The Giuliani administration says the crackdown on food carts is part of a campaign on “quality of life” issues. Mr. Saha sees it the opposite way: food carts improve the quality of life in New York, he says.
Still, he moved on, pushing his cart, dodging potholes and talking about his wife, Shipah. They were married four months ago, but she is still in Bangladesh. Mr. Saha said her emigration papers had been filed, but knowing that is small compensation for so great a separation. “Every other month, I call her on the telephone,” he said. “One dollar per minute, maybe $1.20. Ten minutes, 15 minutes go very fast. A lot of income to talk.”
And on this day, at least, not much income was coming in. He sold two more Haagen-Dazs sandwiches after he got the summons, for a total of three by lunch hour. On a good day, he takes in about $200 and nets $60 to $70, about a third. Not today. “Six dollars,” he said at lunchtime. “A profit of $1.50, maybe.”
He sold off a bit more of his inventory in the afternoon, after moving to 47th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, a crowded corner where he was the latecomer among four carts.
The inventory would keep for one more day. “After that,” he said, “it’s no good.”
A Last Whiff of Fulton’s Fish
By DAN BARRY | July 10, 2005
During much of its 183-year tenure at the original site, the Fulton Fish Market was the most important wholesale East Coast fish market in the U.S.
IT SMELLS OF TRUCK EXHAUST AND FISH GUTS. Of glistening skipjacks and smoldering cigarettes; fluke, salmon and Joe Tuna’s cigar. Of Canada, Florida, and the squid-ink East River. Of funny fish-talk riffs that end with profanities spat onto the mucky pavement, there to mix with coffee spills, beer blessings, and the flowing melt of sea-scented ice.
This fragrance of fish and man pinpoints one place in the New York vastness: a small stretch of South Street where peddlers have sung the song of the catch since at least 1831, while all around them, change. They were hawking fish here when a presidential aspirant named Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union and when the building of a bridge to Brooklyn ruined their upriver view.
Soon the rains will rinse this distinct aroma from the city air. Some Friday soon, the fish sellers will spill their ice and shutter their stalls, pack their grappling hooks and raise a final toast beneath the ba-rump and hum of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.
And on the Monday, they will begin peddling their dead-eyed wares inside a custom-made building in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, to be named the New Fulton Fish Market Cooperative. The old Fulton Fish Market, that raucous stage of open-air overnight commerce, will be no more.
Before it leaves us, then, one last look at a part of the city taken for granted, save by fish people, nighthawks and urban anthropologists. One long, last inhalation of the Fulton Fish Market bouquet as forklifts clatter over rutted pavement, unloaded trucks sigh in escape, and workers pierce wax-coated cases with grappling hooks—whup! whup!—to move fish from here to there.
That raucous stage of open-air overnight commerce will be no more.
In one stall stands Vincent Tatick, of the Joseph H. Carter Fish Company. His father ran Frank Tatick Fillet under the old Sweet’s Restaurant. Both are gone now, and here is the son, twirling a grappling hook as though it were a child’s toy. He sports five pencils and a pack of Parliaments in his breast pocket, and keeps a Marine Corps knife on his hip. Rambo among fish.
Mr. Tatick has no opinion about the market’s move, he says, other than: what is, is. But he wonders about leaving behind the nuns at St. Rose’s Home, on the Lower East Side, who nursed his father in his final two years. During that time, the Taticks agreed that it would be nice to give the nuns some fish, 25 pounds worth, every Friday.
When his father died, Mr. Tatick says, “I didn’t know how to say, ‘Sorry, the deal is off.’ So I never said anything.”
That was more than 40 years ago, he says. “I still give them fish.”
From Oreos and Mallomars To a Market
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | August 7, 2005
Former National Biscuit Company building (in a 1930’s photo). The building is now home to Chelsea Market.
THE OVENS AT THE NATIONAL BISCUIT COMpany complex in what is now west Chelsea once baked everything from Saltines to Oreos. Those ovens went cold a half century ago, when the company moved out, but newer ovens have been working over the last decade in a part of that old complex—at Chelsea Market, on Ninth Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets.
