Sold Out

Haggling on his cell phone with Citibank over exorbitant fees, straddling a pile of bills, and helping customers all at the same time, David Ramnauth holds court outside his parents' hardware store He constantly nods hello, and gets patted on the shoulder by men walking past. Ramnauth seems to know everyone on Bedford-Stuyvesant's Fulton Street.

With good reason: he's been working in the area since 1979. His parents now own the building and store e stands in front of, and his brother owns Rose, a beauty supply business down the street, right next door to a health food store that a Ramnauth cousin runs.

Ramnauth's family didn't always have so much real estate. When they started out, they were licensed street vendors, selling fragrances and costume jewelry. ("It was the disco era, so we sold big pearls and medallions," he recalls.) By juggling street sales, college and his mother's office cleaning job for over two decades--one Ramnauth would watch the tables while the others were occupied--they built three small businesses and began investing time, money and love into the neighborhood. Now, they are vendors, residents, customers, shopkeepers, building owners and small business operators, all in one family. "We were in the right place at the right time," says Ramnauth.

Yet the Ramnauths aren't reaping many benefits these days. Rents are up on Fulton Street, but business is down--way down. And according to Ramnauth and scores of other small merchants o Fulton's main commercial strip, it's plummeting because of a measure that was intended to help local merchants: getting street vendors off the sidewalks of Fulton Street.

In May of 2001, the city, using police on horseback and in helicopters, and with metal barricades and special task force teams, removed all street vendors--whether they were licensed or not--from Fulton Street. As with most vendor crackdowns, the city was responding to complaints from residents, commuters and real estate groups to Brooklyn's Community Board 3. According to District Manager Lewis Watkins, local business owners wanted the vendors out too, but were too afraid to come forward. "Store owners complained under their breath--we were getting a lot of complaints from people who never had a face," says Watkins. Then-City Councilmember Annette Robinson lobbied hard for the vendors' removal, which was implemented as part of a $3 million Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and city Department of Business Services revitalization project called Fulton First.

But on Fulton Street, it's difficult to find a single retailer who will acknowledge supporting the campaign for the vendors' eviction. Shop owners satisfied with the outcome are just as scarce. When the crush of vendors along Fulton Street' sidewalks was swept away, Ramnauth estimates, "all businesses out here lost 20 percent" of their sales. The street vendors, it turns out, were one strand in the web of relationships that snared customers and sustained Fulton Street.

In interviews up and down the strip--from Bedford to New York avenues--almost all small merchants say the same thing. While a few shop owners report that removal of the vendors did not affect their profits one way or another--"I'm not waiting for vendors to bring us business, says record store owner Charlie Rawlston--even they have to admit that business did not improve. And it's not just the crashing economy, they say. The majority date the local slump to the vendors' removal, after which business "instantly dropped," contends Roberto Mader, who has worked on Fulton Street for seven years. Then, he adds, "9/11 finished it off." Over and over, vendors and merchants alike mutter phrases like "Just look," gesturing with a wave of the hand to point out the obvious: deserted streets, abandoned storefronts, empty marketplaces.