JUly 2024

What is it about New York that makes it so special? What is it that keeps the city alive and strong? It’s the establishments that have been around for many generations and hopefully many to come. There is so much love and appreciation that goes into these well-known establishments. There’s obviously a reason they are still open twenty, fifty, even one hundred years after opening. It isn’t just these places themselves that keep them the way they are, but the people inside them who have been working there for countless years, and staying there instead of getting a job elsewhere. 

I set out to find the well-known old establishments of Manhattan, to speak to anyone who had been working at each specific place for a while. I interviewed those who were willing, asking them why they’ve been working where they are for so long and what it means to them. Often, the interviews would flow into natural conversations, forging a new connection between the interviewee and I. 

Across all the conversations I had, there was a strong theme of community and just overall unity. What really kept these people at their jobs and these places alive, has been the community it has fostered. “Yeah you got all walks of life here, you know it’s a cultural multipoint, what New York is supposed to be” says Katz’s Delicatessen manager Charles Delacruz. These places bring people together from all over. Alina Sheffi who has been working at Russ & Daughters for around thirty years says, “I think everybody has the same reaction when they walk in here, and not necessarily being jewish, just growing up in New York, everybody knows bagel, cream cheese, lox.” You walk through the doors of these establishments and all of a sudden you are met with a warm and inviting feeling, one with lots of history, one where the most important thing is unity. These places have regulars that also help keep the spirit alive. Customers and employees get to see familiar faces all the time. “The family, the experience, meeting new people, seeing people from  around the world, the nostalgia of seeing sometimes 3, 4 generations together. I get the regular customers all the time, and then it’s just the tradition and it’s part of keeping something from New York alive, so it feels good,” says Delacruz. These establishments not only mean so much to New York, but also to these employees who have been working there so long. They see many generations of families come through, but the staff is its own family as well. Alina Sheffi says, “Walking in here for the first time felt like, you know, the old country. You walk in here and you smell all the pickled onions and the pickles and the smoked fish, and it's like, oh wow this is food that I know and that I love” It is just as comforting to them as it is to their customers. 

It is important to honor these well-known establishments and those who have been working in them, making them the special places that they are, so they can thrive for many generations to come. It is also important that people who visit these establishments recognize the wonderful people who are keeping the spirit alive, the people that make the effort to remember their regulars and welcome in the newbees. In the future, I am planning on continuing my interviews at more establishments, hoping to gather more on what it means to work at these classic places that are still alive and running strong, and overall what it means to them to be a New Yorker. New York is a one of a kind city, and that is definitely the case because of these classic places filled with so much history.