{"id":39,"date":"2011-08-24T13:22:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T18:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdunn.journalism.cuny.edu\/?p=39"},"modified":"2011-08-24T13:22:45","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T18:22:45","slug":"midtown-food-vendors-catch-lucky-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Midtown food vendors catch lucky break"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_38\" style=\"width: 660px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jdunn.journalism.cuny.edu\/2011\/08\/24\/midtown-food-vendors-catch-lucky-break\/eddie-hermando-and-paul-sandeep\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-38\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38\" class=\"size-large wp-image-38\" title=\"Eddie Hermando and Paul Sandeep\" src=\"http:\/\/www.juliandunn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Eddie-Hermando-and-Paul-Sandeep-1024x680.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"431\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-38\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eddie Hernando and Paul Sandeep running Faith&#39;s Halal Food outside Madison Square Garden<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Despite the economic downturn affecting many Manhattan street vendors, Paul Sandeep, 25, and Eddie Hernando, 42, have caught a lucky break at 8th Ave. and 34th St.: the lunchtime influx of construction workers from the massive <a title=\"MSG Transformation Website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msgtransformation.com\/\">Madison Square Garden renovation project<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sandeep and Hernando, who operate Faith&#8217;s Halal Food from a tiny, overheated cart across the street from Penn Station, say that they haven&#8217;t noticed the impact of the economy at all. &#8220;We previously had a truck but have spent seven months with this,&#8221; Sandeep said, noting that the city&#8217;s crackdown on parked food trucks has actually benefited their business. During their lunch break, construction workers line the sidewalk halfway down 34th St., mostly eating take-out food from boxy styrofoam containers purchased from one of the many vendors dotting the street.<\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\">\n<div id=\"attachment_41\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.juliandunn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Shah-Helping-Customer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-41\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-41 \" title=\"Shah Helping Customer\" src=\"http:\/\/www.juliandunn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Shah-Helping-Customer-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-41\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shah, 52, a newsstand vendor in Midtown, helping a customer.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Other vendors in Midtown, however, have not been so lucky. Shah, 52, from India (who declined to provide his last name), runs a newsstand at the corner of 8th Ave. and 35th St. and decried a 50% decline in sales. &#8220;It&#8217;s very down,&#8221; Shah said, noting that despite his Midtown location, 80% of his sales come from locals and not from tourists. In particular, he said, with the price of a package of cigarettes hitting $13.00, many patrons are choosing to buy cigarettes individually &#8212; something he does not sell. &#8220;They&#8217;re not smoking less,&#8221; he said, but being more judicious about controlling their budget.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the economic downturn affecting many Manhattan street vendors, Paul Sandeep, 25, and Eddie Hernando, 42, have caught a lucky break at 8th Ave. and 34th St.: the lunchtime influx of construction workers from the massive Madison Square Garden renovation project. Sandeep and Hernando, who operate Faith&#8217;s Halal Food from a tiny, overheated cart across &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/?p=39\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}