Solitary Perfection
/anthony mangieri in san francisco, ca. november 2011. image: brian vernor
This article appeared in Bike Magazine - Winter 2012.
“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but, a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.”
~ Louis Nizer
On an unseasonably warm and sunny Sunday afternoon in March, several of the world’s best bicycle framebuilders gathered in a crowded pizzeria in the SoMa District of San Francisco. The event was billed as “Ruota Libera 2011”, the brainchild of New Jersey native Anthony Mangieri and Soulcraft’s Sean Walling. A veritable who’s who were in attendance: Steve Potts, Bruce Gordon, Paul Sadoff (Rock Lobster), Brent Steelman, Jeremy Sycip, Steve Rex and others, lining the walls with some of the best two-wheeled eye-candy under one roof.
San Diego surf-jazz twins The Mattson 2 lit up the place with their unique sound, as patrons milled around the pizzeria with the esteemed bicycle craftsmen, all enjoying wood-fired Neapolitan pizza made by Mangieri.
Mangieri is a wiry guy with the whispering dialect of Alec Baldwin and the heavily tattooed veneer of a skateboarding, punk-rock bassist. He’s also the proprietor of Una Pizza Napoletana at 11th & Howard, kitty corner to California Chopper, and walking distance from the DNA Lounge, a popular music venue that’s hosted Metallica, Prince and Green Day. Prick Mangieri’s finger Monday, and he’ll bleed bicycle chain lube. Prick his finger Wednesday, and he’ll bleed buffalo mozzarella cheese. For such a colorful character, his world is purely black and white, which suits him fine. As you can imagine, he has his share of fans and detractors.
The 39-year-old moved his pizzeria from the East Village of New York City to San Francisco in 2010, opening in mid September. An avid cyclist who owns nine custom bikes made in the Bay Area since 2003, Mangieri decided his passion for riding and the outdoors was greater than his quest for riches in the Big Apple, so he closed his doors, took a year off, got married, packed it all up, and headed west.
Baking’s in his blood
At 15, Mangieri began to bake. A trip to Naples began to shape his perspective on life, and his Italian roots began burrowing deep.
“The lifestyle over there is slower than America because most Italians, in my view, don’t have hobbies like we do,” he said with a grin and sideways glance at his Italian wife Ilaria on a recent Saturday morning. “They don’t really exercise: they work, and they hang out, drink coffee and talk. The men go to cafes and clubs to talk, drink, smoke and be part of that community. Even if you’re in a village, there’s a tight-knit sense of community. Everything is shared. Everyone’s involved in each other’s world. In some ways it’s beautiful, but as I’ve gotten older, I feel the pull to live in a cabin in the woods with a gun! Maybe it’s because I work with so many people every day.” At the moment, he has the pizzeria to himself. Mangieri pauses for a minute, looking around at the empty tables in the vaulted industrial space he rents.
“The challenge I have with running the pizzeria is dealing with the spectrum of people and their needs. I need to hit the reset button all the time. I do all the work, and that’s the way I prefer things. I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but everything I do is for my satisfaction only, not others.”
Naturally leavened
Though he didn’t realize it at the time, the influence of his family would lead him to the birthplace of the mountain bike, Mt. Tamalpais, via Naples and its famous delicacy: wood-fired pizza. After graduating high school in 1989, he worked for the union unloading trucks, detesting every minute. He worked for the post office, hating it, and decided his entrepreneurial leanings had taken over. He opened a bakery near the house he shared with his grandmother in New Jersey.
“After I got into food retail, I felt proud of my grandfather’s focus on details when he had his candy and gelato shop,” Mangieri said. “My grandma, whom I lived with for eight years, told me how much I reminded her of him. My father was handy, very talented, able to build anything. He wasn’t afraid of anything, even heights. He was an electrician, and I worked with him when I was a kid. I got shocked a few times. He had his own jobs on the side on his days off, and I loved going with him. All I thought about was where we were going to eat lunch, and which pizza place we’d visit.”
