Death By Cheeseburger

The Con

With the economy in tatters, the auto industry taking yet another bath in its attempt to be bailed out, the little stories that make up the city are being pushed off the pages of the local newspapers.  Today, I found this little jewel of an item in today’s New York Post:

A man was shot and critically wounded yesterday outside a popular all-night Greenwich Village diner, police said.

Two groups of customers began arguing inside celebrity hangout Cozy Soup ‘n’ Burger on Broadway shortly before 5:30 a.m., then took their dispute outside.

There, one of the customers pulled a gun and fired a shot at Omar Ramnarine, 32, who was hit in the neck, cops said. The shooter and his two friends jumped in a car and sped off.

No big deal, right?  A couple of heavily armed morons arguing with some bozos happens all the time.  The problem here is the choice of the weapon used by the assailants.  You see, a Cozy burger was the preferred burger for NYU students who resided in Brittany Hall at 10^th Street and Broadway.  My senior year, they provided the necessary break I needed from the cafeteria food provided by student housing.

My friend Chad Clark and I would go have our burgers every Sunday around 11:30pm.  The location was close to our dorm so we could get back and watch 120 Minutes on MTV.  However, by the second month of our little ritual, I discovered that, approximately 25 minutes after I left the joint, I had to be in a bathroom.  Worse, the more Sundays I ate the Pizza burger deluxe, the longer it took me to get myself correct.  Finally, in the third month, I developed a full-blown case of something akin to food poisoning.  It was at that moment, not any of the Sunday’s before, when I realized eating a burger from Cozy Soup ‘n’ Burger was a very bad idea.  With little trouble, I was able to convince Chad to move our Sunday dinner to McSorely’s on 7^th Street as he was beginning have the same issues with his Swiss burger, well done.

The reason, of course, for the problem was the beef used to make the burgers – it was scooped out of a huge drawer and just plopped right down on the grill.  How long it had been there, no one knew and only G-d knows what kind of beef was in that drawer from Sinclair’s nightmares.

So I wonder, when in a tiff at the Cozy Soup ‘n’ Burger, why shoot your adversary?  Just buy him or her a couple of burgers.  The e-coli/Botulism can do the job for you .