NYC water cafe sells fancily filtered local water

Molecule is a "water cafe" in New York City's East Village that takes the city's tap water, runs it through a $25,000 filter, and sells it back to New Yorkers. It's $2.50 for a 16-ounce glass bottle or you can bring your own container and pay $1 for up to 50 ounces. For an extra fee, add various vitamins, herbal, and root "blasts" to the water. "What Are They Drinking In New York City?" (WSJ via NextDraft)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

Or I can just distill my water at home for free. You can’t get it any purer than that…
- theophrastvs
  
  but..but… then there would be no homeopathic infinitely diluted memory of giant sewer alligators. whereby… we would become cured of (or possibly… imbued with) all giant sewer alligator diseases/powers… but then [sad voice] we’d be film-rebooted as just being plain ol’ space aliens.
  - http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli
    
    It shames me to admit that I’m totally blanking out on which movie you’re talking about. So much for my nerd cred…
    - http://instantaneousinstances.com/ Spieguh
      
      HEROES IN A HALF SHELL!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Vaughn-Stegeman/100000427940388 Vaughn Stegeman
  
  you shouldn’t drink distilled water. it’s bad for you.
  - nox
    
    Even straight reverse osmosis water is bad for you according to the WHO. Leeches out your minerals.
    
    Hence some products like dasani selling ‘remineralized water’.
    - dragonfrog
      
      Or just eat some food with it.
http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

pfft, I’ve been putting root additive in other people’s water for years and nobody cares until after the screaming stops.
GawainLavers

This story isn’t about San Francisco. Yay!
hassan-i-sabbah

I just drink it straight out the tap. Imagine that! Delicious Scotish water. From a tap!
Paul Renault

I thought NYC tap water was among the best in the world!
- mccrum
  
  It is! It’s coming out of the Catskills and we’re in the midst of a quarter billion dollars worth of repairs to one of the aquaducts. They also recently finished a two billion dollar filtering station in Croton. Much like Rome, gravity powers 95% of the entire system.
  
  It’s astonishing to me that anyone in New York does anything other than turn on the tap. The only concern people might have depends on how close to the 96th street filtration station they are, that’s where a tiny boost of chlorine is added to keep things clean and folks in the neighborhood can catch a faint whiff now and then.
  - wrybread
    
    Agreed that NYC water is very good for tap water, but its far from perfect. Personally I get a really jarring chlorine taste from it, and a general astringent quality. Nothing even a Brita type filter can’t fix for me.
    Same goes for San Francisco’s tap.
  - retepslluerb
    
    Did this greatly improve since 1996? Whenever and whereve I opened a tap in Manhattan back than, including the WTC, it stank.
  - penguinchris
    
    I have an anecdote about NYC’s Catskills water supply; when I was an undergrad studying geology at the University of Rochester I went on a class field trip to check out geology in the Catskills.
    
    One of the stops was a cliff outcrop alongside a large lake, in the middle of nowhere miles from the nearest town, which turned out to be a NYC-bound reservoir. We were down by the water looking at the cliff for all of five minutes (there’s no path but it’s an easy climb down) before several police cars showed up telling us to leave and they wouldn’t take our explanation that we were geologists for an answer.
    
    They take the security of their water supply very seriously, even if poisoning all of NYC this way is a ludicrous supervillain plot!
- BarBarSeven
  
  Errr… Do you ever think about the pipes the water travels trough prior to getting to your tap? Why do you think—at least here in NYC—huge gallon bottles of Poland Spring are popular in poor communities? If you have a set of rusty pipes in your building it doesn’t make a difference how clean the water is at the source: Youl will be drinking pipe crud.
  
  Also, this cafe is B.S. Then again there is an artisinal mayonnaise place in Brooklyn that still trumps this place because—let’s face it—mayonnaise is mayonnaise.
  - http://repeaterband.com skeletoncityrepeater
    
    No way. Mayonnaise is made from simple ingredients that can vary greatly in quality. If someone wants to make it from high-grade olive oil, free-range eggs, and organic lemon juice or artisanal vinegar, they should charge more for it, and maybe someone will buy it. It probably tastes really good.
    - BarBarSeven
      
      Okay, you are right… To a point… On the point of mayonnaise itself specifically. But a whole storefront in NYC at 2012 NYC rent prices? Nonsense.
      - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ON37BGRH3HB7XU7TFAINESIA6E Aaron Thomas Sherwin
        
        But that place is new, right? It’s on Vanderbilt between Bergen and Dean? I think it remains to be seen whether or not Brooklyn can support an artisanal mayonnaise storefront, but there’s definitely been an aioli-boom in NYC-restaurants. But I thought it was really easy to make mayo?
  - bcsizemo
    
