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In a blow to lovers of high-quality low-nutrition food, Fat Bob's fell victim to what was probably a hell of a graduation party over the weekend.
According to owner Bob (who is more notable for his mustache than he is for his gut; blame his kids for name of the place), a braided steel pipe in a toilet broke Sunday night in an apartment over the pizza place, and was unnoticed by its residents. Some ten hours later, an employee came by and discovered that some 10,000 gallons had crashed through the ceiling into the dining room.
This was actually a lucky break, because they were closed on Monday - there's no telling when the apartment residents would have reported the problem.
The dining room, complete with its expensive big-screen television, has been pretty much destroyed, and the shop is closed pending Board of Health approval to reopen.
Bob anticipates that they won't be able to reopen for a week and a half or more while contractors retile the entire dining room and he wrangles with insurance adjusters. I'm hopeful that he won't have to bring a law suit to get paid, but that seems to be standard practice nowadays.
In the past, posts about food have received criticism for being without depth, and rightly so. I am certainly a patron of this establishment, but it's the business disaster, not the chicken-bacon-ranch slices, which compel me to write.
16 comments:
Doesn't this seem more like an issue with a poorly maintained building than with some college kids throwing a party? There have been issues with the plumbing in this building since before Fat Bob's moved in.
You may be right, anonymous, but from what I'm told a braided steel pipe isn't something that breaks due to neglect - they're pretty stout. Either way, the truth might come out in the adjuster's report.
No! Not FB's! :(
Since eating there since 1968 when it was Jerry & Marie's CHEZ JOEY, I shed no tears for this new owner.
The place was filthy all the time & they made no effort to keep the riff-raff off the "porch" & made it look worse then the coffee joint where the Dregs of society gather,,,,,
Good Riddance to bad rubbish,,
SHEESH YOU people ate there ?
UGH !!!
Took you nearly ten hours to find something negative to say . . . are you feeling okay, Butch?
Gee,, if it isn't your opinion i guess it has to be negative,,
Couldn't possibly be that someone other than your exalted self has an opinion based on personal experience.
The truth hurts but most of the "humanity" that currently inhabits our downtown are not the Crown of Creation.
At least not in my world,
argue if you must, it seems to become you.
Several years ago, I used to live in one of those apartments above Italian Supreme/ Fat Bob's. I don't know the people who live there now, so I don't have any personal interest in defending them, but I can tell you from my experience that there have been leaks there at least as far back as the early 2000's. We would be just taking normal showers and the owners of Supreme would come banging on our door acting like we were doing something crazy. The landlords were not very responsive and it would become standoffs for days where the owner of Italian Supreme would tell us we couldn't use any water, and we would tell him he should get the landlord to show up. When he did show up, it was usually his family members trying to fix things, not a professional plumber. The problem would eventually come back (if not immediately).
It was the kind of place you lived if you wanted to pay very little rent and not be bothered, but the flip side was an apartment that had just been passed down between friends without any oversight for the better part of a decade, and it needed some serious work. I haven't been in the apartments in years, and all of this could have been fixed, but when I hear there was a leak, my last assumption is that someone must have busted a pipe behind a toilet at a party.
As durable as this braided steel pipe is, I can't imagine what someone might have done at a party to make the thing burst. Do people really flush firecrackers? It seems more likely there was an underlying problem in the plumbing or it was installed incorrectly. Or it was just a freak accident.
Finally, I was at Bacchus when this supposedly happened. If there was a party there, it wasn't wild enough for me to know it from street level.
Fat Bob's makes some of the best pizza in town, especially the eggplant-ricotta special. Some folks here assume that their product sucks simply because not all of their clientele meet certain lofty standards. Whatever. More excellent pizza for the rest of us, once they open again.
Who's the landlord on that property?
I do find bd's position fascinating. It must be tough to balance out the values "defend the business owner" and "blame the victim." Apparently businesses only receive blind protection if they're above Plattekill Avenue, or his hatred of New Paltz's, erm, colorful characters is so deep and enduring that he is offended by anyone daring to try to make a buck within a hundred yards of them.
This is why I'm a gadfly. I have always found it troubling that there's a near-constant cluster of somewhat smelly people and often unfriendly dogs in that area of Main Street, but rather than lash out I think, study, and consider my words.
When I first encountered that crowd it was a LOT worse because of a feature known endearingly as "piss alley" between 60 Main and the predecessor to the Muddy Cup. Bobby Downs finally removed that feature.
When Justin Holmes and Amanda Stauble opened their tech cafe, "the stoop" was a permanent resting place until they installed a garden. Progress made, but only some.
The police can't or won't move the crowds along in most cases, despite Mr. Downs' claims that standing on a public sidewalk is trespassing.
