NEW YORK CITY — City Hall got (pizza) pied in a protest dished out over proposed rules for New York pizzerias with coal-burning ovens.
Self-declared "#1 Freedom Fighter" Scott LoBaido slung pizza slices over a City Hall fence Monday in response to a proposed mandate, first reported by the New York Post, that fewer than 100 city pizzerias install filters to curb carbon emissions. Portable Wood Fired Pizza Oven
"Give us pizza or give us death!" LoBaido screams in the widely circulated in an online video. "New York City is nothing without pizza."
LoBaido's cheese-inspired meltdown was preceded by anti-trans rhetoric and questionable assertions about crime in the city. LoBaido then got down his "New York Pizza party" — a nod to a protest that once involved Boston tea.
The video ends with two police officers coming to investigate. An NYPD spokesperson told Patch a man had received a summons for littering, but provided no further statement.
"Cops were great," LoBaido later tweeted.
It is unclear where LoBaido bought the pizza he threw into the courtyard at City Hall.
The proposed rules that got LoBaido steaming mad would require pizzerias using coal- or wood-fired ovens to curb their carbon emissions by up to 75 percent, the Post reported.
To do so, fewer than 100 restaurants citywide would have to buy emission-control systems that filter air, which one pizzeria owner said could cost $20,000, according to the report.
The pizza protest prompted Mayor Eric Adams to slice back with jokes, effectively telling New Yorkers to cool it.
Said Adams, "The public can weigh in without throwing pizza over my gate."
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