Restaurant Crowds

Look, I'm not an unreasonable person, as unreasonable people go. I understand that restaurant owners have to make a buck, just like CEOs, oil tycoons and 99 cent store clerks. And so I even understand why they often must, in their desperate grab for the almighty buck, pack as many slobs into their cramped, cockroach infested establishments as they possibly can. But I don't like it -- I like it less than I like it when the hairs on my legs are pulled out one at a time by my annoying friend Elvis. It sucks to enter a restaurant and get seated in a narrow, square table for two (with your arch-nemesis) only to find yourself, in the midst of your attempt to trick your enemy into taking hold of the bag you've sneakily loaded with Kryptonite, surrounded on both sides -- inches away! -- from other desperate, sad New Yorkers begging for a little air or space or anything resembling a sense of humanity. We're cattle when we ride the subway, but there we only pay $2 a ride. We're paying $75 for a bread stick in most restaurants, so shouldn't that at least buy us enough room to kick back and spread our lungs. I think my Grandpa Schlomo put it best when he said, "fuck crowded restaurants -- now shut up and hand me the Motrin."

The problem, of course, isn't limited to a particular type of eatery. There are overcrowded Thai, Chinese, American, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. There are no overcrowded Greek restaurants, but that's another sordid tale (there was the time my friend found a 4 inch hair in his pancake and the cook came out to kill a scampering cockroach with his shoe). What I don't understand is how these restaurants stay in business. Wait, yes I do understand it. They stay in business because they have us over a barrel. It's a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy in the way most things are a conspiracy -- it isn't a conspiracy, but it feels like one because you can count on being treated like a Holstein Cow the second you step through the threshhold of any restaurant in NYC . They stay in business, I'm saying, because they ALL do it. (Okay, the super ritzy places leave you a little elbow room, but you have to consult your stockbroker to see if you can afford those places and you don't even have a stockbroker -- Jesus, what's wrong with you, at least get a job!). And if they all do it, and you're too busy writing pointless, rambling blog entries to cook your own dinner, then they've got you by the short hairs.

There's only one solution: boycott 'em. Start eating pasta every night. Plant a garden in the cracks in the sidewalk. Move to Kansas and live on a farm. Stalk the cute girl next door (this won't help you with the restaurant problem by the way, but you may as well get out now and again and do something productive). Fast for 40 days and 40 nights and then, when you're done, settle for a cracker and a Pepsi and then fast for another sixteen years. Read a book -- it's a different kind of nourishment. Save your money and give it to the needy (like a struggling blogger). Anything -- just dont give it to these hapless, struggling restauranteurs. Force them to space out their tables, to serve you in the way you deserve. Ask yourself, I'm saying, am I man or cow?!!! If the answer is yes to both, then you should probably think about ordering the salad, by the way.