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Has a Famous Sommelier Been Setting Fire to NYC Streeteries?

Photo: New York Fire Department

New York’s streeteries have inspired some, ahem, heated conversations about public space and residents’ rights to parking. Now, they have also inspired actual heat. A man was caught on camera lighting fires on the streeteries at the downtown restaurants Forsythia and Prince Street Pizza, the New York Times reports. Stranger still, per the Times, “fire officials announced that the sommelier, Caleb Ganzer, had been arrested and charged with two felony counts of arson and several other crimes in connection with three fires.”

Ganzer, whom Food & Wine once named a sommelier of the year, is also accused of starting a trash fire at the intersection of Broome and Centre, which is just north of the wine bar Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, where he is a managing partner. In a statement to the New York Times, the owners said Ganzer “is on a leave of absence” and declined to comment any further. The owner of Forsythia, meanwhile, tells the Times that a sharp-looking guy tried to light the restaurant’s streetery on fire “four times over the course of at least nine days in January.” The restaurant’s owners ended up spending $3,500 to repair the shed, which they made fire retardant. No one was hurt by the fires.

Has a Famous Sommelier Been Setting Fire to NYC Streeteries?