Seth Wenig/Associated Press

In his piece on the new pizza stars of New York, Frank Bruni writes of older places that were “products of less self-conscious pizza times.’’ Places like Di Fara.

I remember those times.

For 20 years, I’ve lived a short walk from DiFara, the tiny, non-descript corner pizzeria on Avenue J in Brooklyn. But in the past decade it’s become world famous for its artisanal-league pies, made by the Zen pizza master, Dominico De Marco.

As much as I hate to admit it, the hype is true. It is magical food for no reason I can decipher. In dark times, it has actually cured my depression. It is better than Lexapro.

This cramped little pizza joint was an intimate, comforting staple in my life. Now the crowds have become such that securing a slice involves a commitment, focus and investment of time I no longer have. Waits of up to an hour or more and a steely determination that often requires a feral lean and growl to keep interlopers from snaking your slice.

So I’ve had to let it go. But it wasn’t easy. It was a five-stage process:

1. Denial

It starts with hipsters trickling into Midwood, probably the most unhip neighborhood in all the five boroughs. This is a zip code where people wear plastic bags on their heads when it rains. So why the skinny jeans and the Airwalk Kicks, the scruffy faux-slacker dudes and the ironic model-gorgeous-geek girls? “They are lost,” I tell my wife. “They are lost.”

“But there’s nothing else around here,” she replies. “And we are very far from the L train.”

I know she is right. She is always right.

I just stare.

2. Anger

It is not long before the blank slate of the stare gives way to cracks. I’m turning mean. Did I have to tell my daughter the cookies she made were “not artisanal league”?

“What’s wrong with Daddy?” she asks at dinner one night. “Who is he talking to? Mommy, I’m scared.”

I’m thinking of the guys with the cell phones. The German tourists. Of the guy who came in after me and broke the unspoken “there-is-no-line-but we-all know-who-got-here-when” law and took the last corner of a really perfect looking square pie. (I know, I shouldn’t have said that thing about his mother. And, officer, if you’re reading this, I really don’t know where he lives. I was bluffing.).

3. Bargaining

I promise my family to stop saying “artisanal” — if they would just make the tourists go away. Unfortunately my daughter is 5 and not at all threatening. And my wife just doesn’t care.

4. Depression

Why bother? I lose hope and do the unthinkable: I give up eating pizza altogether because it’s “not Dominic.”

5. Acceptance

I admit it. Our relationship has changed — devolved from pure bliss of love to the occasional hook-up. I take it when I can get it.

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

If I happen to walk by the window and see slices on the pans, I will go in and buy up what is there, even if I am not hungry. (They are not as good reheated, but I accept it, because this is the acceptance stage). I start seeing other pizza makers. They are plenty good — San Remo on Cortelyou. Luigi’s of Avenue U. Joe’s on Bleecker, slice places that remind me of my New York childhood and allow pizza to retake a healthier place in my life, as mere food.

I still walk by DiFara when it’s jam packed with tourists from Manhattan and Sweden and Bratislava and Williamsburg. And sometimes I catch Dominic’s eye through the window, hunched over, flour covered, in his apron, and he smiles at me and I smile at him and I wave and he knows that I know that he knows. We’ve both moved on.

And it’s going to be O.K. Isn’t it?