Nick's in the Sticks viral video discussed at Tuscaloosa City Council meeting

The viral video from Nick's Original Filet House , showing a verbal altercation regarding an alleged racial slur and comment from a Nick's employee, was discussed Tuesday at the top of Tuscaloosa City Council meeting.

Councilor Matthew Wilson began by applauding fellow Councilor Kip Tyner, who has spoken publicly and widely since the video began circulating. Various cuts from the roughly 2 1/2 minute video, some with added commentary, have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Youtube alone, from IP addresses around the world.

More: Online reviews of Nick's in the Sticks pulled after viral video alleging racist language

"I want to say thank you to Councilor Tyner, for his remarks concering an incident that happened at Nick's in the Sticks," Wilson said, "for we believe that, you know, cultural diversity is who we are as Americans. And whether you're Black, white, Japanese, any other ethnicity, you know all of us share differences and similarities.

"And we are all one Tuscaloosa, and I'm grateful and thankful for the knowledge that we are one Tuscaloosa, and we are working for the betterment of our community.

"And things that happened there are not indicative of the city. That's in the county. We're better than that in the city...."

Tyner spoke shortly after, in defense of the restaurant's founder, Nick Del Gatto, who sold the business in 1974, but stayed on for many years as unofficial greeter and raconteur, chewing a well-worn stogie, chatting with patrons in his distinct Hell's Kitchen-raised voice. He died in 2003, at age 94 . His family has no connection to current ownership.

Tyner knew Del Gatto, who lived in his Alberta district, and spoke recently with family members.

"They are horrified, and they wish the name wasn't even on the restaurant anymore, because the original Nick's, they have nothing to do with it," Tyner said.

"If you knew Nick Del Gatto ... he was the most welcoming person to everybody. As his son-in-law (Warren Davis) said, both him and his wife would be spinning in their graves," Tyner said, at the idea Nick's management was actively hostile to anyone, for any reason.

Davis posted comments on several social media spots, saying "Nick and Frances (Wilson, Del Gatto's wife; she died in 2000) are probably crying in their graves over the crap that has happened. He would never do anything like that."

"It is not Nick's anymore. Not the Nick's that we knew," Tyner said. Tyner has reached out publicly to patrons, one of whom said spoke of celebrating, at their first visit to the steakhouse.

"Today is my son's 22nd birthday, and he has to encounter this, really?" a woman's voice says. Tyner has extended an offered to take that family out for another birthday meal elsewhere, on his dime.

The video was shot out front of the restaurant, with patron Hunter Sartain taking to task a Nick's employee, who's been identified as Jack Moltz, co-manager and husband to owner Carla Hegenbarth, who is shown going inside early in the video to call police.

Hegenbarth has owned the restaurant since her late husband, Lloyd Hegenbarth, died in 2014. Hegenbarth had bought it mid-'80s from Dick Norton, who'd purchased it from Del Gatto. Norton tried opening another NIck's downtown, which was when the original Nick's — Del Gatto had opened it as Nick's Fillett (cq) House in 1955, moving from Knoxville in Greene County, when Tuscaloosa County legalized alcohol sales — became known as "Nick's in the Sticks."

On the video, patrons say Moltz challenged Sartain, who is white, for sitting and talking with Black friends inside Nick's, using the N-word slur in the process.

Protesters have been at the restaurant, which was closed as is its regular schedule, on Sunday and Monday. Tuesday at 5 p.m., it reopened, with protesters outside, across the street, and a reportedly full house of customers inside.

Response to the video on social media was rapid and ferocious — hundreds of posts condemning, calling for boycotts, shutdowns, support for the employees who may be financially hurt, and more — on Nick's own media presences, until posts were either shut down or deleted Tuesday. Crowd-source review sites such as Yelp and Tripadvisor both closed Nick's presences, due to influxes of negative comments, related to the video.

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Nick's in the Sticks viral video discussed at Tuscaloosa City Council meeting