Photo by Derek Berg
As seen on Avenue A today... a cab with a checkered past...
He worked as a print shop delivery boy, metalworker, lathe operator, carpenter, and handyman, and around 1979 he began vending in front of the Con Edison substation on Sixth Street and Avenue A. It became a bonanza."People used to come down from upstate and buy out the whole table for six, seven hundred dollars," he says, and then give him their business cards so he could call when he had good stock. Mr. Howard says he once made $4,500 in a week; he had never had that kind of money before.With a pocketful of connections, he could sell whatever people brought to him, and the temptation got too much. In 1997 he says he spent nine months of a six-year term on Riker's Island for possession of stolen goods. He suffered a heart attack while in jail and served the rest of the time on probation."I messed up big time on that," he laments, and has since returned to selling donated items from neighborhood residents, many of whom he's done odd jobs for over the years."Manny is organic to the neighborhood," says a café owner on Avenue A ... explaining that his spot is like a public space, connecting people from different backgrounds. "I see people gathered around the tables, all different layers of society. I think it is very healthy to have that."
For Ixta's reprisal, Himani [brought] on executive chef Francisco Blanco from Mexico City. Blanco, who cooked at Le Cirque and Eataly’s Manzo, will fine-tune a menu of southern Mexican and Oaxacan dishes at Ixta, while mixologist Jenny Castillo will create tequila- and mezcal-based cocktails.