Author: Candice M. Giove
Publication: The New York Times
Date: August 7, 2011
URL: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/hot_dog_hotel_in_hubbub_cl59S48nNR7HT86iRqjlNP#ixzz1UNM8mEzT
A vendor who parked his buns on Central Park
West a decade ago and hasn't moved since has become a 24-hour hot-dog hotel,
disgusted neighbors say.
And if you dare criticize him, he'll roast
you with racism.
"He's there 24/7, day and night. It's
a pig sty," said neighbor Reinhart Nitzl of the fixture on the corner
of West 86th Street. "I see that guy sleeping in there."
But the dog-slinging cart owner, Mohamed
Abdalla, a native of Egypt, claims the clamor is just an anti-Muslim conspiracy.
Sounding like he knows a thing or two about
bigotry, Abdalla, 60, ranted that his cart is opposed by "homosexuals,"
"Jewish people," ignorant bureaucrats, "rich people" and
freebie-seeking doormen.
"The people at the Health Department
are not educated, and it's a blessing to them that they get a job," Abdalla
told The Post. "When the Jewish people complain, they say, F--k Mohamed.
Who's stronger?"
His diatribes did little to address complaints
that his "mobile" cart has take up permanent residence at 2 W. 86th
St.
Owners are required to leave their spots
to scrub down their carts every day, a Health Department spokeswoman said.
Abdalla, of Queens, claims he moves his silver
meat mobile at 3 a.m. for cleaning, though residents and doormen insist it's
rooted to the ground. Post photographers also spotted the cart on successive
nights last week in the wee hours.
Over the years, the Health Department has
hit him with $20,000 in tickets, he claimed.
The agency said it has issued the cart 72
violations since 2000. The truck was most recently slapped with violations
for keeping food -- like eggs -- at the wrong temperatures, improper hand-washing
facilities and serving foods that were spoiled or home-canned.
Some Upper West Siders are in Abdalla's corner.
He carries a 2006 letter from retired Appellate
Division Judge and former Assemblyman Bentley Kassal, who apparently wrote,
"I understand he's being challenged and criticized only because of his
ethnic background, and I find that to be unfair, undignified and, above all,
un-American."
Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she helped
him with violations years ago -- but was horrified when informed of his hateful
rants. "That's abhorrent," she said.
Abdalla said building workers taunt that
he "works for bin Laden" and demand free coffee, pastries and hot
dogs.
"I told them this is not Iraq,"
he said. "I'm an American citizen."
When he doesn't give freebies, they threaten
to call the city's 311 hot line, he said, to file bogus complaints. "If
you don't give us free, we're going to tell everybody that you have cockroaches
in your coffee cup," he said.
Abdalla also complained that "a homosexual"
makes passes at his night worker.
"The gay guy, he come and he want to
make love to the man . . . and he touch his penis . . . I told him get the
f--k out of here . . . We're Arab. We don't go this way."
- cgiove@nypost.com