Pizzeria

The Famous King of Pizza, a South Jersey icon that has reigned along Route 70 for nearly 40 years, was destroyed yesterday afternoon by a fast-moving fire sparked in the building's roof. The landmark pizzeria was closed yesterday while construction crews worked on an exterior remodeling project. Fire officials said the blaze may have been started accidentally during the construction. Mario Scaturro, one of the owners, was inside the pizzeria picking out tile colors for the remodeling when the fire started.

They sprayed his face with Mace. They kneed him in the chest. But when the pizza deliveryman told the two attackers that he didn't have any money on him, they ran away. "When he told these two guys he had no money, (they) took off," said Police Lt. Cliff Livezey. The beginning of the robbery evidently was planned better than its end: The attackers ordered the pizza from Nina's Pizza, 1748 Bridgetown Pike, Livezey said, and then apparently waited outside the address for the deliveryman.

A television rerun has led to the capture in Puerto Rico of a suspect sought by Philadelphia police for eight years in a pair of grisly slayings, authorities said yesterday. The FBI said agents grabbed Orlando Maisonet de Jesus in the town of Manati, on the outskirts of San Juan. His capture followed a Sept. 28 rerun about the murders on the Fox Television show "America's Most Wanted. " Maisonet, paroled in a New York murder, is accused of being the triggerman in the Aug. 15, 1982, robbery-killing of a North Philadelphia pizzeria owner.

For almost three years, Michael Giammarino has known the end was coming for his Lombardi's Pizza on South 18th Street in Center City. And now the time is here. Sunday will be last call for the Philadelphia outpost of the famous Manhattan pizzeria before construction begins for a 33-story luxury condominium tower. What owner Giammarino did not know until about two months ago was that it would also mean Lombardi's departure from Philadelphia. An illness in the family in New York, Giammarino said, has forced him to split his time between the two Lombardi's for weeks, and the demands of that and trying to run his own Internet security company ended his hopes of relocating Lombardi's to a new spot in Center City.

Not long ago, a national poll named pizza as America's favorite food. I'm sure that amuses Italians even more than our fondness for hamburgers puzzles the Germans. So universal is the craving for pizza, it almost seems rare when we get it from Italo-Americans anymore. Thus, it shouldn't be surprising when we hear of a pizzeria run by Filipinos. After all, the Philippines were practically an American colony for a time, and we still have one of our largest naval bases there. (I'm looking forward to a Cuban pizza developed by some enterprising soul from Guantanamo Bay.)

PHILADELPHIA Kelly Drive crash kills 2 Two people were killed and a third was was seriously injured after a crash on Kelly Drive in Fairmount Park yesterday afternoon, police said. A 34-year-old woman driving a silver Volkswagen northbound along Kelly Drive crossed the center line about 3 p.m. and ran head-on into a green Toyota Sienna being driven by a 49-year-old woman, police said. A passenger in the Volkswagen was pronounced dead at the scene at 3:05 p.m., and the driver was pronounced dead at 3:25 p.m., said Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman.

It seems as though every corner in New York has a pizza parlor named Ray's. There's the Original Ray's Pizza, the Famous Original Ray's Pizza, the World Famous Ray's Pizza and the Real Ray's Pizza. Call any one on the phone and they all answer "Ray's. " But finding "Ray" isn't so easy. A guy named Gary owns Original Ray's. A man named Rosolino owns the chain of Famous Original Ray's. And plain old Ray's Pizza is run by a recluse named Ralph. A Greek named Steve owns World Famous Ray's Pizza in the East Village.

Gregory Andrews, a tall, slender 17-year-old, stepped to the witness stand yesterday and described the gunpoint robbery in which his best friend, Qa'id Staten, was slain. Staten, the 17-year-old son of a Philadelphia labor leader, was fatally shot April 27 as he and Andrews fled from a gunman outside a North Philadelphia pizzeria. Andrews said he first saw the defendant, 20-year-old Stephen Spurell of Brewerytown, inside Rainbow Pizza, 2223 Ridge Ave., about 9:30 p.m. "The Spurell dude - him right there - he came in," Andrews testified, pointing to the defendant.

Take an interracial neighborhood on a summer day so hot that the sun blisters your soul. The heat has a way of magnifying your irritability, of searing your heart. You are a black deliveryman, and you can't fail to notice that all the police patrolling the street are white and regard you suspiciously, as though you were Willie Horton. Or you are a white shopkeeper, and you can't fail to notice that most of the patrons of your pizzeria are black and regard you suspiciously, as though you were Bernhard Goetz.

After years spent in and out of jail, Vinnie Marino seemed finally to have been trying to get it together. Recently he got a job as a cook at the Club Diner Restaurant on the Black Horse Pike in Bellmawr. Without a driver's license because of parole restrictions, he bought a black Schwinn Caliente bicycle and rode 20 minutes each way to work six nights a week. He even rode the bike to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, his landlord said. After work, Marino would ride back to Somerdale, stop at Moe & Antonio's Ristorante & Pizzeria on the White Horse Pike for an American hoagie, then go across the street to his home on Maiden Lane.