Because so few New Yorkers have been to the Philippines, they often do not recognize Filipinos when they see them.
—"Manila Strip on Ninth Ave Is Bit of Home for Filipinos," New York Times, December 30, 1976
MANILA STRIPFilipino Lou is not Filipino. And the meat shop that Filipino Lou owned that catered to Filipino immigrants in 1970s NYC is now a store of vegetables and fruits—not a link of longanisa in sight. Even the trademark for Filipino Lou has long expired since the file date of August 19, 1971.
"Filipino" Lou Finkelstein was a GI, butcher and friend of Joseph Estrada, the Philippine’s version of Ronald Reagan. There's a mythology of a moment when Finkelstein (gently) pushed Estrada into his meat store’s bathroom to shield him from the craze of fans. Forever grateful, Estrada maintained a long-distance friendship with Finkelstein, exchanging Christmas cards and gifts. When Estrada was elected Philippine President in 1998, Finkelstein and his wife Jill, traveled to the Philippines for Estrada’s inauguration. Filipino Lou's was on a block that a 1976 NYT article dubbed "Manila Strip" alongside Sampaguita Meat Market and Groceries, Mabuhay International, Philippine Food Center and Filipino International Ltd. Filipinos were arriving alongside Yugoslavian, Chilean and Dominican immigrants transforming a neighborhood that was noted for being Italian and Irish. |
In 1974, New York magazine wrote about 9th Avenue’s first International Food Festival noting the neighborhood it was in as New York City’s latest in transition. Port Authority was newly opened and the neighborhood was organizing against the construction of a convention center (that would later become The Javits Center). The name of the neighborhood fluctuates with strained connotation—one that recalls a bloody history of poverty turned violent, Hell’s Kitchen, while the subtext of another, Clinton, reveals the prospecting (and mostly fulfilled) hopes of real estate development. Currently, rental prices in Hell’s Kitchen begins at $2,500. In 1974, a family could rent an apartment for less than $100 a month.
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