Last year, East Village residents were plagued by the succulent, suffocating, overwhelming smell of bacon emanating from their local IHOP. It was finally snuffed out this past July thanks to a $40,000 "hog-smog" industrial strength odor-eater. But it seems that even that hasn't helped too much: “Then it was smells—sometimes I smelled coffee, other people smelled bacon,” local Rena Begleiter told the Post about the Union Square IHOP. “They installed this behemoth to combat it, but the noise from that has been much worse.”
Begleiter, an 86-year-old retired insurance broker who lives adjacent to the IHOP, said the air vent sound and bacon smell have been bothering her for the last year, and it's just become too much for her. “The one thing I always loved about my apartment was it was so quiet and peaceful, and we’ll never have that again," she told them. "The irony of it is I happen to have lost hearing in one ear. I’m turning a deaf ear, but there’s still that grinding noise.”
Begleiter and about 100 other tenants in her building have bandied together to petition to get SOMETHING changed, at least get rid of the hog-eater: “I’m pissed,” said Sandy Berger, who launched the petition effort. “The community was never contacted.” A Department of Buildings spokesman said that IHOP is "going to have to relocate the equipment. If they fail to do so, we’ll revoke their permit.” Just don't hold your breath on it happening this week: it took eight months to just get the damn hog-smog machine installed. And of course, it's a vicious circle: once the machine is gone, the smell will be back.
