BREEDER vs. BALLER: Your Kid's Fork Is In My Motherfucking Soup: Restaurant Wars
Effed in Park Slope | Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 4:00PM 
Each week we will attempt to bring you the unbiased, unedited points-of-view of a bonafide, ginuwine Park Slope Breeder (mom/dad) and a real deal, smokin, sexin, drinkin Park Slope Baller (child free-n-lovin it) on a variety of topics. Identities will remain anonymous, of course, to protect the soon-to-be lynched.
BREEDER:
My husband and I took the kids to Dizzy's last week. We got there at 6pm- a completely reasonable time to bring loud and tired children into a Park Slope establishment. Not just ANY Park Slope establishment! Not Blue Ribbon, not Applewood, not even freakin Song, but DIZZY'S - the ninth level of hell - second only to Two-Boots in terms of psychotic, park-slope-only child-friendliness.
In any case, there was another couple there who looked like old-school, pre-gentrified Park Slopers - probably about 50 years old. They were the only ones in the restaurant when we got there. And listen, I know it sucks to have a restaurant all to yourselves and then have some loud family enter your private domain, but hey - those are the breaks of living in an open society.
We sat down, the brain-damaged, sheep-shorn, tatooed hostess sitting us one table away from the couple.
On a scale of 1-10, If a 10 is acting like Wally and Beaver, and a 1 is calling the waitress a cunt and shitting on the counter, our kids behaved at about a 6. No major tantrums but yaknow, they're fuckin kids - they put forks in water and get yelled at and then drop their crayons and wanna get up as soon as they're done.
The people sitting next to us - holy christ. They gave us BURNING stares, were shaking their heads, and just looked utterly disgusted the entire time. When my son smiled at the woman who was staring at his father, she gave HIM the evil eye, like it's HIS fault that Union Market opened. They were so horribly rude, albeit passive-aggressively, that I wish I had taken a video camera along.
Another family with kids came in about 5 minutes later - the husband took one look at them walking in and then turned to his wife and said "Jesus!" - as if to say "Jesus Christ MAry, what's with all the FUCKIN kids!!" ...in Park Slope!
I'll tell ya Mary, The Dead Sea was incredible! The desert was breaktaking! Israel was great except for all the G-D DAMN JEWS!
So at the end of their meal, the guy looks at his wife while they're getting up, and says real loud so that we can hear - "spare the rod, spoil the child!"
I was utterly taken aback at his rudeness, and later wished I had had the guts to say something brilliant like, "Yeah someone should have told your MOTHER!"
It was all the more disgusting because our kids weren't even being bad! They can be horrendous - but like I said, that night there's no WAY they were any worse than a 6!!
I've got no choice to conclude that this guy HATED kids. And as someone who HATED kids, which is his fucking perogative, only a total fucking retard would take their kid-hating ass to DIZZY's. You have the rest of the WORLD to hate kids! Go enjoy! If kid-haters don't have the sense to make the wise choice, I'll make the decision for them: From now on, NO KID-HATERS are allowed in Dizzy's.
BALLER:
This BREEDER vs. BALLER thing is getting kinda boring, because yet again: I totally fucking agree with BREEDER.
I wouldn't go to Dizzy's if I received a "you are entitled to a free meal at Dizzy's every day for a year" gift certificate. If someone in my family died...and they happened to own Dizzy's, and bequeathed it to me, I STILL would not step foot in that motherfucking place.
But not because "I shouldn't be allowed"...because I'm smart. And I know that that place is *always* crawling with kids...and I don't like to eat my artisinal, overpriced mac-n-cheese with loud little boys dipping their forks in glasses and dropping crayons under my table.
That's it.
It's the same reason I would never enter Two Boots, even if my life depended upon doing so. Because yes, I would choose death over Two Boots any day of the week and twice on Sunday. If two boots were a bomb shelter, and we were in the midst of a motherfucking nuclear holocaust, that would still not be enough motivation for me to walk through their door.
I'll occasionally make an exception for La Villa cause (gulp), I actually like the food there quite a bit. And sometimes I'll go to the Tea Lounge because I also kind of dig it there (and thanks to Erica's handy guide, I've figured out how to make it manageable).
I've never seen a kid under 12 or so at Franny's and that's the way I'd like to keep it (I guess cause its pricey and also cause they don't take reservations there, so the little fuckers probably get bored).
