The signs at the corner of Ninth Avenue and West 41st Street have an unbelievable, you-gotta-be-kidding quality, like free beer or affordable housing — 99¢ Fresh Pizza. Like many things in New York City, they are also too good to be true. They are off by a penny, as one slice actually costs one dollar.

Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, New Yorkers stand at the outdoor counter of 99¢ Fresh Pizza and pay as much for a plain slice as they did for a subway fare in 1986. At $1.50, the fee to use the sidewalk A.T.M. nearby is more expensive.

This being a city with a 10.4 percent unemployment rate in January, this being a recession, there is no such thing as change that is spare. Customers, taking the signs at their word, have been known to ask for a penny back after paying with a dollar bill.

“I give them penny,” explained Mohammad Hossain, a manager at the pizza shop.

No pennies change hands one block down Ninth Avenue, at West 40th Street, where the competition posted signs of their own: “Pizza, $1.00 per slice, tax included.” Postal workers, teenagers and businessmen step into the 24-hour 2 Bros. Pizza, $5 bills in hand. Allegiances have formed. Trash has been talked. A cabdriver said he preferred 99¢ Fresh over 2 Bros., because it was easier to find street parking outside 99¢ Fresh. A patron of 2 Bros. prefers their sauce over the sauce up the block.

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