A neighborhood once besieged by drugs and violence has a new scourge — the falafel guy.
East Villagers are up in arms over a Halal food cart stationed on Avenue A, where residents are complaining of foul-smelling falafel, generator noise and filth — in just three days since its unwelcome arrival.
“You’re going to attract more people on the corner while everyone is upstairs trying to sleep,” said Dan Forkin, who lives above the cart’s new home at East 2nd Street.
“It’s already noisy to begin with. There’s already the sh–tiest bars on earth on this corner, so you’re already getting everyone who is obliterated here, and now you add this.”
The cart, which is open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., may be causing more than just a bout of dyspepsia, residents said.
“My sister lives on the second floor and she has a kid, and she smells it — and it’s not something you’re used to smelling,” said Amber Velez. “It bothers her and she gets headaches all the time.”
The cart started off around the corner on Houston Street, but moved after complaints that it was blocking deliveries for Union Market — bad news for angry Avenue A residents like the one who printed flyers desperately rallying neighbors to “Help In Removing The Halal Food Vendor In Front!!!!,” according to area blog EV Grieve.
“Aside from devaluing our home and neighborhood,” the flyer rants, “he’s taking up half the sidewalk, introducing crowds which in turn block our walkway, his generator’s noise resonates through the upstairs apartments, his exhaust faces the sidewalk and he was extremely rude and aggressive to our neighbor when faced with these facts.”
But cart owner Farouq Ortega, through his wife, Maribel, is defiant.
“They need to understand that we’re in a free country — and we can’t please everyone,” Maribel said. “Legally, we have a right to be there — we’re not bothering anyone, and I don’t think it’s fair that we move.”
The cart is licensed through the Department of Health and is permitted to be at its current location, agency data show. The city can force vendors to move for a variety of reasons, including being too close to a subway station or presenting a fire hazard.
But, Maribel said, the cart has a clean record at its latest spot. “[They] just don’t like how the cart looks — and I think it’s very unfair and selfish,” she said.
Eddy Idris, one of three workers who man the cart, said residents’ outcry was a form of “racism.”