THE Pickle War on the Lower East Side is getting ugly.

When Guss Pickles, a Lower East Side institution for more than 90 years, closed in December after a bitter dispute with its Essex Street landlord, it looked as though there would be no pickles at all in a neighborhood that is as known for the briny gherkins as Chinatown is for dumplings or Little Italy for cannoli.

But last week, stomachs throughout the neighborhood stopped grumbling at the news that Alan Kaufman, a former Guss employee, had opened a new pickle store just a few doors up from the shuttered Guss site.

Meanwhile, Tim Baker, the owner of Guss Pickles who was Kaufman's mentor and friend, announced that he was reopening - setting the stage for the first pickle war in decades.

This tale of betrayal, madness, jealousy and rage makes "King Lear" sound like a child's bedtime story.

Consider the history: Baker hires Kaufman in 1981 and teaches him everything he knows about pickles - learned from history's greatest pickle men.

But then Baker abandons the store to avoid, as he called it, "killing my landlord," leaving Kaufman to run the shop.

By the time Baker got evicted, Kaufman was ready to fly solo.

"I can't believe what Alan is doing to me," Baker said as he made last-minute renovations to his new store at 87 Orchard St. "We were friends, and now he stabs me in the back."

Kaufman tried to take the high road.

"I have no war with him," said Kaufman, whose store, The Pickle Guys, still has that new-pickle smell. "But he knows I ran his operation for the last seven years."

Behind the tale of betrayal is a bitter battle for the legacy of Lower East Side picklemaking. Where once there were 100 picklemakers, now there are only two.

And the accusations are flying. Former Guss employees even claim that Baker isn't even making his own pickles, instead buying them from a Bronx factory - a charge that Baker deflected with his own attack.

"Alan doesn't even know how to make a sour pickle!" said Baker, who claimed that his secret recipe for sour pickles is kept in a safety-deposit box in a Jacksonville, Fla., bank. "I never taught Alan that. Sure, he's made three-quarter sours, but he can't make a full sour."

Kaufman seemed saddened by Baker's attacks. "He can say what he wants," Kaufman said. "But he knows I know pickles."

gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net