More than 40,000 people have signed a petition urging New York City to help ‘Hot Dog King’ Dan Rossi, a local celebrity whose cart has been parked outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 15 years. It’s one of New York’s most coveted outlets, but Rossi says poor city oversight created too much competition along the stretch of Fifth Avenue and eventually forced him to sleep in. or lose his place.
In an interview with HyperallergicRossi said he’s been spending his nights in his cart or a nearby van for 11 years.
“In the beginning, when we started this, we were doing normal things,” Rossi said. “At the end of the day, you bring your cart back to the commissioner, clean it for the next day.” Then one day, Rossi arrived to find someone in his place. He claims that over the past decade, the Department of Health (DOH) — which regulates providers — has not properly enforced its rules.
The allegations stem from the fact that disabled veterans like him are entitled to selling rights in certain areas of the city, including Fifth Avenue. (The New York Settlement was originally enacted to help veterans of the civil war make money from street traffic and has since been both confirmed and changed.) Rossi explained a current program, called “rent-a-vet” in a 2016 PolicyIco story detailing the issue, in which vending firms are illegally paying disabled veterans for their vending permits in coveted areas such as outside the Met.
A DOH spokesperson said Hyperallergic that a person with a Disabled Veteran’s Permit must be present at the cart using that permit. But Rossi believes that rule is not being properly enforced, leading to an overcrowded stretch outside the Met, with vendors who are not disabled veterans filling the spaces.
“If my cart isn’t there or I’m not there physically, they would take the location,” Rossi said. “That would be my end.”
“Either I leave or I sleep there at night,” Rossi continued. “I have to put a roof over my head; I have to sleep there at night. Rossi’s wife and daughters live in Mamaroneck in Westchester County.
The DOH spokesperson said the city is not “reserving” outlets. “When the day after the sale starts, if someone else sets up shop in the same place, they are free to sell there if they have the proper permits,” the rep said. “We have no interest in taking anyone’s place. However, people also cannot leave their carts unattended.
The son of Italian immigrants, Rossi grew up in the Bronx, served as a Marine in Vietnam, then rented a fleet of street carts in New York in the late 1980s and 1990s. He fought a battle against Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani when the former put pressure to limit Midtown vendors, which left Rossi with only one cart. In 2007, the “Hot Dog King” moved his small business to the Met.
Rossi has been famous for a while but became a social media phenomenon when he was introduced by an internet personality Nico from New York. Since then, he has raised 12,000 instagram followers (his daughter Elizabeth manages his accounts). Rossi has been the subject of several news profiles over the past decade and a half, and last year he was featured in the Netflix series Street food in the United States. He also wrote a book last year called New York’s King of Hot Dogs: From Ragged to Rich to Less Ragged, in which he recounts his fight with Trump, Giuliani and the city. He’s been making waves for years, and former Mayor Bloomberg even directly address its sales problem in 2012, but nothing seemed to change. Rossi said his current issues with the city are “personal” and that he sees himself as an advocate for disabled veterans in New York.
Across the city, other street vendors are also coming under pressure. In Flushing, Queens, Councilwoman Sandra Ung said the illegal vendors there were causing a public safety issue and launched a petition to remove unlicensed sellers. It is almost impossiblehowever, to obtain a legal sales license in New York: there are only 853 and the waiting list of 12,000 people was closed ten years ago.
Rossi says the alleged problems enforcing the sale also cause him a financial problem because they create too much competition. He said he was never able to regain his pre-COVID income.
When the Met closed at the height of the pandemic, Rossi’s business “went to zero”.
“We managed to get out of it,” he said. “But it was hard.”
Today, the Met’s “Hot Dog King” has more than 42,000 supporters. Rossi’s daughters created the petition for their father. “I think it’s great. Will it help me?” Rossi asked. “It depends on how deep the city got into trouble.”
