Where I REAR-WINDOWED TAYLOR SWIFT

IN 2021, I BOUGHT A PLACE across the street from Lucali. It was, by that point, famous for its delicious pizza and doubly famous for attracting celebrities. It wasn’t long before I became like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, ogling the pizzeria from my living room, watching as a flock of chauffeured SUVS descended upon my otherwise quiet Carroll Gardens street. Beyoncé and Jay-z were early adopters. I went for the first time in 2008. No sooner had I finished telling my date that it was Bey’s favorite pizza than an Escalade pulled up and she and Jay-z proceeded to house a pie at the table next to ours. The lines really started getting crazy after Lucali was featured on David Chang’s Ugly Delicious in 2018. Now, every time someone like Bella Hadid posts a pic from an evening there, there’s a subsequent bump in the length of the line and the number of schmoes commandeering my stoop as a picnic spot for takeout pies. On one January night, a trio of dudes with cameras around their necks stopped to watch me and my husband struggle to drag our giant Christmas tree down to the curb. Who were they waiting for? “You promise you won’t put it on Twitter?” one said. I nodded. “It’s Taylor Swift.” I grabbed a bottle of Calvados and brought it outside to quaff as we watched Questlove, Zoë Kravitz, Jack Antonoff, and others arrive. At midnight, Taylor emerged; we only glimpsed her Reputation-green ensemble before she and Blake Lively pulled away in an SUV. At least one of Tay’s exes is also a fan: One year, we planned a pizza dinner for Rosh Hashanah, and as I ambled across Henry Street to get our order, I saw Jake Gyllenhaal pull up, double-park, and pile six pies into his gull-wing Tesla.