May I join you on that hill, Slam_Bradley?

You may indeed.

I love a good coal-oven pizza, but I grew up on NYC slices. My all-time favorite pizza was at a pizza shop near my elementary school; at lunch some of us would sneak out and go down the hill to Broadway and buy slices. We made it back to the schoolyard without anyone noticing we were gone.  There was something about the crust that made it taste better than any of the two pizzerias in my neighborhood; the crust was a bit thinner and somehow sweeter. That pizza shop--it used to be called Theofan's, and then changed its name several times,  around 138th street and Broadway, was there for many many many years, but I no longer see it on Google Maps

My second favorite pizza slice was at Ray's, on 14th street and 6th Avenue. For years I'd read about about how it was the absolute best in NYC/Manhattan. In the '80s I finally went in and it was not hyperbole--the pizza was so juicy, so tomato-ey, so cheesy. I LOVED it. I went back over and over again. Alas, Ray's--the original, that fabled Ray's--is gone. 

I could eat pizza every day. It's my favorite food. I've always been a pizza glutton and my mom used to say to me "You don't like cheese, you don't like bread, you don't like tomato sauce [as separate foods]...but you love pizza!" 

I'm also a fan of boiled hot dogs, and yes, with catsup.

I'm not a food snob about anything. I like any kind of pizza, but I do enjoy a good take-down of Chicago style pizza. Jon Stewart, for example:

I'm a WASP, from Central Illinois; so, it's hard to be snobbish about pizza, when your formative years were spent with Chef Boyardee pizza kits and Shakey's Pizza Parlour. For the youngin's and furiners, Shakeys was a chain of pizza restaurants that built themselves around family entertainment. They were set up like beer halls or other mass restaurants, with long communal tables and bench seats, and a window to the kitchen so you could watch them make the pizza. It was thin crust stuff, with middling pizza sauce and cheese and basic toppings; but you went there more for the atmosphere than the pizza (and we didn't know any better). They showed old Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy shorts and had musicians to play the piano or banjo (I remember both) for sing-alongs, with the lyrics projected on a screen, as in times past (they used to have short features for movies, like that). We used to have birthday parties there. Then, Pizza Hut expanded nationally and drove them off, with better pizza (relatively speaking) and other chains followed, like Godfathers, Pizza World and Domino's Pizza.

When I was in high school, Decatur got a Garcia's Pizza mini-restaurant at Hickory Point Mall. Garcias was started by a pair of brothers, in Champaign-Urbana, IL, near the University of Illinois. They had several restaurants in C-U, then expanded to places like Bloomington-Normal (where ISU and Il Wesleyn are located ) and Peoria (Bradley University), as well as Decatur (Milikin University). They sold pizza by the slice (cut into rectangles) with various toppings, but also whole pizzas (flat and deep dish, Chicago-style). I never cared for Chicago style (usually either too much cheese or dough, or both) and prefer either thin crust, with good sauce or pan-style. Garcias had good pizza, up through my college years. then, after I was out of the military, I found that they had closed many of their satellite locations and were down to a couple, in C-U. I ate there and the quality had dropped way off. It turns out that one of the brothers sold out and the remaining one had a coke problem and not with his soda distributor. he pretty much let the business fall apart. In my high school and college days they had a hot air balloon, made to look like a flying tomato (and called themselves the Flying Tomato Brothers) which was usually flown for home football games, weather permitting.

C-U also had Papa Dell's, which was good, but expensive, with thick, soft pizza crust and great toppings. I couldn't afford to eat it, as a student and stuck with Garcia's (when I got paid) or Pizza World (for Sunday dinner, when I had the cash).

When I was stationed in Charleston, SC, I never found a decent pizza place. It was pretty much all chain restaurant suspects and all pretty mediocre. During my 6 months in Athens, GA, we discovered a place near the Univ of Georgia campus that did great (but expensive) pizza. Only ate there once, due to demands of the school and the low pay, as an ensign.

Springfield didn't have much and Bloomington doesn't either, though I have heard a couple of pubs do. There is a place called Flingers, nearby, that does specialty pizzas and custom ones, but the standard pizzas aren't worth the price they charge and their specialties are a bit spicy for my aging gut and my taste buds. My brother and sister-in-law like their White Chick pizza, which is a chicken toppig, with onions, in a ranch pizza sauce and cheese. I believe it has bacon, too. It's tasty, but a bit volatile for my gut and I prefer the taste of tomato sauce. For me, it's down to Monicals, a regional chain that does thin r pan style crusts. Thin cust is cut into squares and pan into pie wedges (by poor students in geometry). Quality varies according to the crew working. Their pizza sauce is good, but I have to specify extra sauce to get an adequate layer of it. Their sausage isn't that great, so I stick to pepperoni, which is just Hormel-brand stuff. Not the highest quality available.

Next door to where I work is Giordanos, which started in Chicago and built a name, but I am not impressed. Iheir pan pizza is way pricier than the taste and quality and their deep dish is like a block of cheese melted into concrete pie crust. Those who have eaten in their Chicago restaurants say the local version isn't even close.

When Barb was healthier and we would visit her son and grandkids (in Kankakee), we would eat at a place called Aurelios, which had moved south from Chicago. It was really good and the sauce was sweet and tasted vaguely of wine or something similar. We would get a pizza to take home with us. Haven't had it in some years, now.

The best pizza I ever had as in a restaurant in the Italian section of Boston, while there on a vacation, while my mother attended a real estate convention. My sister and I (and other children of realtors) went off on various group tours and outings. We were taken there for dinner and then to see a play, a comedy mystery, called Sheer Madness, set in a hair salon. Before the finale, the "detective" would ask questions of the audience, then you voted for who you thought was the murderer and they performed the finale accordingly (much like the Clue movie, but long before that script was even written). I have never tasted anything as good as that pizza. It was the perfect blend of tomato sauce, crust, cheese and meat toppings, for my palate.

As for store brands, DiGornos is about the only one I like, to any real level, though they stopped making Barb and my favorite, a Chicken Marinara that was quite tasty. The Jewel grocery store's Signature discount brand has pretty decent thin crust pizzas, but their rising crust doesn't bake evenly. Otherwise, Totinos party pizzas used to be tasty enough for me, but have since changed; and, they had another style, similar to red Baron brand, that had a pretty good individual microwave pizza that I used, when I was dieting heavily, to control portions. of course, it was discontinued. I tried Red Barons, but found that it was like chewing through foam rubber.

Once in a while, I have had a decent, if unspectacular, pepperoni pizza, from Dominos. When it's free, I find the flavor is greatly improved. I do like their chocolate lava cake, though, which is a thing of the past, as I am trying to drop weight to relieve issues with my sciatic nerves and hip, not to mention general health (though I haven't had any real health issues, apart from the odd cold).

While I said I'm a NYC pizza snob, I'll also throw out an opinion that the outer boroughs (outside of Manhattan) tend to have better pizza. That said, I have tons of people who ask me when they are traveling to NYC where to go for pizza, and if they are going to be in the touristy Times Square area, I recommend John's Pizzeria. It's an old church actually so the setting is quite charming, but it's very legit pizza. But when I did live in Manhattan for a time as an adult (Long Island and Queens as a kid), I lived in what's called the Upper East Side and my favorite was a little place called Roma pizza, just a non-flashy legit little place with by the slice and whole pies. Could order from our apartment have it sent right up too! You just need to find the small family run little establishments, best odds of getting a great pizza.