Last week, a diabetic man was forcibly kicked out of the Pavilion Theater in Park Slope for bringing strawberries into the theater. Despite the fact he hadn't even opened them and he had a compelling medical reason for needing them, the manager of the Pavilion called the cops on 41-year-old Michael Kass, who left a long message on the theater's Facebook page detailing the incident. Now, the owner of the theater has directly apologized to Kass: "I think the way the situation was handled was not correct and we apologize sincerely," owner Ben Kafash told the News after speaking with Kass.
"I apologized to him extensively. At the end of the day, it shouldn’t have happened. I told him to come back and give us another try," Kafash told the Post. Kass said he was only in the theater for about 10 minutes—the previews had just come on—when the manager and two police officers came for him. As he wrote on Facebook:
I think it goes without saying that I won't be patronizing your theater again any time soon but I'd invite you to take the time to consider revising your policies to better reflect the community you serve. No one is asking you to stock granola or grapes in your concession stand if you don't believe you can do so profitably -- but calling the "cops" on a neighborhood father of three for discretely bringing in a closed container of strawberries is beyond ridiculous and, if you don't revise your policy, I feel pretty confident getting our community to move their movie dollars elsewhere will be pretty easy.
Despite the forcefulness of his words, Kass now says he's willing to give the theater another chance: “It’s an individually owned theater and I’m hoping we can have policies that are better for their patrons," Kass told the News. "He said he would change the policy and I’ll hold him to his word." Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to never go to that theater again that have nothing to do with strawberries.