Stable of bikes
Mangieri’s first custom bike was a Soulcraft Plowboy 26-inch rigid steel singlespeed, built by Walling in 2003. He had a stock Gunnar before that. He commutes twice a week across the Golden Gate Bridge from his house in Sausalito on a pink Soulcraft singlespeed road bike with a matching pink-striped Fi’zi:k saddle. His stable includes an Independent Fabrication XS road bike; a Steve Potts titanium singlespeed 29er with a baby blue Type II steel fork, saved for spiritual Sunday rides after Mass; a Kish 26” titanium singlespeed with steel Igleheart fork; two Rock Lobsters (a 26-inch rigid and 29er rigid singlespeed; one black with no logos). He bought a stock IF geared MTB that never fit right, so now Ilaria rides it.
“I had a PK Ripper BMX bike in grade school with camo pads,” he added. “I had an early Ross MTB with a shoulder strap under the top tube. I did a race from the top to bottom of New Jersey on it when I was 15, when everyone else was on road bikes. My mother, bless her soul, rode with me on a Sears three speed! Because I was into BMX racing, I’d use the toe straps to jump everything on that Ross.” Like many East Coast kids, Mangieri wanted a Fat Chance, but had no money. He had IF’s early catalog, with a photo of a guy riding a flame-painted singlespeed, which spoke to his adventurous side. He recently talked to Steelman about getting one with flames.
“Once I made a little money, I bought a stock IF from a local bike shop,” he said. “I quit riding about 10 years ago because where I lived in New Jersey didn’t have much of a MTB scene, and I grew tired of riding the same trails by myself. I lost interest because it felt like a job to ride. I was traveling a lot, to Guatemala, Thailand, plus hiking and running. Back then I didn’t have the money to get a travel bike. In 2000 or so I rented a bike on an island in Thailand, all on fire roads, which inspired me to get back on the bike.”
Coincidentally, San Francisco was Mangieri’s original choice to open his pizzeria in 1996. To him, the city by the Bay is the only cosmopolitan city, an international city with opera, music, a MTB scene, healthy tourism, access to Mt. Tam and China Camp. He chose Brooklyn instead, leaving the convenient and comfortable confines of his New Jersey neighborhood. His rent was $5,000 a month, and he needed to hire people, manage people, and run things like a bigger business that he was prepared for. He commuted for the first two years from his place an hour away in New Jersey, and slept in a rest-stop on the way home. He wouldn’t get out of the pizzeria until 2 am, and he’d be out of his mind with lack of peace. It made him a different person, he says, someone he’s still trying to find.
“I went from knowing 30 people in New Jersey to having lines wrapping around the block in NYC,” he explained, his hands shaping his narrative. “Without any effort, I was being interviewed every week, getting on TV, in newspapers, magazines…I felt motivated and empowered, but it slowly destroyed me. I thought it was a dream come true at first, but it ate away at me. Our NYC place was tiny, jammed. The challenges in NYC included having the outdoorsy lifestyle I wanted.”
His first trip to San Francisco wasn’t until 2001, and he went there to ride. He rented a car, and rode China Camp and the Marin Headlands by himself, just as he does today. It’s always been hard to sync his riding with everyone’s schedule, even on his days off.
For Mangieri, making pizza is like riding his mountain bike: an eternal quest for the ultimate flow of everything coming together just right. When it happens, it’s like a miracle, but when it’s not quite right, he works hard to get back on track.
“I don’t hide the truth or simplicity of real Neapolitan pizza by heaping any crap on it.”
The numbers
Based on his work schedule of Wednesday through Saturday nights, Mangieri estimates he makes about 500 pizzas a week, about 2,000 in a month. His beehive-shaped Stefano Ferrara oven with “A.D. 2010” on the side, made in Naples, has small tiles and a mouth belching fire, sliding out 12-inch pizzas with ease.
