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When Absolute Bagels closed in December, it shocked the Higher West Facet residents who had come to rely on the 30-year-old retailer. (It additionally shocked them, maybe, to be taught concerning the multitude of well being violations they’d been keen to miss for bagels that lots of its followers deemed to be among the many greatest within the metropolis.) After which one other jolt hit the neighborhood: Final week, the information broke that somebody had taken over the area and was planning to reopen it as one other bagel store. However who is that this somebody? The constructing’s dealer, Rafe Evans, would solely say that the brand new house owners function shops in New York and New Jersey however don’t have any affiliation with Absolute’s proprietor, Sam Thongkrieng. After which there was the identify: The brand new proprietor — whoever they’re — had hung a large banner on the entrance to announce that “New Absolute Bagel” was set to “reopen.” This struck some, to make use of the native parlance, as mishegoss.
After all, the historical past of New York bagels is crammed with controversies and mysteries. Round 100 years in the past, bagel-makers shaped a union in response to horrendous working circumstances (usually baking bagels and even sleeping between shifts in rodent-infested basements that might attain over 100 levels). That very same union went on strike and choked off town’s total provide of bagels within the early Nineteen Fifties — information stories on the time referred to the bagel as “the roll with the outlet” and “the doughnut with rigor mortis” — and later efficiently fought off the encroachment of Johnny Dio and the Lucchese crime household. There was the good H&H dispute of 2000, Cynthia Nixon’s “horrifying” lox-and-capers-on-cinnamon-raisin order, and, final yr, the curious story of Courtroom Avenue Bagels in Cobble Hill, which reopened a lot to the shock of its earlier proprietor and was solely later revealed to have been taken over by the store’s fundamental competitor, Smith Avenue Bagels.
Might or not it’s that the identical destiny had befallen Absolute Bagels? After I pressed the dealer, he remained steadfast: The brand new tenant didn’t want to be contacted and would reveal itself finally, he advised me. If I needed solutions, I used to be going to need to look elsewhere. What I didn’t know was that the extra I dug, the weirder issues had been going to get.
Authorized paperwork filed with the state referring to New Absolute Bagels at 2788 Broadway gave the primary trace. A reputation change filed this March listed Okay Dang Ri Corp, a enterprise that was included final August — months earlier than Absolute closed — at a very totally different tackle: 278 Knickerbocker Avenue. This location shall be acquainted to any Bushwick bagel hound as a result of it’s Knickerbocker Bagel, a well-liked native spot that additionally runs an outpost in Seoul. Had the store determined to increase to Manhattan?
Effectively, no. I despatched a message to Jay Jeung, a companion and a supervisor on the retailer, and he advised me he had no concept what I used to be speaking about. After I shared screenshots of the submitting docs, he wrote again, “Thanks for letting me know, however we additionally don’t know who’s concerned and it’s shocking that we even acquired this e mail.”
I turned subsequent to a supply contained in the bagel world, somebody who works with a variety of totally different retailers and didn’t need me to make use of his identify as a result of the bagel trade is seemingly constructed on secrets and techniques and opacity. “It’s Koreans like Knickerbocker, however not them,” my bagel mole defined. “They’re simply utilizing the identify within the submitting.” He’d heard Knickerbocker had seemed on the area however had handed. Whoever was behind New Absolute Bagel was, true to the identify, somebody new.
Finally I tracked down a certificates of incorporation for New Absolute Bagel, signed by somebody named Kyung Mi Kim, who has owned eating places in Bayside and in Flushing. I known as her, and he or she affirmed that she is the proprietor however then defined that she doesn’t communicate a lot English, so we moved to textual content with the help of translation. In Hangul, she confirmed that New Absolute Bagel will open this summer time and that it’s at the moment underneath building. After I requested about any potential companions within the mission, she responded, “I’m 100% on my own.”
This struck me as unusual due to Knickerbocker’s tackle on the name-change submitting. Jeung, from Knickerbocker, says he doesn’t know Kim, however the connection could need to do with two of Knickerbocker’s different companions: Wee Kwan Oh and Jeong Sook Lee. Lee is, for the time being, suing Oh, alleging that Oh was concerned in a “discreet try and promote the enterprise at a considerably low[er] worth than truthful market worth” with out involving her. And after I requested Kim — she’s the particular person opening New Absolute Bagel — about Oh, she confirmed that she’d beforehand “tried to purchase his retailer final yr, nevertheless it didn’t work.” As an alternative, when Absolute’s storefront grew to become obtainable, she used the identical paperwork filed with the state from the earlier buy try and solely modified the identify and tackle of the brand new enterprise. “Knickerbocker has nothing to do with me anymore,” she advised me. Neither does the unique Absolute Bagels, in fact, but when Kim’s precise bagels are comparable, her new neighbors probably gained’t care an excessive amount of about that.
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