hot-dog vendor fighting with Jewish neighbors

GO NO! A worker stays late at a Central Park West cart that neighbors complain is there "24/7." The owner rants that he's being targeted by gays, Jews and doormen.


















A vendor who parked his buns on Central Park West a decade ago and hasn't moved since has become a 24-hour hot-dog hotel, disgusted neighbors say.

And if you dare criticize him, he'll roast you with racism.

"He's there 24/7, day and night. It's a pig sty," said neighbor Reinhart Nitzl of the fixture on the corner of West 86th Street. "I see that guy sleeping in there."

But the dog-slinging cart owner, Mohamed Abdalla, a native of Egypt, claims the clamor is just an anti-Muslim conspiracy.

Sounding like he knows a thing or two about bigotry, Abdalla, 60, ranted that his cart is opposed by "homosexuals," "Jewish people," ignorant bureaucrats, "rich people" and freebie-seeking doormen.

"The people at the Health Department are not educated, and it's a blessing to them that they get a job," Abdalla told The Post. "When the Jewish people complain, they say, F--k Mohamed. Who's stronger?"

His diatribes did little to address complaints that his "mobile" cart has take up permanent residence at 2 W. 86th St.

Owners are required to leave their spots to scrub down their carts every day, a Health Department spokeswoman said.

Abdalla, of Queens, claims he moves his silver meat mobile at 3 a.m. for cleaning, though residents and doormen insist it's rooted to the ground. Post photographers also spotted the cart on successive nights last week in the wee hours.

Over the years, the Health Department has hit him with $20,000 in tickets, he claimed.

The agency said it has issued the cart 72 violations since 2000. The truck was most recently slapped with violations for keeping food -- like eggs -- at the wrong temperatures, improper hand-washing facilities and serving foods that were spoiled or home-canned.

Some Upper West Siders are in Abdalla's corner.

He carries a 2006 letter from retired Appellate Division Judge and former Assemblyman Bentley Kassal, who apparently wrote, "I understand he's being challenged and criticized only because of his ethnic background, and I find that to be unfair, undignified and, above all, un-American."

Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she helped him with violations years ago -- but was horrified when informed of his hateful rants. "That's abhorrent," she said.

Abdalla said building workers taunt that he "works for bin Laden" and demand free coffee, pastries and hot dogs.

"I told them this is not Iraq," he said. "I'm an American citizen."

When he doesn't give freebies, they threaten to call the city's 311 hot line, he said, to file bogus complaints. "If you don't give us free, we're going to tell everybody that you have cockroaches in your coffee cup," he said.

Abdalla also complained that "a homosexual" makes passes at his night worker.

"The gay guy, he come and he want to make love to the man . . . and he touch his penis . . . I told him get the f--k out of here . . . We're Arab. We don't go this way."