Closing Time On 45th Street

When I was new on the street, this little place was called Sam's Deli, but Sam the person had already sold his business to two young entrepreneurs who kept the same name on the sign. They sold fresh coffee and groceries, and at some point installed a full-on barber shop chair on the sidewalk in front. Around 1993, there began a series of robberies of varying degrees of violence, and the barber chair was stolen. I remember stopping in once (this is two blocks from my place) to find that the lady staffing the deli had tape holding her eyeglasses together and bruises on her face. A robber had hit her with a brick.

The managers made it known that they were "not going anywhere," and they brought some of their employees to a sporting goods store and loaned them money to buy handguns. Barrel pegs were installed underneath the cash register so that the guns could be drawn easily and quickly. One day a man named Kevin, who I knew, was staffing, and in walked two persons wearing ski masks. One masked person said, "Give it up, Home" --which, in American English, indicates that both the speaker and the listener were African-American --and then he reached into his pocket. Kevin then reached under the counter, drew out a .357 magnum revolver, and shot the person twice. The wounded figure ran out the door and turned right, then right again at the corner (visible in the background) and fell dead a few steps along Pine Street. The other person fled the scene.

The dead bandit turned out to be a 14-year old boy named Andre, who lived nearby, and there was only a kitchen knife in his pocket. Grief and anger occured in the neighborhood, and a fringe-leftist group started a smear campaignabout "White yuppies" slaughtering the Black community (not knowing that the shooter was Black, and focusing on the owners being White). I called Kevin and told him that I and all our mutual friends were behind him 100%. The other bandit was 16 and was sent to a "tough love" boot camp-like youth facility.

All of that is an age in the past, and now the place is the Earth Cup Cafe, owned by a pleasant Russian lady. The neighborhood has become very tame and safe in the interim, and the current staff listen wide-eyed when I re-tell the tale. Last I knew of Kevin, he was well, and holding fast to his vow: Never to work at a job that involves interaction with the public. The lefty group is still active, but tiny and regarded with a roll of the eyes, and the cafe's owner told me that she actually met Sam --the ancient, post-WW2 owner, a few years ago!