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Halal Food Cart "Mafia" Plays Hardball to Guard Turf
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 8, 2009
Modified Sep 8, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 8, 2009
Modified Sep 8, 2009
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With more and more upscale food trucks crowding the scene, the turf wars keep escalating. The Department of Health doesn't assign locations, so vendors are left to work it out among themselves, are some say the gyro-cooking owners of the Halal trucks are violently threatening the competition. Clive Dennis, who operates a Jamaican cart on Park Row downtown, tells the Post, "It's like a mob thing—these halal guys think they're the only ones who should be selling food on the street." Dennis says that after he refused to cave, they called 311 to make bogus health-code-violation complaints about him. And when Olivia Cardosa tried to set up her Mexican truck El Rey del Sabor on West 43rd Street last month, a brawl erupted. (Midtown Lunch has the video.) Then last Monday Cardosa arrived to find three giant planters cemented into the sidewalk. She claims it was "the halal guys," and the landlord of the building there confirms that "somebody moved our planters and cemented them in place, so we had to chip the cement off to move them back." These guys obviously mean business—how long before that cement gets poured to make some heavy shoes?
Tagged
food truck
halal mafia
nyc
turf wars
vendor
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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