    There’s mayonnaise, and then there is Blue Plate.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I have several friends who make their own mayonnaise. Fresh v. sitting in a jar for god knows how long. Easy choice.
    - BarBarSeven
      
      I do not begrudge someone making homemade mayonnaise, but did your friend open a whole storefront in NYC dedicated just to selling artisanal mayonnaise & 100% nothing else & is paying NYC rents to force the issue into existence? That’s the issue.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Aren’t there several hundred thousand hardcore foodies in Manhattan?
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

Cool, this is the cafe where I bought the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s much cheaper than you’d expect.
http://twitter.com/nagmay Gabriel Nagmay

Many people pay money to filter their own tap water at home – so, the idea of purchasing pre-filtered local water isn’t that odd to me. This is much better then shipping water from the other side of the globe. Giving people a discount for using their own bottle is an added bonus.

But… then he started talking about the prescription drugs in the tap water. Water that comes from protected wilderness watersheds in the Appalachian mountains.
- nheasley
  
  I’m with you 99%. I think he would have done his business a better service by not pulling the whole “If you drink NY tap water it will give you diseases, then the residual presecription drugs in the water will cure those diseases but they’ll also give you an erection that lasts more than four hours and YOU WILL DIE!”
  
  That said, some of NY’s tapwater starts up in the Appalachian mountains, but it isn’t treated the same way that most city water is, and then it travels through some portion of 6,500 miles of pipes and tunnels, most of which haven’t even been examined for leakage or contaminants in almost 100 years. And yes, there is lead in some of them, so while NYC water is good at the top, it’s not always good at the tap.
  - wrybread
    
    Agreed.
    
    And why didn’t he just show the results of a water test? There’s lots and lots of minerals in tap water, along with easily detectable amounts of chlorine. And probably lots of other things that would justify his product, at least from a marketing perspective. The tests are cheap and easy.
  - gellfex
    
    Actually, quality control testing is done at municipal taps throughout NYC. Bottled water is a hoax by Coca Cola to get us to pay the same price as their overpriced sugar water for just plain water. Bodegas will markup a bottle 1000%. Penn & Teller did a video a while back filling fancy bottles from a hose in the back of a restaurant and getting people to gush about how extraordinary it was.
GlenBlank

Here in LA, there are storefronts all over the city where people install industrial R/O filtration equipment and sell filtered tap water, usually for about 25 cents a gallon, BYOB. Most of ‘em will usually sell you reusable bottles, too – the big water-cooler kind.

You’ll recognize them by the signs that say ‘Agua Pura’ – Seems a lot of our Mesoamerican immigrants come from countries where no one routinely trusts the municipal tap water for drinking purposes, and they brought the custom with them.

Not a bad idea, actually. Just because our tap water passes all State and Federal standards doesn’t mean there isn’t arsenic in it.
- http://openid.aliz.es/Rotoapi Rotoapi
  
  Also, Los Angeles tap water tastes terrible.
  - http://repeaterband.com skeletoncityrepeater
    
    LA is huge. The tap water tastes fine in some places, and awful in others. You could say the same for any city.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      I live in northwest Pasadena, within walking distance of JPL. I get quarterly mailers from the Lab describing the current status of their efforts to clean up the groundwater and re-open a couple of the municipal wells which were closed due to some fairly egregious chemical disposal practices back in the ’40s and ’50s.
      Now it’s a Superfund site. Though they temporarily closed the municipal wells most affected by the contaminated aquifer and have recently re-opened them after they built the Monk Hill Treatment System, my house has three separate filtration systems plumbed in series before the fridge’s icemaker/water dispenser, and the water still tastes a bit… well, carbontetrachloridey.
      
      “Puts hair on yer chest,” I tell the kids.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Even in Palm Springs (pop. 43,000), some of the water comes from the mountain (chlorinated – tastes like pool water) and some of it comes from the aquifer (unchlorinated – tastes like chalk.)
http://www.facebook.com/HyperionToASatyr Jack Holmes

This is like a Portlandia sketch IRL.
niktemadur

This website has been blocked.

Oh well, at least my Murdoch Block extension still works properly, and there’s plenty of other fish in the sea.
http://twitter.com/JesseJamz Jesse

Wait. My Aquafina isn’t filtered with $25,000 filters?
- M Carlson
  
  Your Aquafina might be bottled from a well here in Michigan. There was some big kerfluffle a few years back here where PepsiCo or Coke wanted to put in a water bottling plant from one of our aquifers (Newaygo? Mecosta area?). Don’t know if they actually did it.
Daemonworks

And vancouver tap water is still better.
http://twitter.com/wi_ngo wingo shackleford

One of the founders is a “former world champion boomerang player” which sounds like one of the most totally ridiculous yet awesome things you could be. I can’t begin to imagine how that would be judged.

