oddly enough

oddly enough

NY restaurateur’s sentence: Deliver pizza to poor

BUFFALO, N.Y.

A Buffalo, N.Y., restaurateur will be feeding pizza to the poor as punishment for cheating the state out of sales tax.

Casa-Di-Pizza owner Joseph Jacobbi could have been sent to prison after pleading guilty to third-degree grand larceny. But The Buffalo News reports a state Supreme Court judge thought the city would be better served if Jacobbi fed its neediest.

He sentenced Jacobbi to deliver 12 sheet pizzas from his popular restaurant to the City Mission once a week for a year.

The 57-year-old Jacobbi has repaid about half of the $104,000 in sales tax authorities say he withheld from New York over the course of four years. He must make monthly payments to cover the rest.

He declined to comment after his sentencing Monday.

NM restaurant promotional rooster at odds with law

HATCH, N.M.

First it was a huge fiberglass pig. Now, it’s a giant rooster that has the owners of a New Mexico restaurant at odds with the law.

State officials informed Teako and Josie Nunn that the rooster sitting 12 feet above the ground atop a 1964 Chevrolet and “soft served ice cream” banner on the side constitute off-premises advertising on wheels, which isn’t allowed.

They own Sparky’s Burgers, BBQ and Espresso in downtown Hatch and have created T-shirts with the slogan “Save the Rooster,” similar to what they did 10 months ago when the fate of a huge fiberglass pig was uncertain.

That dispute ended in February, when officials allowed the pig to be an off-premises billboard.

Mass. cleanup crew finds bag full of pot in river

METHUEN, Mass.

Rocky Morrison thought he’d seen everything in his six years of pulling trash from the rivers of northeast Massachusetts.

That was until Sunday, when he grabbed a plastic bag of marijuana floating in the Shawsheen River in Lawrence.

Morrison calls the discovery “unusual.”

Morrison, of Salem, N.H., helps run the nonprofit Clean River Project. He and his co-workers alerted police.

Lawrence police Chief John Romero tells The Eagle-Tribune that some of the pot had been packaged for street sale, and some was still in plant form.

He estimated it weighed 2 pounds and had a street value of $2,000.

Associated Press