In 1890, eight large eastern bakeries amalgamated to form the New York Biscuit Company and soon absorbed a dozen more firms. It was competing against another consortium, the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company of Chicago, and it began building a Romanesque-style complex of bakeries on the east side of 10th Avenue, running from 15th to 16th Street, designed by Romeyn & Stever.
The two cookie consortiums joined forces in 1898 as the National Biscuit Company, which soon provided half the biscuit production in the United States, and the New York complex grew as the new company brought out such new products as the Uneeda Biscuit, Premium Saltines, Fig Newtons and, in 1913, both the Oreo (originally Oreo Biscuit) and the Mallomar.
Within a few years of the merger, the New York bakery complex covered most of the block back to Ninth Avenue. In 1913, the architect Albert Zimmerman designed the most prominent building in the complex, the 11-story structure from 10th to 11th Avenue and 15th to 16th Street. It was built on landfill: the timbers, chain and anchor of a two-masted schooner were found during excavation.
In 1932, the architect Louis Wirsching Jr. replaced some of the 1890 bakeries on the east side of 10th Avenue with an unusual structure, which accommodates an elevated freight railroad viaduct. Its great open porch on the second and third floors was taken by the railroad as an easement for the rail tracks that still run through it.
By then, a new generation of long, continuous “band ovens” were remaking the baking industry. According to William Cahn’s company history, “Out of the Cracker Barrel: The Nabisco Story from Animal Crackers to Zuzus” (Simon & Schuster, 1969) National Biscuit installed some band ovens in the New York complex, but long horizontal industrial processes adapted better to the low single-story buildings that were going up in outlying areas.
By 1958, National Biscuit was producing its line from a plant in Fair Lawn, N.J., and in 1959 it sold the New York complex. The neighborhood was sliding into a sort of Rust Belt-like graveyard.
In the 1990’s, the complex was reinvented as the Chelsea Market, with technology companies upstairs and a long interior arcade of food stores on the ground floor.
To walk through the Chelsea Market is to stroll through a sort of postindustrial theme park, carefully festooned with the detritus of a lost industrial culture. Fragments of the National Biscuit heritage are sprinkled all over the complex, like the trim, elegant “NBC” monograms in the mosaics in the little entryways along 15th Street. But the entrance to the 1913 building at 85 10th Avenue is among the most haunting sights in New York.
Behind Zabar’s Counters, Three Feuding Partners
By GLENN COLLINS | March 16, 1985
Zabar’s, located at 2245 Broadway (and 80th Street), turned 75 in 2009.
THE THREE PARTNERS WHO OWN ZABAR’S are in complete agreement on a number of things. They are feuding, but they are not feuding. They will sell Zabar’s, but they will not sell Zabar’s. A cookie mogul has the inside track to buy Zabar’s, but he may not be able to buy Zabar’s.
The uncertainty over Zabar’s, a magnet for food lovers all over the country, began with reports that David Liederman, the Goliath of the David’s Cookies chain, had offered to buy the store with the intention of bringing it to the wider world, something he had previously done for the pecan chocolate chunk cookie.
This financial story has been overshadowed by the unraveling of the family partnership that has spanned three generations.
Murray Klein, the 62-year-old operational manager of Zabar’s, says he
wants to retire, and from his point of view he is forcing his partners to buy him out, to decide whether to sell the firm or to keep it in the Zabar family. As for the other partners, Saul Zabar, 56, said that he and his brother Stanley, 52, are tired of the stresses of the partnership and want to disengage themselves from the business.
At stake in the partners’ complex, emotionally trying predicament are not just millions of dollars and some choice Manhattan real estate, but also the future of a pacesetter in the world of food whose committed customers are deeply anxious.
“The entire West Side is having a nervous breakdown over this,” said Nora Ephron, the writer, who lives a block from the store.
