Five years ago, Anthony Mangieri relocated his acclaimed, one-man pizza operation Una Pizza Napoletana from New York City to San Francisco, thereby blessing us with our first taste of pizza royalty. If you haven't been, you can rest assured that Mangieri continues to produce the most perfectly blistered, smoke-kissed, chewy-crisp and delicious Neapolitan pies you'll find anywhere in the Bay Area. His monk-like dedication to his craft has been written about many times before, but now Mangieri, who's also an avid cyclist, has been brought together with pal Sean Walling from Soulcraft Bicycles in this new documentary short, Una Pizza Bike Show.
The first bit of the film, made by Wilson McCourtney of Baby Blue Film, focuses on Mangieri and his love for pizza-making, comparing it both to punk rock and jazz, and describing how he finds his rhythm each night. "When [the pizzas] are coming out really great, or in that little window (hopefully) every night where they're really like in the zone where I liked them to be in, it feels awesome for those few minutes. It's very rhythmic and it's exciting and it's hot and it's really physical."
Both Mangieri and Walling share a similar passion for the physical stuff of their crafts, and both insist on touching and building each pizza and bicycle, respectively, themselves. And the doc finishes with the actual bike show that the pair have now hosted a couple of times at Una Pizza Napoletana, showcasing Walling's bikes alongside Mangieri's pizzas.