Wanted by the Mob

Last summer I visited New York City for the first time. I flew up to attend a wedding, but saved a couple days so I that I could go around and see as much as possible.

In two days I saw quite a bit: The United Nations Headquarters, Manhattan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Bridge, Times Squar, the Soupman Kitchen (No Soup for Me!...only because it was closed when I went by) and more. Perhaps the most interesting event of the short trip happened on my first night in NYC.

I was with my Mom and Sister as well as another group of family friends; about eight of us all together. We decided to go to this nice upperscale Italian restaurant. Everything was great! Food was impecable, I was downing cocktails, and we had a cute waitress.

Dinner wrapped up after a while and we headed down the stairs to the bottom floor of the restaurant to leave. As I'm leaving I hear these voices behind me. Then I hear real loud, "HEY! HEY! HEY!!!!"

I turn around as I'm entering the little circular revolving door chamber to leave the restaurant, and see a well dressed Italian guy with a briefcase get bum rushed by one of the waiters! The waiter's yelling at him, runs up and grabs the guy from behind, and throws him face first into and through the adjacent door right next to me!

At this point I'm a little freaked out and suprised by what's going on. My initial thought is this guy with the brief case must have insulted an overly sensitive waiter or something, but I soon learned it must have been more serious.

After throwing him out the door, two more italian waiters come out, pick up the guy, throw him into some patio chairs and hold him down while a third guy starts kicking him! Then, I swear to God, like five more guys come out and are getting involved!

Now normally, being the man that I am, I would have gone in and tried to break the whole thing up. Somehow though, I ended up all the way on the other side of the street as the fight escalated, so by the time I'd get all the way back across, the fight probably wouldn've been resolved, right? Lucky for those guys...

But the scuffle wasn't over! Who then comes jetting out the door but the CHEF! That's right, the Chef! Now's he's getting into it and yelling at the guy, and some other guys are trying to calm the chef down!

Me being safely on the other side of the street at this point decide to whip out my camera to get some of this golden footage. Afterall, its not everyday you get to see an italian mob flex there muscles! Unfortunately, it was too dark to get any decent footage so I wound up with nothing.

As the dispute was winding up, the mob lets up on the briefcase guy and kick him to the curb telling him the get the hell out of there. I'm still trying to get some footage at this point. Then I see someone point in MY direction!

Uh oh...not good.

I didn't want to have beat anybody down on my vacation, so instead as soon as I saw that finger pointing in my direction, I went into stealth mode and dashed into a nearby crowd of pedestrians.

All this on my first night in The Big Apple. Welcome to New York.