Thinking Twice About C-Food

On the one hand, you might believe what you want to believe:

“If this is a C, then how do dirty jerk chicken joints in Flatbush get A’s? This place has a brand-new kitchen. I’ve seen it.”

Then again, it’s a little different when it comes to sushi restaurants:

At [a sushi place] in Whitestone, Queens, [the manager] said the spot’s C rating hasn’t hurt business.

But the grade was posted in a place where no customer could reasonably see it last week. [The manager] moved it to a more visible spot during an interview with a reporter, then later removed it from the window.

“The grade has not hurt us at all,” said [the manager], who said the restaurant spent $20,000 to fix problems that he claimed were unrelated to the food served.

[A passerby], 34, understood why the sushi joint was embarrassed by the grade.

As If Those Reptile Exhibits Could Get Any Freakier . . .

The only thing worse than a poisonous cobra escaping from its exhibit at the zoo is knowing it is still on the loose:

Bronx Zoo staffers were waiting Sunday for an escaped poisonous Egyptian cobra to get hungry enough to come out of hiding.

Once it does, they will try to nab the wily reptile, the zoo’s director said.

The zoo’s Reptile House remained closed Sunday as staff searched for the 20-inch adolescent snake noticed missing Saturday.

Trains May Suck In A Lot Of Ways But At Least They Don’t Flip Over On The Thruway

As long as the Acela remains absurdly expensive, this will continue to be one of my worst fears:

More than a dozen people were killed in a horrific crash early Saturday when a discount bus flipped on a Bronx highway and careened into a metal traffic pole, officials said.

One More Urban Nightmare Sears Itself In Your Fragile Psyche/Summer Can’t End Fast Enough

Stray voltage, subway pushers, exploding manhole covers, vindictive trees, greedy sidewalks and now unmoored air conditioner units:

A 45-pound air-conditioning unit Tuesday fell six stories from an East Village apartment, crashed through the awning of a wine bar and seriously injured a man . . .

See Something . . . Ah Forget It

When you see a nervous man running from a smoldering SUV, yes, absolutely say something, but if it’s just a paper bag on top of a phone booth, assume it’s just something someone forgot:

A suspicious brown bag abandoned atop a pay phone near Times Square Tuesday night led to the third false-alarm bomb scare since Faisal Shahzad’s botched plot left the city feeling jitters.

. . .

The scene was finally cleared shortly before 10 p.m., when bomb technicians determined the bag contained nothing more than a metal cooking tray, police sources said.

Soon nothing will Faisal us like we were once Faisaled.