A woman who has used a wheelchair since she was 2 says a birthday celebration with friends and family took a disturbing turn when their Hudson waterfront restaurant in New Jersey dropped off dessert.<\/p>\n
Antonia Sinibaldi was celebrating her 29th birthday at Blu on the Hudson in Weehawken when she says she and her cousin ordered the same apple cinnamon treat. <\/p>\n
The message on hers — “Happy Birthday Wheelchair” — made her body start to spasm, Sinbaldi says.<\/p>\n
“Body started shaking, body started spasming. My body reacted faster than my mouth or my mind,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sinbaldi says her group spoke to a manager at the restaurant and got a complimentary drinks offer but no apology. Blu on the Hudson later said it was deeply saddened by the June 20 incident and apologized.<\/p>\n
The Weehawken eatery explained in a statement that the word “wheelchair” was used to identify the table receiving the cake, and was inadvertently written on the plate. <\/p>\n
“The word ‘wheelchair was used as a reference to identify where a birthday dessert with a candle should be delivered,” Blue on the Hudson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, that notation was misunderstood and was written on the plate itself.”<\/p>\n
“There was absolutely no malicious or disrespectful intent behind the notation,” it continued. “However, we fully understand how seeing that word written on a plate could be deeply hurtful and upsetting.”<\/p>\n
The restaurant says it has taken steps to avoid such incidents in the future. <\/p>\n
Still, Sinibaldi, an artist and musician, believes someone should have known better. <\/p>\n
“It offended me. This whole thing doesn’t sound real,” she said. <\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC New York. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC New York journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who has used a wheelchair since she was 2 says a birthday celebration with friends and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,1066,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-329434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}