Originally posted on 7.9.08: Nothing destroys the allure of a presumably hot and happening restaurant more than common or crude behavior from the customers.
This lesson was impressed upon me very strongly about 25 years ago at an Italian restaurant on upper Columbus Avenue, not too far from the Museum of Natural History. It had just opened and been written about in a couple of publications, so I popped in one night for a quick one and to look at the menu. I eventually spoke to a waiter about this and that, and he pointed out that the owner was celebrating the opening of the place with a large group of friends and family. I looked over and there they were — 15 or so at a big table, raising glasses and being way too loud. They looked like New Jersey Italians.
I went downstairs to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands one of the owner’s friends or family members — a big tall guy with a moustache — came in and went straight for the urinal and loudly belched, loudly farted and took a leak at precisely the same instant. Boom-boom-bam! And then he went “aaahhhh!” like a grizzly bear having an orgasm. And then he snorted.
Now, I’m as human as the next guy and so I try not to look down my nose at people, but this guy, I decided then and there, was a total animal. And I said to myself, if the owner has beasts in his family or among his friends, then he too must be a belching and farting peon on some level, and this will come out in different ways in the running of his business, and sooner or later the restaurant will close. Probably sooner. I decided all this less than 30 seconds after the show in the bathroom.
Four to six months later, the place had indeed closed. I’m not making this up.