Grub Street

On Saturday, grown men and women wearing Santa costumes will, once again, attack New York bars and restaurants for SantaCon — an annual event that often ends with a trail of vomit, urine, and half-eaten pizzas. Despite what police commissioner Ray Kelly says, SantaCon's anything but jolly. Here's proof: Grub Street asked bartenders, restaurant staffers, and regular 'ol disturbed citizens to anonymously share their painful memories of bearded idiots doing very, very stupid things. Here are a dozen of the worst.

The Bacardi-owned Scotch whisky company Dewar's has pulled all versions of an online advertisement called "Meet the Baron" after bloggers pointed out it was offensive and, well, just plainly hateful toward women. The ad was supposed to be an introduction to a character called "the Baron," a proxy for the brand and all-around wingman who valiantly saves his chum from the advances of a woman in a bar, depicted here as overweight and forward. However it was supposed to play, it didn't, and before its untimely demise this morning, someone even made a compelling argument about how certain shots from the Dewar's commercial seemed to echo a violent stretch of Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange adaptation from 1971.

Restaurateur Alison Price Becker, whose sleepy side-street Alison's on Dominick was once commonly regarded as one of the most romantic spots in the city, will close her two-year-old Flatiron restaurant on December 19. Recette chef-owner Jesse Schenker, who was previously angling to open a restaurant in the neighborhood on West 20th Street, will take the space over and next year open what the Times says will be a casual restaurant. [NYT, Earlier, Related]

Pete Wells gives the three-month-old West Village restaurant Sushi Nakazawa four stars, the highest New York Times rating possible. Referencing the work of acclaimed chef Jiro Ono, Nakazawa's one-time teacher, Wells praises the ten-seat sushi counter's minimal and masterful approach to fish like fatty tuna, hay-smoked skipjack, and ultrarich mackerel. "Welcome to New York, Mr. Nakazawa," he concludes, echoing the praise heaped on the place by New York's Adam Platt. [NYT, Related]

In a new feature, Rolling Stone takes a very close look at animal cruelty on factory farms. As it covers the billions of animals raised and slaughtered each year for the sake of meat and dairy put on sale everywhere from supermarket shelves to fine-dining restaurants, the piece is worth as much time as you can give it today. Chickens, cows, pigs; they're all here, and there's suffering involved. To make matters worse, Paul Solotaroff writes, the widespread reach of "Ag-Gag" laws — which seek to inhibit the work of whistle-blowers and activists — are now making the American way of meat much less transparent, against all odds.