This is an opinion editorial by Casey Carrillo, associate editor at Bitcoin Magazine.
Bitcoiners have a certain penchant for taking things to the extreme. When it comes to privacy, I’ve never witnessed a group of people with a bigger vendetta against sharing information. If we’re talking about lifestyle, many Bitcoiners have entirely removed seed oils from their diet and then have refused to use sunscreen. And I couldn’t discuss extremes without mentioning the obvious point that many Bitcoiners have an exposure of 100% — or more — to bitcoin in their financial portfolio.
So with the Bitcoin Pizza Day holiday approaching, I should have realized that some Bitcoiner out there would set out to create the best pizza celebration possible.
Enter Rick Poach, a Bitcoin enthusiast, poet, author and contributor here at Bitcoin Magazine.
Poach was a previous resident of New Haven Connecticut, a famed center of pizza innovation and cuisine. He’d always enjoyed and loved New Haven pizza, but after becoming a Bitcoiner and learning about the Pizza Day holiday, he knew he could combine his two passions.
“I wanted to set myself up to be able to do Bitcoin Pizza events from now on, because I’m behind bitcoin, I’m behind pizza and the marriage between the two is perfect,” Poach explained when asked why he decided to do this.
He hosted a Pizza Day gathering in which delectable pies from his catering service, Make America Great Apizza, were available for Bitcoiners to delight in — and tickets were only available in bitcoin!
In New Haven style, Poach made the pie’s crust entirely from scratch, and he only used the freshest vegetables and ingredients. In addition Poach said, “I’m also importing sodas from New Haven, because all of your legit New Haven pizza joints all sell this one soda, Foxon Park.”
I told Poach that it sounds like an incredibly immersive experience. Poach went on to say,
“When you say immersive, you’re absolutely right … I have a few artistic skills, one of them is that I sing very well. We have Rat Pack playing … So you have a pizzaiolo, singing at the top of his lungs slinging pizza, and my assistant James, he can throw a pie 10 feet into the air, so it’s kind of like dinner and a show, it’s immersive and it’s fun.”
All in all, it sounds like that pizza would make anyone hungry. But there’s more to this story than the deliciousness of the pizza — like exploring some of the differences in how we celebrate pizza today and how Pizza Day came to be.
What this Pizza Day story is truly a demonstration of, is how far we have come. The original Pizza Day story involves a rather clunky transaction that actually required a decent amount of trust before Lazlo was able to enjoy his pies. In addition, those pies were fast-food junk created by a company that could have cared less about Bitcoin.
In contrast, today we have dedicated enthusiastic Bitcoiners willing to gather to simply celebrate the holiday. So dedicated are these Bitcoiners that they provide one of the most immersive pizza-dining experiences I’ve yet heard described to me. The pizza is world-class, the ingredients phenomenal and the cooking utterly precise. The cherry on top of this all is that those in attendance each paid for it via bitcoin, most likely utilizing one of the myriad of applications available to us Bitcoiners today.
To say that we’ve come a long way might be an understatement. This event is one indication of the growing culture around Bitcoin, the increasing attention paid to it by people of all walks of life and the joy and fun Bitcoiners are bringing to their community.
After asking about how he perceives the future of Pizza Day celebrations, Poach reported, “The one thing about the Bitcoin community that I’m not into is futurism.” However, he did say, “I would like to see it expanded, of course, in 10 years from now, I’ll probably be too old to be slinging the pies myself … I would like to see this catering thing spun up into a real business that goes from Bitcoin event to Bitcoin event and I sit down and bark out orders and have a good time.”
Given the way he describes his pizza’s being made, I could very well see this future unfolding.
“I would say I’m at 90-95% of what a New Haven pie should be,” Poach stated.
His pie might be 90-95% New Haven, but it’s 100% Bitcoin, I’d say.