HOW NOT TO DO PUBLIC RELATIONS

Remember in 2005 when an owner of the Manhattan restaurant Quintessence was exposed (cough) as a subway flasher? I blogged about it here, writing:

By now, you've no doubt heard of the New York City subway masturbator, who was captured for posterity by his victim's camera-phone... Now, they say that the perp could have been restaurateur Dan Hoyt… Still, the man is innocent until proven guilty... so I will make no judgments. But I do have a question: When dining at his restaurant, is it a good idea to order the hand roll and the minced nut meat?

That was five years ago, which is why I was surprised to receive an e-mail late last night reading, in part:

Hi my name is [redacted]. I am working on a publicity / branding campaign representing Quintessence restaurant in NYC. I am contacting you about a post on your website that refers to Quintessence and some negative publicity about one of the owners back in 2005.

Quintessence is upon their 10 yr anniversary and now has four partners involved…their position in their market niche is highly respected and they provide a service to very needing and faithful clientele.

Some depend on Quintessence for their non chemical foods, some are very sick and some are changing their lives and Quintessence is also a huge part of the growing ‘green consciousness.’ Do [sic] to their need to expand and the growing number of searches online for Quintessence and Raw Food, it has become necessary to better serve the community if any negative post from so long ago be removed. It serves no purpose other than to slander the name of just one person where the company is a host of partners, family members, investors, employee...

It would be a wonderful gustier [sic] on your part to see the bigger picture of just who and how many people this post effects and promptly remove it. It is unfair to the community and the new partners of a growing business to have such negativity for so long ago connected to the uninvolved parties.

My response this morning:

I assume you’re joking. When you get Gawker, Gothamist, New York magazine, et al to delete their posts (and somehow make the cached past disappear) maybe you will have accomplished something. (That something is called ‘magic.’) Otherwise, you're just wasting your time. Do you bill Quintessence for these hours? If so, you've got an excellent scam going.

You need to learn what the word "slander" means. It does NOT mean ‘writing true things about people.’ If you're trying to get people to delete what they wrote about Dan Hoyt in 2005, you must have your work cut out for you. I think every blog and website wrote something about that incident. I also doubt any of them have deleted their original posts from 2005, because, well, DAN HOYT WAS AN UNREPRENTENT FLASHER!!! (<-- note: that is not slander.)

If you keep sending dumb e-mails, it will backfire on you. In my case, probably starting later this morning. I wish everyone associated with Quintessence who isn't Dan Hoyt the best. That being said, I have ridden the subway tens of thousands of times and always managed to keep my penis in my pants. It's not a difficult thing to do, and -- as we're seeing now -- saves one (and one's business... and one's associates) a lot of headaches in the future.

I didn’t mock her grammar or spelling, so – overall – I think I was fairly well-behaved.

Anyway, if you're brave enough to eat at Quintessence you can find their website here. Dan "Hot Stuff" Hoyt is still there, so maybe you'll be able to catch a floor show after your meal!

Oh, and PR lady? Did I do this correctly?