Street Vendors and the West Village

Imagine it is 3 a.m., and you are in the West Village. You just walk out of the Village Vanguard and you are drunk and hungry. What should you do? Wait for a table at some bar like the Spotted Pig, or spend $9 on some gazpacho from Mary’s Fish Camp? No, what you want, what you need is something cheap, and quick. What you need is a street vendor.
Unfortunately, you are in the West Village, a place where vendors have been pushed out of because of gentrification. Just ask Rabi Steve, a halal food vendor at the very edge of the Village at the corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue. Because of city restrictions, this is the closest Steve can get to the heart of the Village. And the problems do not end there.
“Food places around here give you problems,” says Steve. “The pizza place calls the police or the restaurant down there does. And they come and say move, move, move, but I don’t have to move. It’s alright for me to be here, but it’s hard.”
Steve, an immigrant from Morocco, has also needed to face problems paying off fines. “I got two tickets, alright, and they cost me $1,200,”, he said. “I work here from Monday to Saturday for 9:30 a.m. to 7, 7:30. How am I going to pay the tickets? It’s crazy, man.”
Recognizing these problems is important to a neighborhood already facing issues with gentrification. With straight couples and their kids traditional family couples forcing some of the long-time gay residents out of the Village, vendors act as an alternative to the high-priced restaurants that are moving in to cater to that new demographic.
And, in the end, a high-priced restaurant is not the place you need to go when you have that 4 a.m. food craving. “At night, people are crazy and drunk and they say, ‘give me food,’” says Steve. “They don’t care what they get as long as its food.” And in a changing West Village this lifestyle staple is also exactly what you need.