After years of performing his state-mandated duty of messing with only somewhat deserving people in Boston, Patrick K. found his tour de force on Wednesday. It might be the most Masshole prank committed to print.
“What’s the worst goddamn restaurant downtown?” he asked Reddit under the name MBTAhole, a nod to the city’s defective mass transit system. “Looking for some great bad recommendations to give to my shithead brother-in-law who self-identifies as a foodie.”
Since then, his quest for ways to mess with his in-law has captivated the city’s online communities. He’s netted more than 800 responses, all trying to one-up each other with colorfully worded restaurant horror shows. And it had dozens of Massachusetts expats on social media pining for their sometimes passive-aggressive, sometimes just aggressive, always wonderfully angry home.
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“This actually made me homesick,” wrote Nerdist’s Michelle Buchman.
“Oh my people,” wrote another Twitter user. “My shitty, dirtbag people.”
“I don’t think this is unique to Boston,” wrote Patrick. “However I probably can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Patrick withheld his last name so he could still send his brother-in-law to restaurant hell with relative anonymity, and The Daily Beast obliged, since it is almost certainly Sullivan or Murphy. After a few years in New York and L.A., Patrick returned to Massachusetts, where he used to gently terrorize the neighborhood as a “natural born Masshole,” as he called it.
“There’s really no origin story here. If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say it goes to back to being a kid in the neighborhood,” he said.
Patrick remembers when “random people or tourists in cars” would yell for directions.
“If they weren’t polite or didn’t say excuse me, then I’d give them directions that sent them the opposite way or to Blue Hill Ave,” he said. In 2010, the Boston Phoenix dubbed Blue Hill Ave the “New Combat Zone.”
That’s why he’s surprised his restaurant request blew up as it did.
“I post idiotic shit to Reddit all the time,” he said. “Like the vast majority of Reddit, I’m just bored at work and the site makes it easy to ask what’s on your mind.”
Now, he has a few hundred suggestions to make his brother-in-law’s life particularly horrible for about three hours. And don’t worry: this man absolutely deserves it.
“I think it’s mostly just the way he talks about ‘reductions’ and claims to never eat fast food or frozen food,” he said. “Bro, I seen the McDonald’s bags in your car. I can smell the stale Wendy’s. Don’t play me, kid.”
Please contact The Daily Beast if you did not read that last sentence in a Mark Wahlberg voice to receive your prize.
In the meantime, consult this thread of restaurant recommendations for Patrick, where you will find sentences simply too beautiful and hostile for Yelp.
“Jerkoffs don’t even know how to [expletive deleted] shuck a [expletive deleted] oyster right, and they’ve had 200 [expletive deleted] years to figure it out.”
“I’d have to be at gunpoint to go in there.”
“My dad loves this place. So, yes, it’s utter shit.”
“I’m fairly sure the same mop used to clean the floor was used to clean the oven. The people who ran it looked like the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
So which one is he leaning towards to complete the prank?
“I don’t mean to pick on Southie here but there’s a whole row of places there that you could give bad suggestions for,” he said. “I personally would send someone to Remy’s or Coppersmith in Southie.”
Here’s Remy’s ringing endorsement in that Reddit thread: “Is Jerry Remy’s in the seaport still open? Guaranteed food poisoning.”
Or, as Patrick’s brother might call it, a “reduction.”
