This Is No Good and I Don't Like It

Katz's Deli is going to sell out, let some Visigoth tear down that beloved one-story block of a building where it resides, and then inhabit the soulless, towering condo warren the Hun will vomit up in its place?

So goes the hideous report on Grub Street, which I pray to God isn't true. For me, it's cold comfort that Katz's would still remain in an altered form. I take issue with Grub Street's contention that "Much as we love the ancient walls and counters, they don’t define what makes the place special." The hell they don't. I like their pastrami as much as the next guy, but eating it inside Katz's one-of-a-kind world of counters, photographs, slogans, back-lit menus, old neon, antiquated dining fixtures and sea of tabletops, and eating it inside any old nondescript room DO NOT REMOTELY COMPARE AS EXPERIENCES. That interior not only in large part defines what makes the place special, it defines what makes New York special.

As for Grub Street's next assumption, that "we’re sure if it did happen, every effort would be made to make the new place look the same as the old"—well, I guess I'm just more cynical than they are.

Aw, just wake me up. Tell me it's all a bad dream. Or least a spurious rumor.