There was a corner pizza joint near my home. I liked it because I like pizza, so it’s easy and quick to go get a bite. The corner joint’s only drawbacks were that they didn’t sell slices, only whole pies, and it wasn’t the “American” Papa John’s / Pizza Hut style with the thick crust — more a Latin or euro style thinner bread.

I’m speaking in the past tense, because that pizza joint closed down.

It had only been there for a couple of months, but in that short time it was clear they weren’t doing much business. I never saw more than one party of customers in the shop at one time; actually I never saw more customers than workers in the place, ever. Every time I’d ordered and gone to pick up my pizza, my presence was the only thing happening for the bored staff.

A funny thing is that failed pizza joint didn’t even have a website. I called there about a week after they’d opened, asking the woman who answered where I could see their menu. She told me that their Yelp page, where a customer had uploaded a photo of the menu, was the only place to see it. They never made a website. That place was kind of doomed from the start.

I walked by the place two weeks ago and the windows had brown paper (think of a paper bag) covering them on the inside. The place opened back up after some days, still with the lit-up PIZZA sign and the inside mostly unchanged.

The only reason I know this was/is a new establishment was because of the menu hanging in the window. Though under a new name, it’s still a pizza shop, just with no empanadas now.

I stopped in and had a margherita pizza the other day. It tasted exactly the same as the old place’s (which I rate as “just OK”). The new place takes only cash, and didn’t even charge me tax on the $12 pie.

And, besides me (I dined in), it was empty.

Let’s see how long they last.