could get the company some 
good press and make people want to sign on,” I suggest. She likes the idea, and tells me about several layoffs that have impacted members of her extended family. I think about the talents of my laid off comrades, and throw out some possibilities. “I know someone who can give blogging lessons and help businesses with online media communications. He could probably even tweet for people who are too busy to do it for themselves. I also know a really good comfort food caterer. And I can cater-waiter for her!”
The next day I hook Jen up with the folks I’ve mentioned via email. She follows up quickly expressing interest in meeting them, and pitches a first project to help get the company off the ground. She tells them that she’s looking for a writer or an English major type who can condense and polish the copy for her web pages. A response comes back soon after from the blogging guru. “Janet’s a great writer. Have you read her Recessionals series?” There’s no way that I can say no after that, and I send Jen a note telling her that I’d be happy to take on the assignment. “What will you charge me?” she asks after expressing delight that I’ll be helping with the writing. I tell her that the cost is one chicken Caesar salad, and that she’s ended up paying in advance based on lunch the previous day. She’ll hear none of that, and demands an actual rate above and beyond a low carbohydrate lunch. Unemployment hasn’t done much for me in terms of knowing what my services are worth. Am I worth the $100+ an hour I was earning in my professional career, or what I’m willing to accept now for the types of odd jobs that feel more like what I used to do during college? I’ve always been made salary offers based on the job I was in while interviewing, and the idea of coming up with a figure for something I’ve never been paid for before is a bit bewildering. We finally settle on a rate that is far from what I got as a recruiting manager, but enough that I can cover the cost of a chicken Caesar salad and a diet coke at a relatively high end restaurant with an hour’s pay. I’m looking forward to beginning my first ever paid copywriting gig!
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(Ed. note) Janet and The 405 Club love to read your comments and feedback. If you all can relate to Janet’s “Recessionals” please share your story via the comments link below. Thank you.
I HAVE ABANDONED MY JOB SEARCH IN FAVOR OF PIZZA.
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.
I have just cancelled my membership to TheLadders.com, Inc., a company offering an online job search destination and content for $100K+ jobs that I could see and apply to, but unfortunately come nowhere near securing. The fee for the premiere membership was only $30 a month, a small sum when you consider that I am already managing nearly $4000 a month in fixed expenses on an income of about $2400 (unemployment insurance and the interest I’m receiving from savings accounts I’m too afraid to transfer into higher yielding vehicles), but I’ve found a better target for the money. I have decided to devote my burgeoning free time to dining my way through New York Magazine’s top 20 pizza places, and I have 14 more restaurants to go.
I know what you’re thinking. How exactly is eating at 14 more pizzerias going to help me manage the frightening inequity between my new income and expenses, and reach my diet and exercise goal of fitting back into a single digit sized interview suit? The answer is that the pizza quest isn’t helping me in any career directed or self improvement oriented way, but it’s relatively inexpensive. Eating my way through the list is also an easy enough goal to reach. I need to start creating satisfying accomplishments other than finding a job or garnering press for being an unemployed former yuppie. Despite doing everything I can to keep the depression and sense of hopelessness at bay, it’s beginning to set back in again. I think it may have something to do with the fact that it rains every day now, and with a former colleague telling me that she’s incredibly depressed about turning 29 and being out of work for one month. I’m at the point now where I barely remember my twenties – despite the fact that my newly revised resume may suggest that I’m still in them – and I think I slept through my entire first month of employment.
Have you heard about the group of guys who go around eating at burger joints and then rate their meals on a blog? They are seven white collar professional men in their 30s and they started “Burger of the Month” (burgerrankings.com) or “BOTM” to highlight their rankings and solicit suggestions on the next burgers they should try. They’ve now been featured on several television programs and have been profiled extensively in print. I’ve even heard that a movie is being developed about 
their story. Wouldn’t it be great to develop an unemployed version of this where a group of laid off gourmets set out to visit every pizzeria on the top 20 list, and perhaps all the well loved places that have caused such controversy based upon their exclusion? Why should the gainfully employed be getting all the fame and fortune for eating the same thing over and over again? There seems to be a unique convergence between the escalating number of unemployed people and the proliferation of upscale pizza places, and there may very well be an opportunity to use this synergy for marketing purposes. “Nine out of ten laid off investment bankers prefer Neopolitan to Sicilian,” or “downsized first year attorneys who may never get a legal job because they will be competing with several classes of deferred summer associates protest the exclusion of Grimaldi’s from the list of top pies of the moment,” could be sample advertising slogans. At the very least, couldn’t someone sponsor one laid off recruiting manager for an expedition to try all the best examples of this recessionary favorite?