At $20 a pop over 15 years, that’s nearly $7.2 million. His menu, like his taste in rigid singlespeed bikes, is limited: naturally leavened dough, round pizzas, no slices, in five choices: Marinara (San Marzano tomatoes, oregano, garlic, basil, sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil and no cheese; Margherita (San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella from Naples, extra-virgin olive oil, basil, sea salt); Bianca (buffalo mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, basil, sea salt; no tomatoes, just white); Filetti (fresh cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, basil, sea salt, fresh tomatoes, no sauce); and Ilaria, named after his wife (smoked mozzarella, fresh cherry tomatoes, arugula, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, fresh tomatoes, no sauce). His business hours? Wednesday through Saturday, 5pm until the dough runs out, which is 10 pm or so.
Working the oven by himself, where he bakes three pizzas at a time, has sharpened his skills but dulled his penchant for eating pizza, due to a wheat allergy.
“I can tell a good pizza from a bad one the minute I take it out of the oven; the customer can’t always tell, but I can,” he added with a knowing grin.
With a limited menu and a trailblazing business model now mimicked all around the country, the outspoken Mangieri has developed thick skin from the criticism. Like Connecticut framebuilder Richard Sachs, Mangieri doesn’t necessarily make pizzas for others. His focus is on his craft.
“I do all the work, and I’m not interested in selling out. I’m not egotistical, but on the other hand I have a huge ego that drives me to prove the naysayers wrong,” he said, arms flailing as his eyes widen. “When you come to Una Pizza, you get a piece of me with every pie, like it or not. I’m doing this for myself. Critics and armchair quarterbacks can’t take that away from me.
“If I see someone totally committed to what they do and what they’re passionate about, I support their effort. I’m driven by the quality of every pizza coming out of my oven. If I feel I’ve had a bad night at the oven I’ll stay up at night to figure things out, how to get back on track. I understand my fame has attracted a bigger audience, so it’s normal to see more people have a love-hate relationship with me.”
According to Soulcraft’s Walling, Mangieri is the real deal.
“He showed up at our shop in Petaluma to order a Plowboy singlespeed in 2003,” Walling said. “I had no idea who he was. We asked him what he did for a living and he said he owned a pizzeria in NYC. I immediately had the stereotypical image of a bunch of jamokes in stained white aprons spinning dough. I later learned that was not the case and that we were dealing with a rock star.”
History lesson on a plate
Despite many old wive’s tales and urban legends, pizza is not a recent revelation. “Pizza goes back to Pompeii,” Mangieri said. “If you look at the ovens from 79 A.D., they’re the same as what I’m using today. I don’t mix my dough by hand anymore, but I did until two years before moving out here. The only thing that’s changed from Pompeii to now is electricity. Companies involved in the pizza industry are also supplying all the ingredients; it’s a huge business.” The U.S. pizza industry does $32 billion a year, compared to the bike industry’s approximately $6 billion. Mangieri realizes the economy of scale, and how big his industry has become.
“Our Neapolitan concept is taking hold. My friend Gary in New Jersey asked recently: ‘who would’ve guessed this would’ve taken off as big as it has?’ I don’t want to sound like an ornery old man, but when I started my pizzeria 15 years ago, we were the only ones doing it this way in the country. Now it has taken root in the industry, and people are selling ovens like mine, ingredients like mine, sauce, tomatoes, you name it. What makes my pizza different boils down to the hands that make it each night and the details I pour into it; just like a handmade bicycle builder.”
He went to the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in San Jose in 2007, and he was excited by what he saw, but thinks the event has outgrown the spirit of its original intent. He sees the hangers-on and imitators popping up, just like those opening Neapolitan pizzerias without any experience.
“Every handmade bike is not a quality bike, just like every handmade pizza is not an artisan pizza,” he says with a laugh. “The oven is a tool. If I go buy the tools to clean people’s teeth, that doesn’t mean I’m automatically qualified to be a dentist! Similarly, just because I can buy titanium bicycle tubing doesn’t mean I can automatically build a frame anywhere near as good as Jim Kish, you know?”
Rock Lobster’s Paul Sadoff has seen plenty over the years, and respects Mangieri’s singular focus on his craft.
“Anthony's passion for food makes him spend many hours at his restaurant. His passion for riding made him move across the country, restaurant, wife and all,” Sadoff said.
“Anthony showed up at a small frame builder show and bike swap on a Sunday in late June, his day off. It was great that he made the trip. I try to get up to San Francisco now and then to go to his restaurant. Maybe one day I can show him some of the singletrack here in Santa Cruz.”
