The city’s “Hot Dog King’’ has been banned from peddling franks from his sidewalk cart because he allegedly lacks the proper permit — but he says it’s just part of a nonsense campaign to harass him out of business.
Beloved Manhattan street vendor Dan Rossi, 73, was ordered to close up his cart outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 23 after a city Department of Health inspector cited him for selling without the Disabled Veteran Vendor permit required for that location.
But Rossi, a disabled veteran of the Vietnam War, told The Post he’s had that permit for decades — and that the inspector simply scraped the decal off his cart before writing him up.
“It’s a game that they play with me all the time,” Rossi said, claiming the DOH has pulled a similar stunt at least five times before, including as recently as last year.
“This is not the first time they did it, but this time it’s right in front of the Memorial Day weekend,” he said, adding the timing of this closure is like “spitting” on veterans both living and dead.
“It really pisses me off that they have no respect for nobody,” he said.
Rossi has been selling hot dogs on the streets of New York City for just shy of 40 years with a Disabled Veteran Vendor permit, which allows vets injured in the line of duty the unique privilege to sell food most anywhere around the Big Apple.
The street-meat merchant said he believes that the DOH is trying to drive remaining veterans like him out of business so that they can tighten their grip on the street vending market with new laws restricting where people can sell.
He believes his veteran’s permit — issued in 1983 — is probably the oldest in the city. He said there are probably just about “five or six” veterans left with one of the permits, created under a historic law first drafted to benefit veterans of the Civil War.
Rossi, who gained his “Hot Dog King” moniker for a years-long strategy of sleeping in his van to hold his coveted spot outside the Met, said, “It’s just, ‘Keep hitting them until you wear them out,’ you know?”
He added that as the city’s oldest veteran vendor, he knows more about the laws than anybody else — and that it’s made him a target, too.
He said he expects his cart to be shuttered for about two weeks this time around, as it has been in the past, while he works his way through the bureaucracy and proves once again that he is properly permitted.
“It’s gonna be the same as always. I’m gonna go down there on Monday to Health Department. They’re gonna play all kinds of games with me for a few days,” he said.
“When I get to court, the judge throws it out like they do all the time,” he said. “This is what I do for a living. This is my livelihood. So I can’t play games.”
A GoFundMe has been set up in Rossi’s name to tide him through his latest closure.
The DOH did not respond to requests for comment on Rossi’s harassment allegations but said he was selling without a permit.
“The Health Department closed this food cart because it was operating in front of the Met Museum, and the vendor did not have a NYC Specialized Disabled Veteran Vendor permit or an agreement with the Parks Department,” a DOH representative said in a statement. “One of those is required to vend at that location.”
