To Keep an Eye On: Moishe's Bake Shop & Punjabi Deli

As we say goodbye to St. Mark's Comics this month, one of the last older businesses on the block in their original location (having been at 11 St. Mark's for 36 years), I fear a similar fate will soon meet two other neighborhood institutions currently in their own precarious states.

The first is Moishe's Bake Shop, opened by Moishe Pearl in 1974, only a couple years after the Fillmore East closed its doors down the block, and Ratner's Restaurant still held court in the Saul Birns building (in what would become Met Foods before being forced out by NYU). Besides Economy Candy, Moishe's remains the only other stop for sweets from my childhood still standing, and one of two kosher Jewish bakery in the LES. When I heard the news this past December that the building had been sold, I was devastated. Although investor Jay Schwimmer's lease for the property begins in March, there's still no concrete information as to what will happen with Moishe's Bake Shop on the ground floor. Even Vanishing New York couldn't get ahold of Mr. Pearl (half of Pearl Roth Realty Inc. which sold the building), and in the numbers of times I've stopped by for dollar rugelach or hamantaschen, neither of the women who run his daily operations knew for sure what the plan was; one saying, "our boss tells us nothing".

The second is the famed Punjabi Deli on 1st right off Houston. This 25 year mainstay of the LES, not only the site of delicious, inexpensive hot food in a pinch, but a source of support and aide for the embattled community of the taxi drivers throughout the city. Started by Kulwinder Singh in 1994 to provide a bathroom, rest stop, and space to park for the diasporic South Asian taxi community he was a part of, Punjabi Deli has been struggling for years against the brute arm of redevelopment (with dirt and debris from a 2015 city project to clean up this stretch between 1st Ave and A only fully being cleared as of January 2019, and the city's continued practice of parking large vehicles around the deli). For any developer looking at this block, Punjabi Deli must seem a relic from a bygone era when businesses not only sold goods, but provided cultural and communal anchors. While certainly Punjabi Deli has faced the immense financial burdens (and in some cases, outright horrors) of any business connected to the taxi cab industry, they continue to meet the regular needs of drivers who are only working longer hours, taking more risks, and ultimately in need of a resource like Punjabi Deli more than ever.

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A Hidden Lower East Side

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