UWS Residents Rallying to Support News Dealer the City is Trying to Shut Down
He spent 23 years working a UWS newsstand and in the process was hit with bureacratic fines from the city that he did not pay. Now, instead of showing some mercy in what Mayor Adams calls the ‘city of yes,’ a city agency is trying to slap him with over $90,000 in fines that Sadik Topia says will force him out of business.
| 21 Jan 2024 | 05:57
Sadik Topia holds a copy of the West Side Spirit which highlighted his plight on a front page story last week. Photo: Michael Oreskes
Sadik Topia admits he made mistakes, pleads one of his neighbors, Bette Kerr. He sold e-cigarettes he should not have been selling from his newsstand at W. 79th street and Broadway. He failed to renew his license to do this.
But the city’s decision to shut him down completely ignores all the good he has done over 23 years from his little corner of New York, Kerr says.
“He has been a mainstay of the community,” Kerr wrote, “and has managed, through arduous daily work, to raise and support his family and put his children through college, instilling positive values in them. They in turn are contributing to society. This immigrant family is a credit to our country and our city.”
Kerr’s appeal is one of many the local council member, Gale Brewer, has received since Topia was ordered to shut his newsstand after he failed to pay some $92,000 in fines that have accumulated during and after the pandemic.He remains on his corner, but now must work outside the newsstand, offering newspapers to his loyal customers from the steps of the adjacent First Baptist Church.
”I am trying to get this hard working and beloved newsstand operator his job back,” Brewer said. She said that she contacted the office of First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright on Thursday and urged City Hall to consider a much lower fine.
Topia’s plight has become a cause celebre in the neighborhood since it was first reported January 14 by Straus News.
“He is part of the community and is there for us,” another neighbor, Mary Alice Kennedy, wrote to Brewer, “even thru the pandemic.”
The New York Post featured Topia in a piece on Jan. 21, his 60th birthday, under the headline “E-Smoked out.” Landmark West, the activist preservationists who usually focus more on buildings than small businesspeople, visited Topia in the biting cold to highlight his situation“Never failing in his smile throughout our meeting, Topia reiterates that he is proud of his family and to be able to send money ‘to help my mom in India and to get to visit sometimes’,” Landmark West reported, “Ever hopeful despite these conditions, he is steadfast that ‘immigrants always work very hard to make it here, and I try to help everybody.’ He admits that there should be oversight, as ‘too much freedom is no good for anybody.’ From his multi-layered standpoint, he says, ‘Let me pay something to make it fair to reopen...”
Landmark West said the community would organize a kickstarter campaign to help pay Topia’s fine if the city refuses to lower it. https://www.landmarkwest.org/remaining-positive-in-the-penalty-box/
Perhaps to show they had not wandered too far from their mission, Landmark West included with their interview with Topia a fascinating portrait of the First Baptist Church from whose front steps he now sells his papers.
“Two strikingly uneven towers rose high above the main entrance,” the description said. “The taller one was symbolic of Christ; the smaller tower, designed to appear unfinished, was meant to represent the church whose work is unfinished until the return of the Messiah.”
City officials have stressed the importance of enforcing controls on e-cigarettes and other vaping paraphernalia. The suspension of the license to operate Topia’s newsstand coincided with a larger crackdown on unlicensed sales of e-cigarette material by cannabis shops and others, city officials said.
Nevertheless, the general community response is that the punishment exceeded the offenses.
“The citizenry of NYC would benefit far more from the administration’s pursuit of those who roam the streets and trains stabbing, punching, shooting, robbing, and otherwise assaulting others, rather than in pursuit of Mr. Topia for his lesser transgressions,” Bette Kerr wrote to Brewer. “He is not denying them, nor am I. Instead, arrange some reasonable fine for him. Perhaps something he can pay without destroying the life he struggled to create for himself and his family. Allow him return to make a living at his newsstand. He will have learned a lesson. He already has. Mr. Topia has made a corner of NYC safer for all of us.”
Kerr noted that Topia’s corner of Broadway “has been fraught with problems” in recent years, particularly during the period when the Lucerne Hotel and other neighborhood hotels were used to house people during the pandemic to reduce crowding at the city’s congregate shelters.
“Mr. Topia, an anchor at that corner, a sea of confusion and occasional danger, has contributed to the well-being and safety of all of us,” Kerr added. “At times, people who have been convicted of various transgressions have been sentenced to community service. Mr. Topia, for years, has done faithful community service at Broadway & 79th St. Let him continue to do that. I feel far safer when I pass by under his watchful eye.”
“Mr. Topia, for years, has done faithful community service at Broadway & 79th St. Let him continue to do that. I feel far safer when I pass by under his watchful eye.” Bette Kerr, UWS resident supporting newsstand operator Sadik Topia