Professional jealousy on Washington Ave.

This is really odd.

Some friends of ours, who live on the CH side of the tracks, are regulars at both Tom's Restaurant and Cafe Shane. They were on their way to Shane's very early one recent weekday morning, tried the doors and found it was closed, so they walked over to Tom's, where Gus was outside sweeping up.

As they walked up to the door, the normally effusive Gus greeted them with something along the lines of "yeah, I guess we're sorta closed, too."

So they stepped back and stood on the curb, debating the best place to grab a bagel (hmm, should have checked the Crown Heights board) when, maybe half a minute later, Gus approached them and said he'd let them in. When they passed through the doors, they were a bit surprised to find the tables already well populated with customers.

What's going on here? The obvious interpretation is that the Tom's/Cafe Shane rivalry is getting acrimonious. Or maybe Gus was just having a bad day. Either way, the story is an interesting follow-up to Cafe Shane's shameless stumping at the expense of Tom's.

I wouldn't take this story as anything more than hearsay if I didn't know the couple so well, and if Gus hadn't given them a "time out", leaving them on the sidewalk, nearly turning away business before he apparently had a change of heart.