• by John Capone , May 1, 2009

Waterboarding might be too lenient (if satisfyingly appropriate) a punishment for Craig Zucker, the founder of Tap'dNY. Tap'd is a company that rented a Brooklyn warehouse, opened up a water main in it, and started bottling the stuff, which it now peddles under the tongue-in-cheek brand name. Zucker has the gall to wax environmental, babbling to the Los Angeles Times about how eco-conscious the company is. And then everyone seems to agree. The packaging - even as the company warns consumers about falling prey to the clever marketing gimmicks of other bottled water companies - carries taglines such as "The anti-bottled-water bottled water" and "No glaciers were harmed making this water." It all raises only one question: Has the whole world gone insane?

The manager of Irving Farm Coffee, a NYC coffeehouse that carries Tap'd, says the store sells about 100 bottles of Tap'd a week, and stopped carrying Poland Spring to peddle the local stuff. "It's a step in the right direction," she says. A step in which direction? Why not just, you know, turn the spigot on the in-store tap, and serve the same agua you brew the coffee with? Wouldn't that be hurtling in the right direction? Maybe it's just an elaborate joke to show people how absurd bottled water is, but once people start buying it, the joke's on them.