I may now have some new aspirations in life…
- Mazoola
  
  Yeah, but you should see him toss the old didjerido….
- jackbird
  
  Maybe he’ll make a comeback.
- waetherman
  
  Show me a world champion boomerang player and I’ll show you a man who knows how to play with himself better than anyone else…
http://repeaterband.com skeletoncityrepeater

$1 for up to 50 ounces of super-clean water? There are much worse ways to waste money, like ANY bottled water from a store.
Navin_Johnson

H2Oh hell naaaaaawwww!
http://twitter.com/MrWeeble James Hardy

And will they name it “Peckham Spring”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Nature%27s_Son_%28Only_Fools_and_Horses%29 for those who don’t get the reference
ImmutableMichael

Call me a crazy visionary, but I can imagine a future world in which water is managed like data and can be “piped” directly into our homes and workplaces, like some crazy kind of internet of “tubes”. Water could be sent to where it was needed as simply as if it were data packets rather than hauled home in our cars.

One day in the future, the notion of having to buy water in bottles will seem as archaic as the horse and buggy.

Oh, that I would live long enough to see such a time!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  More likely that we’ll soon find ourselves losing the battle for Water-pipe Neutrality.
  - ImmutableMichael
    
    Somewhere in an alternative universe, someone still has a drawer full of WOL CDs.
- http://www.facebook.com/cathy.delaney.52 Cathy Delaney
  
  That is one of the best posts…. Love it!!!
pjcamp

Filter it and then stick a root in it? Yeah, that sounds like The Village.
SoItBegins

Yeah. What are they drinking in New York City?!
Nik From NYC

I hang my head in shame for my little island where our wonderful mountain stream water is killed by filtration and “blessed’ by a hippie.

I refill commercial tanks of CO2 to save a hundred bucks a month carbonating my own tap water to pour over store bought ice to give it the most amazing fizzy kick that goes down much easier than straight tap water. Most people just use those fancy carbonation appliances, which is what I started with before I paste epoxied a 1/4″ copper tube up into the thread area where the super expensive little tanks normally go. Works fine without need of even a regulator. There’s one remaining welding supply shop called McKinney welding that requires a rolling luggage visit and safe subway ride now that they have the new half height safety tanks made of lightweight aluminum with a built-in plastic crown that shields the valve knob from damage if it tips over. Compared to grocery store seltzer, it’s twice as fizzy and thus twice as fun and luxurious.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  It blows my mind that carbonating water is so easy, when I was a kid I assumed they like dissolved some kind of mineral into it. It just seems like something that should be more complicated.
noah django

“A fool and his money are soon parted” –Greg “The Hammer” Valentine
http://www.facebook.com/people/Vaughn-Stegeman/100000427940388 Vaughn Stegeman

Has anyone else here seen Penn and Teller’s Bullsh*t episode about bottled water? They sell people straight NY tap water out of a hose, telling them it’s fancy expensive water, and the people who drink it ALL think it’s awesome, and can tell the differences between the “different types”.
I’ve never had NY tap water, but I’m guessing it’s pretty decent.
http://twitter.com/wilmcdaniel wilmcdaniel

O.
- http://twitter.com/wilmcdaniel wilmcdaniel
  
  2.
Romana_Clef

Kanye West’s father (yes) started a similar “water bar” in the town adjacent to my college. Unfortunately, my college was WAY out in the middle of nowhere and the town was really small, so it was only open for two years or so.

However, it was pretty great. At the drop of a hat, Mr. West would take you on a tour of his massive filtration machinery and explain how it all worked and the (purported) health benefits of terrifically-filtered water.

Also, you didn’t just get water or flavored water, the water bar was actually a full-service cafe where you could get coffee and tea drinks made with the special water.

Obviously I didn’t give a shit about extra-filtered water (I drink from the tap) but I did enjoy this guy’s enthusiasm for his slightly crazy dreams, and they made good chai.
MrHaroHaro

Filtration takes out all the flavor that makes New York City tap water taste so good. How dare these people!
Rachael Hoffman-Dachelet

The best water in the world is lake Superior water run through my hiking filter. Perfect temperature, very very tasty. Though, that may have something to do with my drinking it after hiking up and down Isle Royal in 90 degree heat all day. The second best water I have ever tasted was filtered out of a stream in the highlands of Scotland, but, same deal, hiking all day in hot sunny weather (in Scotland!) may have changed my perspective. My husband maintains that the best beer he ever had was a Grain Belt Premium someone handed him as he pulled into the BWCA takeout after a canoe trip. I think it’s probably all an issue of context.