San Francisco

[Drunk Monk]

One of San Francisco's best pizzas now comes with a pre-rolled joint

Lester Black, SFGATE
Dec. 3, 2022
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The signature Margherita pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco on Oct. 18, 2022. Owner Tony Gemignani was recently recognized in a world's best pizza competition.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
One of San Francisco’s top-rated pizzerias has a new pizza pairing that is worth raising a lighter to: Tony’s Pizza Napoletana is now selling the “Up in Smoke” combo, a wood-fired pizza that has an official pre-rolled joint pairing. 


Both the pizza and the joint are adorned with fantastical illustrations from beloved local artist and former SFGATE burger inspector Jeremy Fish.

Tony’s teamed up with nearby North Beach Pipeline, the neighborhood’s first pot shop, to create the pairing. Fish told SFGATE that the pizza, pot and art collaboration is a celebration of North Beach, the city’s iconic Italian neighborhood, of which the artist has been deemed the “unofficial mayor.” Fish said he hopes it will bring more people into the neighborhood, which has struggled with a lack of tourism during the pandemic. 
“Do me a big favor and come out and smoke a doobie, enjoy a pizza and celebrate my neighborhood,” Fish said. “Help support this side of the city while tourism is a little bit fractured.”

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Tony’s Pizza Napoletana is considered one of the world’s best pizzerias, recently ranking number 10 on an Italian list of the best pizzerias around the globe. Its new “Up in Smoke” pizza ($30) hits with layers of smokiness, with candied bacon, smoked mozzarella, tomato, basil and volcano salt, all on a wood-fired multigrain crust.
“Tony's Pizza Joint” is a one-gram pre-roll ($15) filled with Mother’s Milk cannabis and dipped in kief, a form of cannabis hash. The Pipeline pot shop sourced the joint specifically to pair well with the pizza from Tony’s. Fish described the joint as having a pleasant herbal flavor. 
You can get a $5 discount if you buy both items in the collaboration. Just bring your pizza box to North Beach Pipeline to get $5 off your joint, or bring your pre-roll package to Tony’s Pizza Napoletana to get $5 off your pizza.
Packaging for each the joint and the pizza is decorated with illustrations from Fish, who's known for whimsical art that found its way onto everything from New Balance sneakersto San Francisco trolley cars. The pizza box features a character wearing a red beanie and suspenders, looking awfully similar to one half of an iconic stoner comedy duo from the 1970s. The lid of the pizza box tears off to create a slot so you can slide it around your neck, turning the lid into a “pizza bib” to protect your clothing from any stray slice droppings. Fish designed the box’s art so that if you use the bib, your face will be outlined by the cartoon’s body.
“It’s a selfie opportunity, and you can keep the pizza from spilling on your clothes,” Fish said.

Artist Jeremy Fish, posing with the "pizza bib" box that he illustrated.
Fernando Godinez
Fish has lived in the neighborhood since the mid 1990s. The historic Italian enclave on the north side is perhaps San Francisco’s most iconic neighborhood. It was home to Joe DiMaggio (and briefly his wife Marilyn Monroe), and it's where Jack Kerouac and the rest of the beatniks launched a world-famous literary movement. He lives and works around the corner from Tony’s Pizza, and he’s served as the official artist of Coit Tower, one of the area's historic landmarks. 
Fish said he got involved with this pizza and joint collaboration to welcome North Beach Pipeline to the neighborhood. He said there was a lot of stigma against opening a pot shop in the historic enclave.
“It took ages for a dispensary to open over here, and it just seemed like a classic Little Italy way to celebrate weed,” Fish said.
Fish himself has deep roots in the cannabis community. He moved to San Francisco in 1994 for art school and quickly got involved in pot activism, including gathering signatures for Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical marijuana in California. Fish remembers working with the initiative’s mastermind, Dennis Peron. 

“I would go into Dennis’ office at the time, and you could smoke all of the weed you wanted, but you couldn’t leave with any, because they were under surveillance of the feds,” Fish said. “That’s how sketchy it was at the time.”

Owner Tony Gemignani holds some of his pizzas inside his kitchen at Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco on Oct. 18, 2022. He was recently recognized in a world's best pizza competition.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Fish is no longer smoking weed, as he had a brain aneurysm and was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2014. Instead of smoking, he now only vaporizes cannabis concentrates or consumes edibles. But he still has a favorite place to get high in North Beach: Washington Square, just across the street from Tony’s.
“Washington Square park is the classic place to smoke weed,” Fish said. “There’s a lot going on there because there’s this beautiful mix of cultures. There’s tourists. There’s older Chinese people exercising. There’s crazy people running around. There’s lovely people walking their dogs. It’s just a great place to sit and get stoned.”
The "Up in Smoke" special ends once Tony's runs out of the Fish-designed boxes. The pizza place said they ordered 5,000 copies.
[i]Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, 1570 Stockton St., San Francisco. Open Monday and Tuesday, noon-9 p.m.; Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, noon-10 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, noon-11 p.m.[/i]
[i]North Beach Pipeline Dispensary, 1335 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133. Open 8 a.m.-10 p.m. seven days a week.[/i]

Written By 
Lester Black
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Lester Black is SFGATE's contributing cannabis editor. He was born in Torrance, raised in Seattle, and has written for FiveThirtyEight.com, High Country News, The Guardian, The Albuquerque Journal, The Tennessean, and many other publications. He was previously the cannabis columnist for The Stranger.