Saul Zabar said that “the normal irritations in a partnership” become “more abrasive” over time. “That’s the main reason for this,” he said of the possible sale. “The personality conflicts that existed throughout the years—well, as you get older you don’t want to tolerate them anymore.”
Many credit Mr. Klein with the store’s pioneering innovations and praise his obsessive focus on the customer and his passion for underselling the competition. “Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s—that was Klein,” said Saul Zabar, referring to Zabar’s price war with department stores that culminated in the 1983 Battle of Beluga, a caviar competition with Macy’s. “He just did not want to be undersold.”
Many have expected the Zabars to pass the business to their heirs, and such an outcome is still a possibility. “David is the only one of the children who has taken an interest in the business,” Mr. Zabar said, speaking of Stanley’s 29-year-old son, David Zabar, who has been working as a fish buyer. Mr. Klein “made sure” his children were not in the business, he said of his son and daughter. “I would not want for them to work these terrible hours.”
At Balducci’s, a House Divided Stands in Name Only
By MARIAN BURROS | June 28, 2000
THE OPENING OF A NEW BALDUCCI’S ON THE Upper West Side struck many in the neighborhood as a marvelous gift from one of the city’s finest food shops.
But to some the West Side store represents a new chapter in a rancorous family fight that has gone on for years. The estrangement is now so complete that at both Balducci’s the only thing left of the family is the name. And that was sold to an outside company last year.
For years the food world has buzzed about the hostility among the three Balducci siblings, two of whom ran the famous Greenwich Village store with their parents and some of their children until 1985, when Grace Balducci Doria and her husband, Joe, left to open Grace’s Marketplace on the Upper East Side. Balducci’s itself is now owned by Sutton Place Gourmet, a Maryland-based company whose products have never been on the level Balducci’s were in its best days.
Why did the stores end up out of the family?
The answer is a byzantine story of family jealousies and court fights. Sibling rivalry between Andy, 74, and Charles, 76, dates back more than 70 years, when it became clear that Charles was his father’s favorite son, even before he became “my son the doctor.”
Andy married Nina D’Amelio in 1952 and left Balducci’s in 1953 to work for his father-in-law’s marble and granite business. Andy returned to Balducci’s 15 years later, four years before they signed a lease to move to Avenue of the Americas and Ninth Street. That’s where the humble but successful fruit and vegetable market became something more.
Before they signed the lease, they formed a new corporation, with four partners: Andy and Nina owned 51 percent; Grace and Joe 49 percent.
Grace said that she didn’t understand that whoever owns 51 percent is the boss. Dr. Charles Balducci, her brother, has another take on the situation. He says his father’s will called for giving each of his three children a third of the business. The new corporation, Dr. Balducci said, was “strictly done to get me out of the will.”
Grace says there was friction, that Andy humiliated her and her husband every day. She says her brother offered them $500,000 for their share before they left. They sued him. Their father sued him at the same time, for his share.
The estrangement is now so complete that at both Balducci’s the only thing left of the family is the name.
The case was settled out of court. Joe Doria says Louis Balducci received $2.5 million, the Dorias another $2.5 million. (Andy disputes the figures: “They got a hell of a lot more than $2.5 million. I’m not going to divulge any number.”)
In 1999, when Andy sold Balducci’s to Sutton Place for $26.5 million, a number of longtime employees left, including Andy’s cousin Charlie Balducci, who said he did not want to work for a corporation. So important is it for Sutton Place to create the impression that there are still Balduccis at Balducci’s that this month’s company newsletter suggests that Alan Butzbach, the vice president of operations, is married to a Balducci daughter.
In fact, Mr. Butzbach has been divorced from the Balduccis’ youngest daughter for years; she died after they separated.
Keeping the Greenmarket In the Pink
By BARBARA STEWART | August 3, 1997
The Union Square Greenmarket began in 1976 and is currently held every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
YOU THINK THE UNION SQUARE GREEN-market just manages itself? The farmers drive in, unload the beets and tomatoes and Ruby Crescent potatoes and just relax until customers show up? And the park simply turns itself into a lush, odorous cornucopia of vegetables, still dripping dirt, and at night turns itself back into a park? All by itself?
