Love Your Hockey, Love Your Cheesesteak

A side treat to this great series is enjoying a good cheesesteak as a tribute to the Philadelphia Flyers. (Any excuse to eat a cheesesteak is no excuse. It's a good reason.)

In another life, I lived in Southern California, where I would sneak out of the newsroom with my good friend Steve, the Anti-Puck, and go to Philly's Best in Fountain Valley for a sandwich. (Sneak? Hah! We marched proudly out to the car and and then, with a smug face of satisfaction, lumbered to get back through the sliding doors of the office.)

Anybody who had ever lived in Philadelphia, including the Anti-Puck, had a pushpin placed in the wall-mounted map of the city to identify their old neighborhood. To complete the experience, there was an assortment of Flyers, Eagles, 76ers and Phillies posters and pennants, along with photos of customers and a few articles clipped from The Philadelphia Bulletin. Among the first to alert the Anti-Puck and me to the place was our good friend and scribe Elliott T., whose father once worked for The Bulletin.

The feast inside almost made you forget you were going to get cheesesteaks in January, in shorts and flip-flops, with palm trees shading your car outside. (Why did I leave Southern California again?)

Now about the video above. It's the little face-off going on in South Philly (footage is from 2008) involving Geno's and Pat's King of Steaks. I've been to both, and I have to side with Pat's in this little battle. But there are others who say there are better stands elsewhere in Philadelphia.

If you have any suggestions, pass them on here.

If you are in New York, I say get yourself to Shorty's on Ninth Avenue (between 42nd and 41st streets). In it's first incarnation, as Tony Luke's, it used to look more like a check cashing facility, only a little less charming. But the food was tight and priced to move. The New Yorker's little review noted that the preferred style of consumption resembled the way you would position and push wood into a chipper.

So true.

Now the joint is called Shorty's, it has a bar, and the clientele is a bit better for wear. But the style of consumption remains the same. Tilt head and grind away. Sounds like a hockey game. Sounds like dinner.

Who's with me?