Harvey Hinklemeyers Pizza & More. . .

A failed Bible salesman and Vaudevillian, Harvey next tried his hand at pizza . . . & more.

"It's all good."

-Harvey Hinklemeyers

From the time we're old enough to stand in front of the TV, we're confronted with a brilliant universe of characters and colors. From cartoons and sports to the endless parade of national brands, it's easy to become transfixed even before we know the first thing about riding out a good corn syrup high or the tedious ecstasies of reading a box score in baseball. 

We learn, in other words, from a very young age how to read and interpret the bright colors, the animal personifications, the criminals, and the cartoonish cavemen. And no, I'm not talking about pro football. 


Engaging, entertaining icons aren't just fun, they're educational. In fact, iconography teaches us to recognize patterns and helps us pick up important lessons about the world: Toucans and Leprechauns are foppish, thieves wear  bandannas over their eyes, and cavemen eat fruity, sugary cereal while pushing cars around with their feet. Icons are also central to that part of our pleasure-centers that compels us to come back for the experience again and again. The iconographies of everyday life help us make sense of a world that is decidedly not of our own making. (Spend 13 seconds on Twitter if you want to gauge the truthfulness of this statement.)

In a similar vein, a recent episode of my current podcast obsession, NPR's Invisibilia, explores how people also use categories as a way of continuously framing, shaping, and thereby interpreting their experiences of the world: objects, other people, pizza, etc. A long lineage of writers and thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Kant, Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu have made similar though far more detailed and rigorous claims to this general effect. But even as a somewhat casual observation, this makes sense at face value. 

Chuck Klosterman showed us years ago in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs that Star Wars, rom-coms, and even breakfast cereals (specifically of the kind targeted to six year olds and people who live on couches) also work via the same relatively crude ideological means, particularly when it comes to teaching youngsters such key lifelong lessons as "how to belong" and "how to tell when others don't." Sad and superficial? Probably, but also quite human.

Though still in the experimental stages, the all-in-one moustache/mouth combo has shown some promise in clinical trials. 

Religious iconography works exactly the same way, even more so to the extent that religion adds a crucial feature that simpler iconographies, such as those of cereal and pizza joints, tend to neglect: namely, rich storytelling. 

And so it goes with pizza in this fair city, which contains a veritable Super Friends of pizza icons, not the least among them the Pizza King and Mr. Amore (above left). 

His Majesty, the Pizza King.

(Google Images and a quick Facebook check assure me that Mr. Amore here is somehow affiliated with Gabe's.) 

Then there's Harvey Hinklemeyers, which I've recently discovered is the ideal Kokomo-style pizza. (This is very different from saying "it's the best in Kokomo.") But it's still a pretty massive compliment.

Now, I don't make this statement lightly, so let me explain. As I have come to know it over the last year, Kokomo-style pizza has three primary features: first, the crust is doughy-thin, a paradoxical combination of crispiness and dough--substance, in other words. Don't ask me how, but the paradox works. (The extra salt might help, too.)

Second, as I've noted in previous reviews, the cheese is the thing. Kokomoans love their mozzarella, and it's damn near impossible to find a pizza restaurant in this town that doesn't consider a full half pound of it to be the birthright of every customer who walks through the door. It's a beautiful thing, really. One of these days I plan to tempt the fates and see what monstrosity emerges from the oven when one orders extra cheese.

Third, Kokomo-style pizza joints just pile on the toppings. They really do. On an initial visit, I always go with a given establishment's interpretation of the Veggie (as noted here), and it (almost) never disappoints. Check out Harvey Hinklemeyers' rendition of the veggie (pictured).* A hot mess. The typical Kokomo-style veggie, larded with olives, onions, peppers, and cheese, has to be one of the world's most satisfying all-veggie pizzas, if not necessarily the most graceful or aesthete. Not to get all neo-Platonist or anything, but of those I've eaten thus far, Harvey's serves the ideal Form. 

And that, in a nutshell, is how icons work, too. There's no such thing as an ideal form, of course, but in the icon, be it cartoon character or a colorful desktop button, all of our experiences and feelings and associations of a particular product are manifested in these bright, sprightly little characters. 

There's a fourth quality that most Kokomo pizza restaurants share: a starkly unimpressive, largely unnavigable website. (No matter: that's a significant part of this blog's raison d'etre.) 

I'm also pleased to report that my experience ordering out from Mr. Hinklemeyers is one of the most pleasant takeaway experiences I've yet had in Kokomo. From the charming young lady who giggled her way through my order to the cheerful, Lynchian-ambience of the place (think Shoney's in the mid-90s), I thought, "I'm coming back here to eat in," as I sat at the old-fashioned soda bar thoughtfully sipping a root beer float, my feet dangling from the bar stool in childlike glee. Plus the walls are covered in Stooges paraphernalia. 

Grade=B (a C+ on the pizza alone; the weird ambience and iconography pushes this one up a bit.)

Class=Rf.
  
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NOTES

*I've recently come full circle on the issue of tomatoes on pizza. Growing up, it was just never an option. (That is, I don't think where I lived the idea had yet been invented.) Then, tomato as a pizza topping became more and more available at boutique pizza joints and then Mellow Mushroom. These places usually used good, sliced tomatoes. Now it seems that some restaurants dice up canned tomatoes and toss 'em on a pie. I'm not a fan. So, it's back to not being much of an option. So it goes.