Bottled water is often just tap water in a bottle. But a new store — excuse me, a new “water cafe” — in the East Village is basing their entire business plan on that concept: They sell nothing but bottled tap water.
It’s a little bit mystifying why anyone would buy a product available for free in EVERY SINGLE APARTMENT and EVERY SINGLE RESTAURANT and EVERY SINGLE PARK. But the proprietors of Molecule have a pitch, the Wall Street Journal reports. This tap water is no ordinary tap water. It’s tap water that’s been subjected to a bunch of BS quackery. And that’s expensive!
Not just any tap water, insist the owners of Molecule. They say the water streams through a $25,000 filtering machine that uses ultraviolet rays, ozone treatments and reverse osmosis in a seven-stage processing treatment to create what they call pure H2O.
In other words, they want to sell you perfectly good water that they make taste like nothing. Because that’s what makes water taste good: all the stuff that’s in it that’s not hydrogen or oxygen.
These guys just moved a year or so ago to NYC from California, and one is a “former world champion boomerang player, musician and self-described social-justice activist.” They’re not buying the contention that NYC has some of the best tap water in the country. The owners say they “don’t want chemicals in my water. I don’t even want chlorine in my water.” Don’t tell them H2O is a chemical formula, okay?
Also, water has magical healing powers! DNAinfo reports:
[Co-owner Adam] Ruhf knows first hand the healing properties of purified water, claiming that drinking it regularly helped eased the pain caused brought on by two serious car accidents that left him without a spleen and a leg held together with metal pins.
“It’s more of an intuitive thing about cleanliness,” he explained of how water helped him recover. “Not wanting toxins [from unfiltered water] to further inhibit my recovery.”
Really, I hope they don’t ever look into what’s in the air they’re breathing in, because, buddy, hate to break it to you, but the East Village isn’t exactly a bastion of fresh, clean air. Still, the shop sounds cool:
The tiny shop looks more like a laboratory than a love-in. Brightly lighted and spare, Molecule is dominated by the giant filtration machine, a vast tank connected to tubes, pipes and monitoring dials. Along the back wall hangs a line of long, thin burettes filled with colored liquids.
The water’s $2.50 for 16 ounces. You can also get stuff added back into it. Not chemicals, of course — vitamins! Which are also chemical, but whatever. Additives at Molecule include vitamins A-E or “a mixture of roots, herbs, fruits and mushrooms blended in blasts.” It’s like a juice bar for breatharians. This is one of those things that makes you realize that everyone now is just as dumb as everyone in the Middle Ages.
