An Indianan Is Born Every Minute

Note to readers: The following Roger Simon column was first published in March 1996.

NEW YORK — It was a filthy day in the city. Rain had blown down the streets in icy gusts all morning, and now it was changing to sleet. Little pellets danced madly on the windshield of our taxi cab.

"Let's walk," my friend, Mike, said.

Mike is from Indiana. Apparently, people in Indiana walk everywhere. Rain, snow, sleet, earthquakes, volcanoes, they don't care. They walk.

"C'mon," Mike said. "How bad could it be? I've got an umbrella."

Mike had a tiny, electric blue umbrella that he had purchased from a street vendor the day before for $5. When opened, it would cover a space approximately the size of a soup bowl.

At the first good gust of wind, that thing is going to blow inside out and become junk, I told Mike.

Mike looked astounded. "The guy said it was guaranteed," he said. "I asked him."

And in Indiana, they probably have a State Board of Street Vendor Inspection that goes around and makes sure that everything is on the up and up, and if a guy on the street sells you a Rolex watch for $20, it is a real Rolex watch and the reason he is selling it for that price is that he is an escaped mental patient.

I didn't have the heart to explain to Mike that in New York the street vendors are the smart ones and the people who buy from them are the mental patients.

The cab moved north along Eighth Avenue in fits and starts. Every time the meter clicked, Mike jumped a little.

"This is going to cost us a fortune," Mike said.

We're almost there, I told him.

We were going to the Carnegie Deli, which is probably the best deli in the world. I say "probably" because I have not been every place in the world yet, though I have checked out delis in unlikely places like Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Grenada and Denver. But Mike pointed out that I had missed what is apparently a deli Mecca.

"Fort Wayne," he said. "Have you ever eaten at a deli in Fort Wayne?"

No, I admitted. Which is why my life is empty and without meaning.

Mike rode quietly for a few blocks — though I could tell he was still upset that he could not find the seat belts in the back seat of the taxi — but at 55th Street, he went nuts.

"Look!" he said. "A line! A line!"

About 100 people were lined up on the sidewalk.

The line stretched down 55th and then bent up onto Eighth Avenue.

Don't worry about it, I said. They're probably looking at a corpse.

"No, no, no!" Mike howled. "I read about it! It's the Soup Nazi! The Soup Nazi!"

As it turned out, Mike was correct. On West 55th Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, Al Yeganeh has his famous Soup Kitchen International.

And it became famous when a character looking almost exactly like Yeganeh was featured on "Seinfeld" as the Soup Nazi, a man who bars people from his establishment for not following his rules.

In real life, Yeganeh — who hates the name Soup Nazi and thinks it is "a horrible term, which should never be used, ever" — has three rules taped to a mirror near his cash register: "Please have your money ready. Pick the soup of your choice. Move to your extreme left after ordering."

People who do not know what they want when they get in front of Yeganeh are ordered to the back of the line.

Jeff Marshall, 35, who works for a Wall Street brokerage firm, got in a long line one day after seeing the Soup Nazi re-run on "Seinfeld," which is in syndication and airs six days a week all across America.

Marshall waited and waited. He knew what he wanted to order. He had his money ready. And then tragedy struck.

"My beeper went off, and I got heaved," Marshall told a reporter a few days later when he returned for another try. "I was about fifth in line. He (Yeganeh) said, 'Leave! No noise!' So I'm on vibrate today."

Yeganeh offers about 200 soups each day, and they sell from $6 for a small cup to $13 for a very large cup. According to The New York Times, Yeganeh recently turned down a $150,000 advance for a soup cookbook because it would have meant going on a publicity tour.

"How could I leave my soup?" Yeganeh said.

"We have to eat there!" Mike began screaming. "Nobody in Indiana will believe this! We have to eat at the Soup Nazi's!"

And maybe we would have gotten out and stood in the sleet for 90 minutes except for one thing: Yeganeh has no seating inside his place. You order from the sidewalk, pay from the sidewalk and get your soup on the sidewalk.

Let me get this straight, I told Mike. You want us to stand in line in the sleet for the chance to eat soup in the sleet?

Mike held up his umbrella and pushed the button. The back seat of the cab was instantly filled with electric blue nylon.

"My umbrella!" Mike shouted. "We could eat under my umbrella!"

Hoosiers. You can't live with them, and you can't throw them from moving taxis.

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