By Jeff McClellan, ’94, Editor
When I began attending BYU, I quickly learned that cool literary folk hung out at the Pie. The Pie Pizzeria was a small restaurant across the street from the BYU track. Its sign displayed the mathematical sign for pi, and generations of students had made inscriptions on the brick walls inside.
I was a freshman and had begun to mix in circles of “word” people—senior and graduate English students who were performing their work at poetry readings, writing short stories for theses, and creating witty editions of the underground newspaper Student Review. I got a Student Review T-shirt and wrote an article for the paper. I attended a poetry reading at a professor’s home. I ate steaming pizza piled high with peppers and onions and cheese while a live band played and a TV screen glowed at the Pie.
I didn’t like the Pie’s pizza much at first. (An inch of crunchy bell peppers and onions? It took my Pizza! Pizza! palate some time to adjust.) But the Pie was cool, and I aspired to be cool, so I sat among the written-on bricks and listened to music I didn’t really care for and ate pizza that slowly grew on me.
Not long into my BYU career, the Pie Pizzeria closed down. Good Time Charlie’s Pizza Parlor had a brief stint in the Pie building, but it too closed and the hangout was no more.
What were the cool, hip, groovy, or swell BYU hangouts when you were here? Did you bite into a sandwich at Mama’s or sip limeade at Rowley’s or bowl strikes at Regal Lanes? We want to hear your stories of Provo’s college culture. Send your memories (of fewer than 300 words) to First Person, BYU Magazine, 209 UPB, Provo, UT 84602 or firstperson@byu.edu.
