Soho Fights Back: Drenching Delicatessen

What follows may in fact be one of the best reader emails of all time. We knew things were tense between Soho's Delicatessen and its upstairs neighbors—especially of course when we learned someone was peeing on their glass ceiling—but we didn't know the war was still raging on. We have some good old fashioned community organizing on our hands:

"Last night a friend and I were walking around SoHo and saw Delicatessen...Within five minutes of sitting at the bar, some young super-angry dude storms up to the bar and starts laying into the bartending staff screaming shit like, 'Fuck you!!! Fuck your restaurant!!! Fuck your hipstery little patrons who think they are so fucking cool!!! People fucking live on this block!!! I can hear these people screaming outside my fucking apartment all fucking night!!!' And all through his rant everyone, including the bartending staff, are just staring at this dude with big grins on their faces, clearly enjoying his rage...did I mention it's not even 8:30pm yet?

But it gets better.

As my friend and I are about to start our meal, all of a sudden a bunch of people in the apartments above the sidewalk tables simultaneously dump buckets of water down on the people dining below. (Luckily, my friend and I were just out of reach.) I don't know if they used buckets or pots, or if it was even water in them (I shudder to think otherwise), but it was a big sheet of something liquid and soaked at least four of five tables worth of patrons.

To add insult to injury, while these poor patrons were sitting in shock looking up at what happened, the people in the apartments then hit them with a second blast, scattering everyone for cover inside the restaurant, and forcing the waitstaff to have to reissue everyone's meals. Next thing you know, there's a bunch of patrons standing out in the street screaming up at the people in the apartments looking trying to instigate a brawl. Somehow, some way, the cops were never called and the situation quickly calmed down. (But of course no one would sit below those apartment units after that.)

Is this what it's come down to?"

Apparently it has come to this: people dumping water on the paying customers of Delicatessen. And we have a feeling this situation will get worse—flaming bags of dog crap, or perhaps plastic wrap on the toilet seats— before it gets better. Diners beware.
· Pissing on Delicatessen [~E~]