Now let’s go back to the list. I had already tried Franny’s in Park Slope/Prospect Heights (#3), Co. in Chelsea (#4), Adrienne’s near Wall Street (#14), and Luzzo’s (#6) and Artichoke Basille (#18) in the East Village when the rankings were published. This was a respectable number, but certainly nothing to brag about for a lifelong New Yorker with an Italian sounding last name. I had enjoyed all of them in different ways, and Adrienne’s in particular still fills me with warm memories of the Stone Street corridor behind Goldman Sachs where bankers and traders go to see and be seen, and others go to hook up with these masters and mistresses of the financial universe. On a Sunday in August when I was convinced that half of New York would be out of town, and the other half would be huddled indoors because of the torrential downpour, I set out to try the #1 rated spot, Kesté. You have to love an upstart that makes it to the top of the list only a few months after opening, and at this point my rejection bruised ego is so fragile it’s a boost to say that I’ve reached #1 in anything.
Kesté did not disappoint. Unlike Grimaldi’s it did not have a long line of guidebook clutching tourists at the door, and unlike many of the new hot spots it is open for both lunch and dinner (on more than four days in a week), doesn’t appear to shut down immediately when the dough is gone and accepts credit cards. I was seated right away too, although distressingly near a couple who was committing what I consider to be the cardinal sin of discarding their crusts. I thought about saying “Hello, I’ve recently been laid off and would like to have your crusts,” but thought better of it. While I couldn’t understand one word of what the waiter said due to the combination of his accent and the noise level in the small space, my pizza arrived piping hot and so quickly it appeared that they knew I was coming. At $12 for a Margherita it’s also a bargain compared to many competitors in the top-ranked New York pizza world and thus a boon to us 405ers; Franny’s charges $16 for the standard pie, Veloce (#7) runs $15, and Di Fara (#10) in Brooklyn will run you $5 for just one slice now.
The superlatives accorded to the restaurant run by the American chapter president of the Associazone Pizzaiouli Napoletana also proved justified. Top 20 listmakers Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld wrote that “never in this town have oozy blobs of melted buffalo mozzarella and brightly flavored San Marzano tomatoes frolicked in such ecstatic harmony,” and added that “a few bites in you are struck by the sensation that life, such as it is, may have nothing more to offer.” I’m no food critic, but beside the aforementioned deliciousness, I was particularly struck by the perfect size of the pie for one hungry customer. Some of the less cheesy and puffier artisanal breaded variations at highly rated places like Co., for example, will leave you desirous of ordering a budget busting second pie for just one mouth.
It was still raining miserably when I left Kesté, but I felt refreshed, exhilarated, and ready to take on the world. I was pleasantly full, but still had enough room to wash the pie down with the contents of nearly two pints of Turkey Hill ice cream. I know this sounds rather glutinous, 
especially when you consider that I ate both of them without a spoon by pushing the contents up to the top, but there was a 2 for $3 sale at Key Food that week. The calorie content of the lower-fatted brand is actually one half of a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and they cost less than one pint of the Vermont-based competitor, so it was a prudent choice for both the price and the heat units. I’m going to continue with my goal of visiting all the restaurants on the list, and may even have some remaining time to continue sending out resumes and telling headhunters that I’m willing to take a step back. I may even find a new job by the time I explode.
Kesté is located at 271 Bleecker Street near Morton St, a strip that seems to have more good pizza places and ice cream/gelato shops per foot than any other area in New York City. You may also stare lovingly at the menu at kestepizzeria.com
