Results tagged “pasangsherpa”

Since Mayor Bloomberg was robbed of his chance to engage in Weiner Wars this election year, he's settling for the next best thing—the Wars! Yesterday on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg was asked about the recent crackdown of illegal vendors outside the Met. Since it was reported that veteran Dan Rossi was taking advantage of a 19th Century law that allowed vets to vend without paying, more veteran have been making their way to Fifth Ave, many employed by vendors who use them to beat the law and allow them to sit idly nearby. The mayor said, "They hire a vet to stand there and [he] has nothing to do with [it]. That's as much fraud [as] minority and women-owned businesses where you just hire somebody that's a minority or woman and say, 'Oh, you're the name person.'" As for Pasang Sherpa, after being evicted from his $600K lease to vend at the Met, Rossi hired him to man his stand after seeing Sherpa crying on the Met stairs. Now Sherpa simply joined in on the "rent-a-vet" system, paying disabled Leo Morris Jr. $100 a day to nap in his car near Sherpa's new cart.

The "Wiener Wars" taking place outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art may have sparked a debate over just how much money food cart vendors rake in, but one thing seemed agreed upon—Met vendor Dan Rossi was raking in the dough. Well not any more, the city says. A loophole for veterans allowed Rossi to park his cart in the high profile spot without having to (frank) foot the bill of $600k in rent paid to the city by Pasang Sherpa. But now the Vietnam Vet tells the Post that the city has declared the strip along Fifth Avenue "a street," meaning that his special privileges no longer fly there. Nonetheless Rossi tells the paper that he "would be back [today], even if it means getting arrested." He also tells them that he is the only veteran who owns his cart, but that other carts utilized the exception by hiring vets to man their stands. More concerning to us: if Rossi gets tossed, where will the recently evicted, overbidding Sherpa turn now??

Swooping in like a regular Mister Monopoly riding in on his hot dog cart (or was it a wheelbarrow?), vendor Dan Rossi has come to the rescue of fellow frank seller Pasang Sherpa after Sherpa was evicted from his high-priced spot outside the Met. Yesterday news broke that Sherpa was $300,000 behind on the $600K+ in annual rent he was supposed to be paying the city to sling dogs outside the Upper East Side museum. That prompted Rossi, who is able to set up his stand without paying rent due to an exception for veterans like him, to invite Sherpa to join his edible empire. When asked about his former rival turned subordinate, the winner of the wiener wars told the News, "He's gonna work for me now. Nobody's gonna touch him now without talking to me...The guy was crying. They pushed him out." Rossi also called for the Parks Department to crack down on unlicensed, "black market" vendors nearby saying, "I sell water for $2 and the others sell it for $1. If I charged $10 a hot dog maybe I could compete."

Hot dog vendor Pasang Sherpa made headlines a few months back for his big six-figure bids to guarantee lucrative space slinging franks outside the Metropolitan Museum, paying out $643,000 annually to the Parks Department for his spots outside the Met. At the time, he said that he didn't want to pay the city his big rent bills because he contended that nearby construction was having too negative of an impact on his business. Now after following through on his threat to hold off rent, the city has responded by evicting him. A Parks Department spokesman says Sherpa had fallen $310,000 behind in rent. Sherpa told the News that he was "going crazy" and didn't know what to do or where to go. Even more lost though were some Rhode Island tourists outside the Upper East Side museum, one of whom told the paper, "We don't know the area or where else to eat but here. There's no other place to eat around here." When Sherpa's original beef was reported in January, the Post said that another nearby vendor on 5th Avenue was set up and operating without permission or paying anything because of "a regulation that lets veterans like him bypass the bidding process."