Fans and critics
Mangieri doesn’t really care about the noise some make about him, but sometimes it gets to him when people squawk about the limited menu or the quality of his food, without getting to know the real pizzaiolo.
“I work hard to pour myself into this business; I’ve passed up several opportunities to make serious money with offers to do reality TV shows and other things, but I choose to stay the course and do what provides me with satisfaction, and that’s making the best pizzas I know how.”
Scratching the surface of the former straight-edge punk rocker leads to the inevitable: discussion about bloggers and use of social media. “Yelp? They have the worst concept ever!” he nearly shouts. “You can pay to advertise with them, and they’ll filter the negative reviews. But if you resist, all hell breaks loose and the negatives rise to the top. I don’t think some knucklehead who works for the man, who’s miserable with his life and can’t find his way out of a paper bag, should have a voice with weight that criticizes any business without a reference point. Same thing for the majority of bloggers out there: no credibility, just a platform to spout.”
First impressions
At first glance, Mangieri looks a bit intimidating. His thin frame is covered with tattoos, visible on his neck, and cascading down his arms and legs, including his knuckles, with the words HOPE and FEDE (Italian for ‘faith’). He was 18 when he got his first tattoo.
“I got Jesus and Faith in Italian tattooed on my left shoulder because my thinking was my mother wouldn’t be heart-broken that I got this!” he said with a chuckle, rolling up his sleeve. “No idea how many tattoos I have now. My favorite artists are friends like Dave Shoemaker, Robert Ryan, Mike Schweigert, and Tom Yak, who work hard and are capable of being world famous, but choose to be the best at what they do.
“I haven’t been tattooed in years. My first pizzeria was a block from their shop in New Jersey, and they’d come in for free pizza, and I’d go there for free tattoos. We were just trying to figure out our craft back then. Half my original clientele came from those guys. They’d come to my place and eat with fresh tattoos and bandages!
“I was into the flash piece with thick lines and heavy shading. A few custom, but no real thread of a life story here. Most are religious tattoos,” he points out as Ilaria answers the phone. “My wife and I had a religious upbringing: Catholic guilt and fear, all that. We still go to Mass every Sunday. It’s private to us. But we believe, and it’s part of our lives. It gives me and my family protection, and I feel good about that.”
Walling knows it would be easy for many to base their first impression on Mangieri’s fiery focus.
“Anthony is a pretty quiet, humble guy who isn't a social butterfly; he's also very giving,” Walling explained. “But that's not what many people see when they go to his place and watch him working. He looks kind of pissed off and some people go away with a completely wrong impression. Hanging out with him away from work is cool because I see the other side and I feel pretty fortunate to know someone that works so hard just to be able to keep doing what they want to do.
“It's inspiring.”
Seeking perfection
Despite Mangieri’s handyman environment growing up, he doesn’t do his own bike maintenance.
“I over-tighten everything! I don’t like going to shops where I need to make a three-week-in-advance appointment. My go-to mechanic is Mike Varley at Black Mountain Cycles in Point Reyes Station. It’s a far ride to his shop in a pinch, but he’s incredible. Awesome guy and a great shop.” Like Mangieri, Varley runs a one-man shop, and agrees with his approach to his craft and the fulfillment it brings.
“Anthony's and my approach to each of our businesses is very much the same,” Varley said. “The only way to really ensure consistency in your product, be it pizza or bikes, is to perform all tasks yourself. It’s a lot of work sometimes, but the end product is the reason people go to Anthony for pizza and why he and others come to me for bike work. I know each pizza he makes is going to be consistently good and that he has put his whole being into each pie.”
Asked to describe the perfect pizza, Mangieri doesn’t pause or look up at the ceiling for inspiration.
“Naturally leavened, no yeast,” he said with a toothy grin. “You can taste the wheat, sweetness, it’s a little puffy, has a touch of crispness that goes away quickly, some burn spots here and there and on the bottom, the cheese is melted but not lost its shape; oil is shiny. When I see it, I know it.”