A former Washington Post journalist sparked a viral firestorm this week after publicly calling on New York City’s mayor to intervene in what she described as a failure by the city’s bagel shops to keep up with the times.
Taylor Lorenz, 40, fired off a Sunday morning post on X directed at Mayor Zohran Mamdani, demanding the city’s top elected official take action on the vegan cream cheese options available at New York bagel shops.
“The bagels in LA suck, but all the LA bagel shops at least use cashew-based vegan cream cheese. NYC bagel shops almost never have vegan cc or they’re using hyper processed Tofutti [vomiting emoji]. I hope Zohran can remedy this,” Lorenz wrote.
The post racked up more than 2.5 million views.
Lorenz left New York City for Los Angeles in 2020 and has lived there since.
Almost immediately after posting, Lorenz disabled comments on the thread, cutting off direct public response.
The move failed to contain the backlash.
Another X user captured a screenshot of the original post and republished it with their own commentary attached, opening the floodgates for the ridicule Lorenz had tried to head off.
“‘I hope the communist mayor can force bagel shops to serve my vegan slop cream cheese,’” the user wrote, framing it as a paraphrase of Lorenz’s demand.
“Just incredible. It’s like she was created in a lab,” the poster continued.
Hundreds of users piled on in response to the screenshot post.
“Leftists want the government to intervene in everything from healthcare to housing to cream cheese. It is so absurd,” one user wrote.
Even those who might be expected to sympathize with Lorenz’s dietary preferences were not on her side. “I’m a vegetarian and this annoys me,” one commenter stated flatly.
Another user drew a broader ideological conclusion from the episode.
“The ‘tolerance, inclusion, compassion and empathy’ crowd is at it again. Everything has to be the way they like it so we can truly have diversity. They see nothing wrong with this either.”
Lorenz pushed back on the torrent of criticism, casting those mocking her as fringe agitators.
“Right wingers and reactionary weirdos are all QTing this taking it so seriously and getting angry at the concept of vegan cream cheese,” she wrote in a follow-up post.
She then referenced Erewhon, the Los Angeles luxury grocery chain that has drawn national attention for its pricing — the store sells items including $15 vegan yogurts and $21 smoothies. “You guys couldn’t survive 5 minutes inside an Erewhon,” Lorenz wrote.
In a separate post, she claimed the original message had been intended as a joke.
The next morning, Lorenz published a follow-up structured almost identically to her original post, this time targeting Los Angeles bagel shops for putting chia seeds on their everything bagels and tagging a trio of LA elected officials.
“I hope Nithya, Bass, or Pratt can remedy this,” she wrote.
Hours later, she posted a photo of herself holding an everything bagel slathered with what appeared to be her preferred cashew-based vegan cream cheese alternative.
Comments on that post were disabled as well.
Mayor Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who has served as the 112th mayor of New York City since January 2026, has made no public statement in response to Lorenz’s request.
