West Side Rag columnist Laura Weiss of Food and Things was chatting up some merchants around 96th Street this week, and learned a few juicy bits of information.
The long-awaited Westside Market at 2589 Broadway between 97th and 98th Streets (a former Duane Reade), is planning to open its doors in about six weeks, a manager there told us. That means the opening will likely come in late March/early April. As you can see in the sign above, they are urging Upper West Siders to wait patiently, although the sign makes it sounds like they are literally cooking food inside the store right now.
A new location of 16 Handles, the self-serve frozen yogurt chain, is also close to opening at 2600 Broadway between 98th and 99th Streets. We wrote about the new store back in November. Laura heard that the opening date is March 2, and an employee at the other Upper West Side store on 75th Street said he’s confident the doors will be open within the next two weeks.
The openings will be a nice change of pace around 96th, which saw quite a few closings last year, including the loss of the big Gourmet Garage on 96th.
Laura Weiss, who took the photos above, is a food writer and journalist. She’s the author of Ice Cream: A Global History (Reaktion Books). You can also find Laura at @foodandthings.com or at http://www.foodandthings.com.
The Westside market’ s prices on fresh fruit are reasonable.I did notice that ever since the market opened,there are not a.lot of african americans employed there.There are a few black girls at the register,but almost no black males.The employees are about 90% latino.I myself am not into hate,but it seems to me that in a lot of stores,there is an abundance of other races employed,except for young black males . I can’ t say this is a racist policy,but it sure seems that way.I hope the management realizes that everyone needs some type of income.It is a shame that there are many stores that sell to black people,but when it comes to employing blacks,ther are too many who do not hire blacks.On 125th St it used to be like this for many years,until black consumers boycotted these racist principles that was the only thing that made these racist establishments change their work force to include everybody that was willing to work.