Events and Updates

Mr. Sun has been our next door neighbor on Chrystie Street since the day we started Rick’s Picks.   And he was there long before we were.  Mr. Sun’s business is vegetables, mostly the kinds popular in Chinese cuisine: bok choy, long beans, melons.  He has been incredibly kind to us as we’ve grown, letting us store samples of refrigerated pickles in his coolers, holding parking spaces, and most crucially, letting us borrow his forklift and pallet jacks when we transfer pallets of pickles from our warehouse in Long Island City to the office, to supply our Greenmarket and Internet business.   It’s not like you can just go to any neighbor and ask to borrow a forklift.   But he was unfailingly generous with what was his, and asked nothing in return (we did our best to keep him in pickles and t-shirts).   A few weeks ago, Mr. Sun said he wanted to speak with me.   He told me that his landlord was jacking up his rent to the point where it no longer made sense to continue his operation on the Lower East Side.   He had decided his only option after 23 years on the block was to consolidate his distribution with his farm in New Jersey.  As they say, there goes the neighborhood.  It is terrible when a hard-working man running a successful, clean business is forced to depart.    I’m sure the inevitable art gallery that will take his place will be groovy and cool, but from my perspective, Chrystie Street between Stanton and Rivington just lost a lot of soul.

We will miss Mr. Sun.