NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – The sickly stench of the meat cutting business hangs in the air here, even on a cool day.
Rows of meat hooks hang from rails on the street outside the wholesale meat cutting companies, ready for the sides of pork and beef that arrive by truck.
It’s lunch time and work is winding down for the meat cutters who have been here since 2 a.m., cutting and packaging meat for restaurants and hotels throughout Manhattan. A dozen white-clad, blood-stained meat cutters stand on a corner, smoking and chatting as they get ready to call it a day.
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Up and down these two blocks of Washington Street it can seem like any other part of the North American slaughter business, with the same sights and smells found in any other wholesale meat district, with the same air of unfashionability.
But then a jarring scene occurs. A group of cleanly dressed, middle class women, some speaking Italian, turn the corner, following a guide who is telling them about the “neighbourhood.”
They stop briefly outside R and W Provisions to hear about how “it all used to be like this around here,” before moving along the street and around the corner.
The women are careful to avoid stepping in the fetid, bloody pools of
water that lie along the sidewalk and street.
Tour groups like this have become so common in New York’s meatpacking district that they no longer raise eyebrows, although they will attract a stream of abuse if they get in the way of workers and drivers trying to load meat orders on the street.
But little by little the meat packers are beginning to feel like an endangered species in the area named after them and most say the end of their industry is in sight.
“Come down here and you’ll see Americans destroying their culture,” said Charlie Migliore, a 30 year veteran of the meat cutting business, as he loaded boxes of chickens into a van.
“There won’t be anything left here. Nothing. Just watch.”
The workers in this beleaguered industry feel like their backs are against the wall as gentrification squeezes out the meat packing business.
Boutiques, art galleries and trendy restaurants have been biting away at the fringes of the meat district for more than a decade, but in the last five years the bites have become enormous and there are now only a handful of meat distributors left here.
The workers are resentful about the plight of their dying district, but have given up thinking they can protect it.
“What are you going to do? We’re getting pushed out little by little,” said Tommy Woodley, who was helping Migliore load the van.
“There’s nothing left to do.”
The meatpacking district used to cover half a dozen blocks of two avenues in this area just off the Hudson River. It was a good location for a wholesale distribution industry because it had excellent connections to road and rail lines bringing in meat from outside New York.
Generations of men from Brooklyn and New Jersey have spent their working lives here.
But this district is suffering – or benefiting from, depending on your perspective – the same phenomenon that is occurring across Manhattan: as the most fashionable areas run out of room, adventurous artists and entrepreneurs move into unfashionable areas and begin remaking them.
The meatpacking district is right beside Greenwich Village, which was taken over by artists decades ago. This migration turned the area into one the world’s most famous “cool” places, but that has boosted rents and driven out many of the artists and fringe businesses as wealthier people moved in.
Some began moving into the meatpacking district, seeing its low-cost, underused warehouse buildings as perfect places for galleries and loft living.
Nightclub owners saw the area as ideal, offering huge open spaces in the middle of cramped Manhattan.
Now the streets of the meatpacking district are thick with revelers at 2, 3 or 4 a.m., when the meat cutters are showing up for work.
Meat cutters are used to fringe nightlife in their area.
“Meat cutters, prostitutes and transvestites – that’s who’s always been down here,” said meat cutter Joe Diaz. “That’s the way it’s always been.”
Large throngs of partiers in the middle of the night are a bigger annoyance because they can get in the way of the business, but what really annoys the meat cutters are developers who are turning former warehouses into expensive condominiums and apartments. That raises local rents and encourages landlords to drive out their former meat cutting tenants and replace them with apartment-dwelling professionals.
“People want to raise their kids down here. Would you raise your kids here?” said Diaz, who lives in Brooklyn.
Only two blocks of the meat business are now left and no one expects them to last.
“Fuhgedaboutit,” said Migliore with disgust, employing the famous Brooklyn phrase.
“You get a block here, a block there, and one guy over there. It’s over.”
He points out a sign painted onto a wall across the street, saying “Dave’s Quality Veal.” That business left years ago, replaced by a high-end Italian restaurant on the ground floor and luxury condominiums on the upper floors.
Migliore, Woodley and Diaz finish loading the van, pull down the shutter and lock the door of R and W Provisions, leaving to get some sleep before the next day begins for them at 2 a.m.
A few minutes later a real estate agent arrives with a couple interested in one of the condos above the former Dave’s Quality Veal plant.
“It’s beautiful. You have to see it,” he says to the couple as they enter the building.
