To get to the Feast of San Gennaro, you’ll want to get on the 6 train downtown to Brooklyn Bridge from Grand Central Terminal. You’ll likely be standing up, gripping the handrail like your life depends on it — or, more likely — your ability to not faceplant. It will feel like there are a million people in the train car, definitely the most that have ever been packed into this subway.
You’ll ride eight stops (Google Maps will tell you it’s an 11-minute commute, but it will take 20). Then you’ll emerge on Canal Street and, somehow, there are even more people on this sidewalk than on the train. Quickly, you’ll contemplate if this was the best use of your Saturday.
You’re poked and bumped into seemingly a million times, so you’ve come to the conclusion that you should’ve just stayed home. But then your five-minute walk is over, and you’re on the corner of Canal and Mulberry Street, and you’ve forgotten how much you hate crowded spaces because to your left, there is quite literally the most glorious slice of pizza you’ve ever seen and you have to have it. Now.
This was how I spent my Saturday. And you’ll be happy to know that I did, in fact, get that slice of pizza. And it was, in fact, the most glorious slice I’ve ever had.
And in between bites, I made sure to thank San Gennaro. After all, he’s the reason I was there. In 305 A.
D., San Gennaro, the Neapolitan Bishop of Benevento, Italy, was martyred at the hands of Roman Emperor Diocletian. Killed.