Meanwhile, down the street at Fat Bob's, Bob is committing the sin of selling his product to anyone with money. At the same time, he's told the director of Family of New Paltz that he won't contribute because he feels that their services are supporting the volunteer homeless community, and his business suffers as a result.
Think and analyze, bd. Don't just read and type nasty things out of ignorance. Remember Oscar's words in "The Odd Couple" before you assume. Maybe we could return to a two-party system in this town if you just took a few moments to consider the facts before acting.
Who knows, maybe if you actually talk to Bob you will discover that you and he have very similar values. (You and I do, although you will never take the time to see it; it's a lot easier to seek and destroy all differences.) Who knows, maybe Bob would become a Republican donor if you didn't simply kick the guy in the jimmy because you don't like the people who walk on the street near his shop.
His name was Simon something. I don't think he owns a lot of properties in New Paltz.
I guess what bothered me about this post was the lead. It seems Terence was just looking for a clever hook, but the hook invents an entire party for which no evidence is shown anywhere else in the post. It seems mostly harmless, but in the process blame is being laid upon people who may not have even been home. Many college students probably went to visit family, or to a friend or siblings graduation, last weekend. Is there a witness who can be quoted indicating that such a party existed? Bob seems to have been interviewed for this post. Why not the people accused of throwing a party causing thousands of dollars of damages? If this is where people are going to get their news for the town and village of New Paltz, then I think posters ought to aspire at least to the journalistic standard of not making something up for a convenient lead.
I too lived in those apartments for many years. Its crazy to say the party caused the damage. I had many wild parties there and never had the honor of flooding out fat bobs/ Italian supreme. Romano had it coming though. Those apartments were poorly looked after.
Hi anonymous #2.
"Its crazy to say the party caused the damage."
I had this exact same thought. But when I reread the article, I realized that I don't even think that there was a party. Terrence never mentions it again anywhere in the post. He never says how he found out about this party. Did someone call the cops? Did he speak to someone who was there? Have the tenants of the apartment taken responsibility?
Terrence, if I am wrong about this, let me know.
If I am correct, I feel bad for the current tenants. Not only do they probably have a horrible mess, frustrating landlord, and probably no water to deal with, but they are being blamed by strangers on the internet. Just because they are (likely- we don't even know who they are) college kids, doesn't mean they threw a huge party and broke everything. Despite the perceptions of many non-student New Paltz residents.
-original anonymous
I was walking past Fat Bob's today and saw the contractors hard at work trying to do repairs. The owner was outside, so I asked him how it was going. He said it looks to be about $80,000 to $100,000 in repairs. I asked about the pipe, and he said it wasn't just the pipe; part of the toilet had been broken, too. That sounds pretty clearly like tenant (or guest) craziness to me.
To the anonymous comment that it would be an honor to flood my pizzeria, that i had it coming, i say this shows your level of immaturity and integrity. The responsibility for the losses will eventually be determined by a court of law. Some of the street people exhibited better manners than the anonymous cowards above. we hope to open by mid july. Those who miss us, we miss you. FAT BOB
Hello,
My name is Gianna Cioffi, I have no need to be anonymous, as I know the truth. I know it may seem fruitless and maybe way past the point where it matters but I came upon this and I feel the need to say the following. I was a renter in the apartment that flooded. I would like to set a few facts straight.
1. There was a graduation party that happened over 24 hours before the flooding began.
2. It was a broken flex pipe,located in the back of a toilet in a bathroom shared by two people. On the morning on which this occurred, there was only one renter around. This renter did not use this bathroom.
3. The location on the flex pipe on the back of toilet would have taken serious effort to kick in.
4. A flex pipes pumps an insane amount of water in a single hour. As terrible as the actual damage was, there would have been way more damage. Our other roommate awoke to a terrible hissing sound, wouldn't we have heard it and stopped it during the party?
5. Our toilet/ flex pipe was inspected by plumbers, insurance companies,and Kath Moniz of the New Paltz Village building department all who determined that there was no possible way we could have broken the pipe.
6. Finally what they did determine was this, The flex pipe was old and made out of a brittle material which break all the time, this is why flex pipes are now made out of plastic because they maintain their elasticity over time, as opposed to becoming fragile over time and eventually become to weak to withstand the water pressure.
Those are the facts. Again, I don't know what the point of the post was, I just thought it was only fair for my and my roommates sides to be heard. We were all distressed by the damage done not only to our own apartment and things but of course to the establishment below. Best of luck to Fat Bob's Pizzeria in the future. Perhaps the reason why I am posting this, is because I think it is awful the way just because we are college students, people assume that we are not responsible tenants.
I would also like to say thank you to everyone who didn't assume and didn't judge.
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