Cheese It, It's The Cops!
Reader Jeffrey Balla hips us to the latest black marketeer prowling the streets of The Big Apple. Listen in as The New York Post reports on "Ronnie" (not his real pseudonym), a purveyor of contraband…grilled cheese sandwiches:
"I'm worried that I'm getting too busy. I'm instituting a friends and friends-of-friends policy," he said. "I kind of want to quit, it's getting too big, but I want to feed these people."
Mostly he's worried that if he gets too big, he's sure to draw the attention of health inspectors.
"It's not cool with the Department of Health," he said. "I don't know how much longer I want to do it because I'm living in fear. It would be such a stupid thing to get in trouble for."
Yes, "Ronnie," it would be stupid to get a mark on your permanent record for selling unlicensed sandwiches, even to ultra-willing buyers (as one satisfied customer put it, "We begged for a delivery"). But there's something far more wrong with a world where "Ronnie" and his clients can't make decisions among themselves without a city bureaucracy interposing itself.
As far as I'm concerned, the only crime here is the New York Post's headline: "He's makin' a gouda livin'"