A slice in time

The Sept. 25 Facebook post crashed over a popular Lawrence group like a thunderclap: Pyramid Pizza … closed?

Sad to see them leave. It’s like watching my youth pass me by …

Pyramid was the shiznit back in the day.

Does anybody have the recipe for Bonez?

Yes, Pyramid’s passing was mourned— mostly, it seems, by far-flung alumni who had not recently partaken of Pyramid pies. After multiple changes in ownership and locations, the most recent incarnation, on Mass Street, had seemingly lost interest in preserving a legacy launched in the late 1970s, when Pyramid opened below The Wagon Wheel Café. What was once a spirited haunt famous for braided crust had decayed into a dingy, slice-by-night joint catering to bar crawlers.

But Pyramid’s passing still brings heartache for nostalgic Jayhawks, so we reached out for words of comfort to the one man forever identified with Pyramid.

“Well,” says John “Tan Man” Schneider, who was paid in Sunday-night slices to pose with pretty women and pizza boxes in a long-running advertising campaign, “I guess they all close sooner or later. Just seems like there’s a lot of memories there.”

The good news is that Jayhawks now craving a Pyramid fix can get a pie resembling the original at The Wheel Pizza Co., in the space where Pyramid was born, and former owner Mark McKee, ’87, told the Lawrence Journal-World that he still owns the name and is interested in saving the brand by launching Pyramid anew, with its former flair restored.

Should that day come, and Pyramid hopes to reach out to Tan Man for a nostalgic ad campaign, we here at Kansas Alumni will be glad to assist with contact information. For the price of a pie, of course. Just don’t forget the cup of honey.