Backstory: Philly's cheesesteak wars

Where cramped Pat's is fluorescent and gray, Geno's, diagonally across the street, is orange, neon, spit-shined, and spacious. Opened in 1966, it might be the kinder, gentler cheesesteak. Or, as the second of the two shops you come to on one-way 9th street, they may just have a little more time for nice.

Manager Louis Maiorano and his staff - their eyes twinkling - say they enforce no ordering code. "Just tell us what you want. American cheese? We'll give you American cheese. 'Wit, wit?' - there's no such thing," Mr. Maiorano insists. He takes pride in offering a well-wrapped sandwich, not the wide-open kind slid across the counter across the street.

No one in town keeps estimates on the cheesesteak's bite of the local economy, says Mary Flannery of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Nor is there a predominant local franchise. "Every corner pizza shop has its own version," she explains.

Outside Geno's, Greg Cuta, from the neighborhood, rattled off cheesesteaks he has known and loved. "I like Jim's at 4th and South. They chop it up small. Tony Luke's - the rolls are crispy at the ends. Dalessandro's? I haven't been there in a while."

The food isn't the only ingredient in his chow-down. He and his fiancée feel that they were dissed by Pat's staff a few months ago and haven't been back since. "[Geno's and Pat's] are both like the 'soup Nazi.' But Geno's is a little more polite."

Toward evening, Geno's neon glow brings a carnival-like promise of excitement to its surroundings - a neighborhood of narrow streets and tiny, brick rowhouses, their windows, many of them, trimmed with silk flowers or statues of the Virgin Mary. Here, Mom still lives around the corner, or at least you want to believe she does.

Out on 9th, shouts of " 'D' it up!!" drift from the basketball court, and - not 18 inches from the tables - an unrelenting logjam of cars, bikes, strollers, and motorcycles trundles past, some stopping to double-park, others idling. An airportshuttle stops by. So does a stretch Hummer. Brides are known to come by in full dress. And then there are the celebrities.

"Andwe had Bill Clinton first. Before he was famous," boasts Maiorano.

The corner serves up its breads 'round the clock, seven days a week, with business picking up around 9 p.m., and peaking from midnight to 4 a.m. The fights, the drunks, the cussing make appearances in the wee hours. "You give me a hard time and I'll send you to Geno's," Smith tells customers with attitude. Geno's has been known to return the favor.

But here, at ground zero in the city's cheesesteak wars, there's no rivalry. None.

"Not between Pat's and Geno's. Maybe between Geno's and Pat's," sniffs Smith of Pat's.

Maiorano, of Geno's, lobs one back: "There's no other place here but us."

But scratch a little and the battle is joined: There's the grease content. The family secrets. The size of the giving to local charities.

As the skyscrapers to the north fade into the night, a cab pulls up. A neatly dressed businessman steps out at Geno's gleaming window.

"Hello. I'm from Tennessee," he drawls. "I'm told this is the best place to get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia?"

Maybe it is. Maybe it is.

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