Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy sounded off Monday on the Big Apple’s proposal targeting pizza joints that use pollutant-heavy coal-and-wood-fired ovens.
In a nearly three-minute diatribe posted on Twitter, Portnoy lambasted the rules drafted by the city Department of Environmental Protection that would order eateries using the old-fashioned baking method to cut down on carbon emissions by up to 75%.
“You got rats, you got trash in the city, you got f—king cars, planes, private planes, you got people getting slashed on the subway, you got flash mobs robbing stores and you’re coming for coal oven pizzerias?” Portnoy said in the video.
While Portnoy said the city wanted to shut down the coal-cooking pizza places, the proposed rules, which were drafted to comply with a 2015 law, would not force them to close their doors.
But the edict could mandate that pizzerias with such ovens installed before May 2016 buy expensive emission-control devices, The Post exclusively reported Sunday.
And one pizza restaurateur, who has a coal-fired oven, fumed to The Post over the weekend the environmental guardrails could affect the taste of the pizza.
Less than 100 businesses would be affected if the rules were to go into effect.
“You know what pizzerias use coal ovens,” Portnoy asked rhetorically. “All the best, all the best.”
“Any pizza place that you’re like ‘oh, this is Manhattan, this is old school, this is what people think about when they think of NYC,’ they have a coal oven,” he insisted.
Portnoy is hardly the only one to express outrage over the proposed rules. One conservative shock artist even tossed nearly 50 slices over the fence into City Park near the mayor’s office to protest the move Monday.
Portnoy referenced the crusty move in his nearly 3 minute video, vowing to stand by the pizzerias which he called the “guts of the city.”
“You’re gonna come after pizzerias for f—king global warming?” Portnoy once again asked rhetorically. “Are you f—king nuts?”
Some of the pizza joints facing the heat include Lombardi’s in Little Italy, Arturo’s in Soho, John’s of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, Macoletta in Astoria, Patsy’s in Turtle Bay and the Upper West Side, Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint Grimaldi’s near the Brooklyn Bridge and Totonno’s in Coney Island.
“If they come after John’s of Bleecker I will come for their throat and I will never let go until I squeeze the life out of them,” Portnoy vowed. “Leave the f—king pizzerias alone.”
