Bay Ridge BID Isn’t Feeling the Vendor Love

Who doesn’t love a street vendor? Certainly not the folks at the Street Vendor Project, the entire readership of Midtown Lunch, anyone in Times Square, and those who turned out to rally for Mohammed Shirajul. But Bay Ridge’s Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District? Not such a hotbed of vendor affection.

The Brooklyn Paper reports that the group is trying to remove the only food vendor on Fifth Avenue due to supposed competition with the street’s mom-and-pop stores. The BID’s president implied at a recent community board meeting that the vendor, Nagi Hassan, has an unfair edge over the storefronts, since he doesn’t have to pay rents, utilities, and a BID fee. Also, Hassan’s halal cart apparently drips grease onto the sidewalk. And so Hassan finds himself unwelcome in the neighborhood, though one is tempted to suspect that were he to pay the BID fee, he might enjoy a warmer reception.