Vendor Fight Over 6th Ave. Spot Caught on Video
A lot of news pouring in over the past few days about the third El Rey Del Sabor cart. Just to recap, their original cart is parked on 60th and 3rd, and their second cart is parked on 49th and 3rd. A month ago, they parked a third cart on 28th and 6th, but last week we heard rumors that it had disappeared. Cut to yesterday, when the cart was spotted on 43rd & 6th. This could be great news for Midtown West, if the cart ends up staying…
Apparently the owners of the El Rey del Sabor Cart got into a fight with another vendor on that corner yesterday while they were setting up. And Lunch’er “Jer” caught it all on video.
Check it out, after the jump…
“Not sure if you’ll find this interesting but figured I’d send it along, its from [yesterday] morning at about 10am’ish. Background: There is a greek street cart on 43&6th (to the left of the cameras view). At about 10am a Mexican street cart tries to move next to the Greek cart. Greek woman gets real angry… insanity ensues. If you are wondering what all the honking is about, the greek woman was standing on the Mexican guys cart (which was blocking the street) so no cars could get by. Traffic was blocked all the way across to the east side of 6th ave.
Around 1:15-1:20 into the video, the greek woman slaps the Mexican guy in the red hat, and right after that one of the Greek guys got tossed. Unfortunately, my camera stopped recording at 3:00. About a minute after the recording stopped, more punches were thrown, and then the police showed up.”
Yikes. We are well aware of El Rey del Sabor’s toughness (they managed to hold off Rafiqi’s in order to stay in their 49th Street spot) but 43rd & 6th is some pretty sought after real estate. I guess we’ll see if they show up again today. If you spot them, put it in the comments.
(Side Note: The Schnitzel Truck was hoping to park on 6th Ave. and 43rd or 44th today. Curious to see how that works out…)
Related:
Rule #1 of Vendor Fight Club is You Don’t Talk About Vendor Fight Club
Rafiqi’s Tries To Intimidate New Mexican Cart From 49th Street
Posted by Zach Brooks at 10:30 am, August 25th, 2009 under El Rey Del Sabor, Street Vendor Issues, Videos.
43 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
43 Comments
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Crazy!!! El Rey del Sabor should common over to 38th-40th we need options other than Chipotle.
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I saw them this morning on 43rd and 6th. this was at about 8:30am. no crazy greeks there at the time.
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Don’t hate on the Sombrero cart, man. They’re aiming at (better) American Mexican food, while Sabor is going for authentic Mexican. Apples and oranges.
I mean, geez, they have a Big. Sombrero. On the cart. Nothing screams authentic Mexican like a big sombrero!
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Okay, El Ray’s cart on 43rd and 6th is there. They don’t seem to have as big a menu (the only “menu” are the pictures of the food), and they’re a bit new there (he said he couldn’t mix enchiladas).
I told him that I saw the fight on the internet, and he was shocked/happy. He asked how I saw it and told him about this website. I told him to stick his ground (how many halal carts do we need on a single city block).
Hopefully he’ll stick around and start doing enchilada combos (I could do a single chorizo enchilada with other chicken ones, but 3 chorizo enchiladas is too much).
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Just spoke to the El Rey dudes and apparently they’re there to stay! Woohoo!
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I’m really surprised carts aren’t aware of this site.
Had I a cart, I’d stick to this site like white (sauce) on (jasmine) rice, and use it as much as I could.
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I walked to the corner today and looked around but didn’t see anything that I thought would have been it. Just the Trini Pak on one corner and then what I thought was a standard halal cart and a hot dog cart on the other. Which corner were they on?
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Don’t fuck with a Mexican.
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Moons – right past the hotdog cart.
The hotdog cart woman is who was yelling loudly in the video. It turns out that’s her normal tone of voice. I was waiting for my order and she was talking loudly to someone, and I realized she was the one in the video.
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The Sabor cart is on 43rd st, between 6th & 7th (closer to 6th) on the north side of the street.
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@adamprato, thanks for the info and for smiling it up with that new “reality star”
Hey Zach, that red hatted mexican warrior deserves an interview… what was the (greek?) guy saying that really set him off to toss him (with one arm.. whoa!!)
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Before watching this video, every morning when I passed by the woman by the hot dog cart, I used to think, “what a sweet old lady.” Turns out, she’s a tough old bird. I’ll be buying a hot dog from her this week. And maybe a taco next door too.
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Finally got a chance to try this place as the others were too far from my office. Wanted to try the tacos but they were out of tortillas (I went at about 1:40) but they were getting more. I opted with the chorizo torta and man was it good. Will be back often as I talked to the guys and they said they would be there for good!
I also told them that I watched the video online and they had a nice laugh about it.
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Jeff – You can find the “red hatted mexican warrior” at the 60th and 3rd cart….though he has a camo hat on today.
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they never left the spot. el rey del sabor cart is there to say. =D
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Holy crap! Take one day off from work and I miss out on the ML story of the year “Lunch Cart Ladies Gone Wild!!””
Awesome job with the video Luncher “Jer”!!!!
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@1:00, blatantly flirting with the cameraman.
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i see that people keep tossing the ‘different target market’ concept around but you forget to consider one important business factor: substitute/indirect competition
although she wasn’t completely levelheaded, she was right to be upset because they DO pose as a threat.
instead of seeing this as mexican vs hot dog, think of this as food vs food or Lunch Option A vs Lunch Option B. the more choices a consumer has, the less likely they’ll default to her cart.
every customer lost is a %age loss in her revenue. carts are scraping by and can’t spare any change to upgrade or allow a competitor to set up shop beside them.
Anyone interested, they are back today, and to quote, “will be there today, tomorrow and everyday” I’m happy since they are downstairs from my office, no more hiking up to Bloomingdales.