Beloved News Stand Operator Still Shut Down as Council Member Brewer Pushes Cause
Sadik Topia operated a newsstand for 23 years on the UWS before the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs hit it with tens of thousands of dollars in fines and effectively shut him down. Mayor Adams addressed it during a press conference on Jan. 23 and said he’d try to help and two days later, not waiting for the wheels of the city bureacracy to turn, City Council member Gail Brewer held a press conference on the corner of W. 79th St. and Broadway and called on the public to support Topia with a Go Fund Me drive.
| 26 Jan 2024 | 06:18
Sadik Topia, who operated a newsstand on the corner of W. 79th St. and Broadway for 23 years, was forced by the City Departmet of Consumer Affairs to shut down in a dispute over unpaid fines. Mayor Adams said he would try to help if he could. City Council member Gale Brewer held a press conference supporting him on Jan. 25 on the corner where he once operated the newsstand. Photo: Michael Oreskes
Eric Adams vowed to do “everything in my power” to try to get Sadik Topia back in the newsstand that the city Department of Consumer Affairs shut down due to unpaid fines but officials acknowledge their option may be limited. Gale Brewer therefore is urging the public to support a Go Fund Me drive. Photo: Keith J. Kelly
With the Adams administration sympathetic but unyielding to calls that it forgive or reduce the fines that have shut popular West Side newsdealer Sadik Topia, his friends and family rallied on Broadway Thursday and announced that they would help him raise the money to pay his penalties.
“This guy is beloved,” said City Council member Gale Brewer, standing in the rain near the newsstand Topia has run for 23 years at the corner of 79th and Broadway on Jan. 25.
With Topia and a gaggle of neighbors and supporters looking on, Brewer said she had tried unsuccessfully to convince the Adams administration to rescind or reduce the thousands of dollars of fines pending against the newsstand for selling e-cigarettes without a license and ignoring rules that limit the price of most goods sold at newsstands to under $10.
“I feel strongly the punishment does not fit what happened,” Brewer said.
“We are going to set up a go fund me,” she said. “We will try to raise the money. We want him to be back in business.”
Brewer’s office said the newsstand has been fined $67,450 for selling e-cigarettes and tobacco products on an expired license in 2022. When he could not pay the fines the license to run the newsstand was suspended.
He then received three further summonses in December of 2023, for operating an unlicensed newsstand and for continuing to sell e-cigarette and tobacco products without a license.
The newsstand is licensed to Marylin Kaufman, who lives upstate and contracts Topia to run it. Legally, she is responsible for the fines.
But Topia, an immigrant from Gujarat, said he takes responsibility for “my bill and expense.”
“I’m independent,” he said in acknowledging his responsibility to pay the penalties. “Nobody support me. I just take care of myself.”
No fine has yet been set for the three more recent summonses, which could add as much as $20,000 to his bill.
That $87,000 would still be slightly less than the $94,000 which had been described as his total bill. This number apparently included some summonses that were actually on other newsstands operated by Kaufman but wrongly attributed to Topia’s newsstand, city officials explained.
Mayor Adams said he had read about Topia’s plight, which was first reported by Straus News and the West Side Spirit.
gofundme.com/f/keep-his-newstand-open-as-city-fines-against-him
“I clipped it out,” the mayor said at a news conference at City Hall on Jan, 23.
“We’re going to look into that,” Adams pledged. “You know, he’s a working-class person. It’s hard being out there throughout the weather dealing with this. And if there is something within my powers to get him back in that stand, I’m going to do it. We’re going to follow the law, but we’re going to make the policy.”
But Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer noted that the bulk of the fines were “for illegally selling e-cigarettes without a license and other flavored e-cigarettes,” offenses which the city has been cracking down on. The fines are imposed by a quasi-judicial administrative hearing process, so the mayor can’t simply rescind them, officials noted.
“But these are working class individuals,” she added, “and so we have to make sure that we lead with education and compliance and not penalties and violations. So, we’ll look into it.”
A key issue is that the hearing process imposed a fine for the entire period since the license to sell e-cigarettes expired in 2021, some 500 days at $100 a day, rather than for the 13 days Topia says he sold the products. The hearing officer did not believe him.
One of Topia’s supporters, Sean Khorsandi, Executive Director of Landmark West, the preservationist group, said the issue was more than just one of equitable punishment.
“It’s literally costing his livelihood,” he said, “It will mean another empty corner. Fewer eyes on the street.”
That phrase, “eyes on the street,” was the legendary urbanist Jane Jacobs way of describing the importance of neighborhoods full of people looking out for each other, which is precisely what Topia’s customers say he has been doing for all of them for all these years.
“I’m working very hard for 23 years, every day,” Topia said. “Every single day I’m working here. The pandemic. Hurricane or blackout or any situation, I’m here every single day. Pandemic time I worked 730 to 4 o’clock. All customers coming. Everybody coming to buy their newspaper here. Nobody open. I’m the one only open there.”
One of Topia’s loyal customers, Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, said Topia’s crisis was a chance for the City Council to revisit the regulation of newsstands, whose business has changed radically with the declining sale of print newspapers.
Newsstands make virtually no money on the sale of newspapers, and must rely on other products to make ends meet, Topia and other operators say.
“I clipped it out,” the mayor said at a news conference at City Hall on Jan, 23.
“We’re going to look into that,” Adams pledged. “You know, he’s a working-class person. It’s hard being out there throughout the weather dealing with this. And if there is something within my powers to get him back in that stand, I’m going to do it. We’re going to follow the law, but we’re going to make the policy.”
But Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer noted that the bulk of the fines were “for illegally selling e-cigarettes without a license and other flavored e-cigarettes,” offenses which the city has been cracking down on. The fines are imposed by a quasi-judicial administrative hearing process, so the mayor can’t simply rescind them, officials noted.
“But these are working class individuals,” she added, “and so we have to make sure that we lead with education and compliance and not penalties and violations. So, we’ll look into it.”
A key issue is that the hearing process imposed a fine for the entire period since the license to sell e-cigarettes expired in 2021, some 500 days at $100 a day, rather than for the 13 days Topia says he sold the products. The hearing officer did not believe him.
One of Topia’s supporters, Sean Khorsandi, Executive Director of Landmark West, the preservationist group, said the issue was more than just one of equitable punishment.
“It’s literally costing his livelihood,” he said, “It will mean another empty corner. Fewer eyes on the street.”
That phrase, “eyes on the street,” was the legendary urbanist Jane Jacobs way of describing the importance of neighborhoods full of people looking out for each other, which is precisely what Topia’s customers say he has been doing for all of them for all these years.
“I’m working very hard for 23 years, every day,” Topia said. “Every single day I’m working here. The pandemic. Hurricane or blackout or any situation, I’m here every single day. Pandemic time I worked 730 to 4 o’clock. All customers coming. Everybody coming to buy their newspaper here. Nobody open. I’m the one only open there.”
One of Topia’s loyal customers, Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, said Topia’s crisis was a chance for the City Council to revisit the regulation of newsstands, whose business has changed radically with the declining sale of print newspapers.
Newsstands make virtually no money on the sale of newspapers, and must rely on other products to make ends meet, Topia and other operators say.
“Yes, there should be rules and, yes, we should obey the law,” Breen said. “But let’s make them realistic, let’s not penalize this poor guy excessively.”