{"id":2241,"date":"2007-03-27T09:20:46","date_gmt":"2007-03-27T17:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/03\/keep_those_nyc_company_vultures_away_from_this_one.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T18:22:22","slug":"keep_those_nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/03\/keep_those_nyc.html","title":{"rendered":"Keep Those NYC & Company Vultures Away From This One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now here’s a story to tell the folks back home in Ohio<\/a> (or London* or Ireland** or Moscow***, as the case may be):<\/p>\n

The dining room at De Marco’s Pizzeria and Restaurant on Houston Street was empty Sunday evening, save for one couple sharing a pizza and a table by the window.<\/p>\n

They were tourists, they said, and unknowingly were among the first customers to visit the restaurant less than two weeks after a worker there was shot 15 times in the back, and two auxiliary police officers were gunned down while chasing his shooter through the streets of Greenwich Village.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But seriously — why back down from the notoriety? Everyone knows that people love to gawk:<\/p>\n

Being the scene of violent crime has sometimes boosted business at city restaurants, according to crime historians and restaurateurs, while in other cases establishments have seen their reputations irrevocably damaged.<\/p>\n

“In a strange sense, the notoriety can actually help,” a New York restaurateur, Drew Nieporent, said. “People will likely come to De Marco’s as voyeurs. . . . It might even gain a national reputation.”<\/p>\n

Restaurants sometimes undergo cosmetic changes following a traumatic incident, a professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Robert McCrie, said. “Fast food places where shootings have taken place often shut for a day, or undergo a name change,” Mr. McCrie said. He described these venues as “forbidden kinds of places” whose notoriety attracts customers.<\/p>\n

“There’s a certain cachet associated with going to a restaurant where something bad has happened,” a sociologist at Indiana University, Thomas Gieryn, said. “We have a morbid fascination with places where impossible things happen.”<\/p>\n

Some restaurants capitalize on the drama that transpired within their walls, Mr. Gieryn said. Sparks Steak House became a Midtown landmark after a mob boss, Paul Castellano, was murdered there in 1985.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/a><\/p>\n

**<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now here’s a story to tell the folks back home in Ohio (or London* or Ireland** or Moscow***, as the case may be): The dining room at De Marco’s Pizzeria and Restaurant on Houston Street was empty Sunday evening, save for one couple sharing a pizza and a table by the window. They were tourists, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new_york_new_york_its_a_wonderful_town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}