That Blognigger dude put together a great "Declaration of Co-Dependence" way back when that actually suggested that we divide the territory in Park Slope proper BREEDER/BALLER style.
I think it might be worth revisiting. Though, I would like to take things a step further.
I would happily be willing to give up all of the following restaurants, have them declared BREEDER establishments, and never step foot in them again:
* Pizza Plus
* Dizzy's
* Bonnie's Grill
* Five Guys
* Purity Diner
* Aunt Suzie's
* Two Boots
* Red Hot II
* Grand Canyon
* Yamato
* Tutta Pasta
* Rancho Alegre
* Joe's Pizza
* Amin
* La Taqueria (go to La Taq now!)
* Uncle Moe's
* Two Boots
In exchange, all OTHER restaurants in Park Slope would be declared BALLER territory and would be totally off limits to kids, babies, breastfeeding mothers, nannies, and SAHDs.
Cool?
Breeder vs. Baller, eats 
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Reader Comments (8)
Not Bonnies. We Ballers are not giving up Bonnies. No effin' way.
That sounds good to me, but yeah, I agree with 1, we should keep Bonnies. Ballers need cheeseburgers too!
Give up Bonnies? F*ck you!
Daym, ok...fair enough. Everything at Bonnie's is way too pepper-y for me, but I guess that *was* a little insensitive. I'm swapping out Bonnie's for Five Guys...
Hey FIPS how about a burger-off PS style? (you know, like the bagel one from a while back). That oughta get you lots and lots of comments...
Even though I'm probably closer to the age of the breeder than the baller, I don't think the breeder understands that back in the older couple's days that kids would NEVER be able to behave like that in public. They would have received a quick slap on their fanny, chastised and would have sat down properly and ate their food. These days, kids have to play Nintendo at the dinner table yell, run around ... and people think it's okay. You know what? It's NOT. It's become acceptable for children to act like monsters with the whole premise that "they're just *kids*."
When I've traveled internationally, I've eaten at restaurants with kids many times. You know what? They are well behaved. Of course, there are monsters overseas as well. However, overall the children were behaved 1000 times better in the countries I've been in than in the States. I remember eating at the Four Seasons in Hong Kong. Next to me was a couple with children the age of approximately 3 and 6. Wonderful kids. Just sat in their seats, talked with their parents and ate their food without taking out a damn toy, yelling, running around, crying, etc. They sat there until the parents were done and wanted to leave. Just because you are a child doesn't give you license to run around causing havoc. Kids don't have to be like monsters. Sure, kids will probably never be able to sit through a 4-hour meal at Per Se. But they should learn to be respectful towards others during a meal at Bonnie's.
Unfortunately we live in a society where it has become acceptable for kids to let free as we don't want to "stifle their creativity." Let the kids be creative all they want. But first and foremost, they need to learn fundamental manners.
Now, as I wasn't there at Bonnie's, I can't say what really transpired with the Breeder, Breeder's kids and the Baller. But the Breeder should try to keep in mind that the old Baller grew up in a different time than the Breeder, and that her kids' behavior, while it was rated a "6" on her scale, would probably never have been tolerated in the Ballers' days. That said, the Ballers did need to learn manners of their own.
I'm 29, not the crusty 50 of the Dizzy's diners, and a mother and am still appalled by "6" behavior by children in restaurants. Teaching a child to behave properly at a restaurant is imperative to social success as adults. It is never to early to start. My children know that there are times that they can scream and throw things and roll around. The dinner table is NEVER the time to put their forks in their water glasses and throw their crayons on the ground. Of course the occasional temper tantrum will happen. And that is when my husband or I will take the offender outside to blow off steam and to discuss why being chill was hard to accomplish and what we can do next time to act appropriately. And these rules apply to our dinner table at home as well. Don't expect a child to discern the difference between restaurant table rules and home table rules.
Baller - Amen, EXCEPT
* Aunt Suzie's - they have $5 martinis after 10. those little fuckers better be tucked in to their mini egyptian cottons by then
* Two Boots - that's my after brunch cocktail spot. by 3ish, it's naptime.
* Rancho Alegre - been drinking there since i was 16. those breeder bitches prob hadn't even finished oberlin yet. step.