Don’t say that to Joel Patraker, the manager of the city’s two dozen markets, who is all too familiar with the constant tending required.
Looking at Union Square today, it’s hard to remember how downtrodden it used to be before the market opened 21 years ago. “It was ruled by drug dealers, the original needle park,” said Rob Walsh, the former president of the 14th Street-Union Square Business Improvement District. “The buildings were derelict. A lot of people threw up their hands.”
When Barry Benepe, a planning consultant, created the first Greenmarkets, many people thought nobody sane would shop at Union Square. With $15,000 in private grants, Mr. Benepe persuaded a few farmers to drive to New York City to sell directly to city shoppers.
The Greenmarkets let the 200 farmers sell most of their harvest directly to consumers
The farmers were leery. “They thought that there would be gangsters,” Mr. Benepe recalled. But they needed what the city people had. “Money.” (The administrators’ salaries are paid from farmers’ rents, $65 for the biggest space. The city government has never donated nor received money from the markets.)
The Greenmarkets let the 200 farmers sell most of their harvest directly to consumers at retail prices, bypassing wholesalers. But the Greenmarkets are more than buying and selling. The markets that thrive become town centers, where people speak easily with strangers. Urban residents discovered that farmers are frequently highly educated. Farmers found that city people could be friendly and reasonably honest.
“It’s like theater,” said the chef David Bouley, a buyer of Greenmarket produce. “It exudes energy. At the Greenmarkets you can feel the purity. There is no commercial marketing. It’s all from the gut. There’s no promotion, no marketing. You walk through the stands and the farmers are proud of what they’re selling. They live with it, they teach people how to enjoy it. ”
The same could be said for the interaction between urban and rural people. A few, like the Greenmarket managers, feel at home with both.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m hiding in the middle of New York City with my brother and my wife and my friend, Tony,” Joel Patraker said. “We all get to live in a little rural village and be in the city, too.”
Lucy in the Greenmarket With Fava Beans
By JENNIFER BLEYER | July 1, 2007
Lucy Wollin shopping in 2007.
LUCY WOLLIN, AN ARDENT FAN OF THE CITY’S greenmarkets, arrived at the Union Square Greenmarket with a burlap sack over her shoulder, ready to appraise the d
ay’s offerings.
“Look at these interesting lettuces,” Ms. Wollin said, examining tufts of speckled romaine, red oak leaf and butterhead lettuce with a gem dealer’s eye. A farm manager pointed toward a bushel basket near the back of his booth.
“Fava beans!” she said happily. “Can I have one so I can remember?”
Ms. Wollin plucked a single arched fava bean pod from the basket and stuck it in her bag, to be mentioned later that morning on her blog, Lucy’s Greenmarket Report. She continued wandering among the booths, commenting on the tail-end-of-the-season asparagus and expertly evaluating the strawberries.
Ms. Wollin, a retired school librarian who is 64 and lives nearby on East 15th Street, has followed the Union Square market since it opened in 1976. She started her report (at www.echonyc.com/lwollin/greenmarket.html) with the simple desire to help “the Greenmarket be as terrific as it is.”
Her blog entries, read by both professional and amateur chefs, are typically a few succinct, often exuberant lines noting what she discovered that morning: “You can still get strawberries from some farmers and Phillips has blueberries! Yuno has gorgeous salad.”
Many of the sellers know Ms. Wollin. They also know how to entice her with their wares.
“Do you have my treasure?” Ms. Wollin said to a seller from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm in Roscoe, N.Y. A small bundle of chervil, a licorice-tinged herb, was handed over.
She also surveyed edible flowers, checked on sugar snap peas, swooned over the lavender and commended the young garlic. Then she paused to review what she would say on her blog.
The New York Times Book of New York Page 55