Street vendors are a fixture near the Trade Center site, just steps from where the towers fell. STEPHANIE HOO tells their stories in an asap podcast.
Coffee vendor Abdelhafeez Amin occupies a slice of a New York pathway where his cart serves hundreds of New Yorkers daily. (AP Photo/Bernadette Tuazon)
Shoeshine men Travis Harris, left, and brother Steven Harris lure customers to their stand. (AP Photo/Bernadette Tuazon)
Street vendors were ubiquitous around the World Trade Center before 9/11 and remain so in the area now -- selling newspapers, shining shoes and pouring endless cups of coffee for harried professionals on the go.
"We're warriors," says Steven Harris, who has been shining shoes near Wall Street for nearly 30 years. "I was here when the World Trade went up, and I was here when it went down."
They may toil in the world's financial capital, but they barely make ends meet. Some are undocumented workers, so it's not known precisely how many died when the towers fell. "I don't want to remember this time. This was bad time," says Mohamed Selim, who lost his falafel stand on 9/11 in a rain of debris.
Still they return, because this is their spot.
Hear their tales in this asap podcast, reported by Stephanie Hoo and produced by Ray Zablocki.
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MORE ON SEPT. 11
For more stories related to the fifth anniversary of the attacks, look at asap's special report Living with 9/11.
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Stephanie Hoo is asap's business writer, based in New York.
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