Some of the more, shall we say, refined residents of the Mount Morris Park Historic District in East Central Harlem were recently mortified when a new wine shop opened up with bulletproof glass and garish neon signage that would make the Whore of Babylon blush. This kind of thing may fly over in Northeast Central Harlem, but this is the MMPHD, people! As the president of the local community improvement association, Syderia Chresfield, told DNAinfo at the time, "It brings down everything we are trying to build up. I don't like to use the word ghetto, but that's what it is." And so, after a lot of hassle, the owner has transformed the ghetto into fabulous. But is he a sitting duck?
"I look at all the liquor stores around here, and they all have plexiglass," store manager Berihu Mesfin tells DNAinfo, which has masterfully milked this story for all its worth. "We are the only one that is opened up." Mesfin says his boss spent tens of thousand dollars placating the neighbors, and now they're adding security cameras as a precaution. But at least he finally got everyone off his back—another manager tells DNAinfo that before the modifications, he was cursed out by an elderly man, "a buyer for a French wine importer, who told him that the people who purchase his wines would not shop at a store encased in plexiglass."
Mesfin is still worried about his safety, but Chresfield is pleased, saying "it's more in line with what's going on around here." She even put her money were her mouth is by buying a couple of bottles of Chardonnay, and her association plans to shop at the store for the association's spring wine-tasting fundraiser. With the money he makes off that, Mesfin can totally buy a new shotgun to stash under the register!
