See Guss Go

Bowery Boogie has pictures of the final exodus of Lower East Side mainstay Guss' Pickles. Sad, sad, sad.

Yesterday afternoon, we stopped by Guss’ Pickles for the weekly regimen of delicious full sours. Outside the tiny storefront, owner Patricia Fairhurst was busy with a handtruck, unloading boxes of Ball jars and latex gloves onto the sidewalk. It was a somber sight and a brief scare all rolled into one. However, Fairhurst assured us that customers still have the rest of this month to stockpile their most favorite pickled treats. In the interim, Guss’ will be gradually moving to its new diggs in Brooklyn.

To review how Lost City feels about this development, read here.

Guss' Pickles, Back in the Day

A faithful reader sent in this shot of Guss' Pickles, taken when the shop was still on Essex Street, in the 1990s, long before all the turmoil that is sending the timeless shop out to Brooklyn, far away from its roots and true name.

No LES, No Guss

Earlier I weighed in as not completely hating Guss' Pickles' announced move from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn.

I did not know all the fact at this point. Let me adjust my opinion.

I hate this.

Why? Because, when Guss' Pickles—a landmark for a century—leaves Manhattan, it will be forced by law to leave its name behind. It will became Someone's Pickles, Whoever's Pickles, anything but Guss' Pickles.

This is all due to the convoluted and ridiculous lawsuit that has dogged the Guss' legacy for the last few years, in which two parties—Guss' Pickles owner Pat Fairhurst and father and son Steve and Andrew Leibowitz of United Pickles—have both laid claim to the famous name.

Writes the Daily News:

[Keeping the name] just wouldn't be kosher under a 2007 settlement between Fairhurst and Steve and Andrew Leibowitz, a father and son duo who also laid claim to the Guss' Pickles name.

Both pickle peddlers insisted they had the true connection to Isidor Guss, the Polish immigrant who sold pickles from a pushcart in the lower East Side and later opened up the shop.

Fairhurst took over the institution from Harold Baker, who had purchased it from Guss' family after the patriarch's death.

But the Leibowitzes, who run United Pickle in the Bronx, also had a long relationship with the store and bought the rights to the name. Son Andrew Leibowitz's company, Crossing Delancey Pickle Enterprises, opened a Guss' Pickle shop in Cedarhurst in 2001.

Fairhurst sued him in 2006, then Andrew Leibowitz countersued. A 2007 settlement allowed Fairhurst to use the name only at her Orchard St. location.

That decision left a bad taste in Fairhurst's mouth, and she has nothing but sour words about it to this day.

"We have a following, they don't," she says simply.

The Leibowitz's hope the move will bring an end to the sticky pickle predicament at long last.

"I wish her all the luck in the world in her new location - as long as she doesn't use our name," said Steve Leibowitz.

That such a sweet and simple thing as a timeless Lower East Side pickle dealer should be ruined through greed and litigation is unforgivable.

I applaud the Curbed network for openly professing a boycott of United Pickles. I join them. Their claim may be tongue-in-cheek. Mine is serious. I don't know why I would ever go to Cedarhurst, but if I do, I'll spit in the Liebowitz's pickle barrels. The family has brine on its hands.

Guss' Pickles—Of Brooklyn

This should upset me more than it does.

Lo-Down, via Eater, reports that Guss' Pickles, one of the last old-school, Lower East Side institutions, is moving to Brooklyn. The new location is 39th Street between 14th and 15th Avenues, the Kensington neighborhood "in a few months."

Patricia says she's running out of room and can't afford rent for a bigger space in the neighborhood since it's changed so much. When the city put a Muni Meter directly in front of her pickle barrels, blocking customers' access, it was the last straw.

I'd like Guss' to stay on the LES, where it's always been. But I have to admit that I don't mind the shift. As long as the place stays in business. After all, Guss' has been quite the same Guss' for some time. The business has changed hands a couple times since Izzy Guss retired, most recently to Patricia Fairhurst. And there was the move from the old location on Essex to the newer, less charming one on Orchard. Throw in the whole tangled dispute involving the rights to the Guss name, and you have to wonder aloud: "What difference does a move to Brooklyn make at this point?" It's like hanging a picture with a few cracks in it on a different wall.

Besides, a place with a name like Guss' pickles sounds like it belongs in Brooklyn.

The Guss, The Whole Guss, and Other Pickles

The battle for what's left of the Lower East Side's soul continues, rending new wounds in the City's heart.

According to a flurry of recent articles, the contretemps over who owns the right to call the contents of their brine-filled barrels Guss's Pickles continues to rage, with no conclusion in sight.

In her corner on Orchard Street, Patricia Fairhurst, who took over Guss's LES location—the place where most New Yorkers are used to finding the City's most famous kosher sours and half-sours—says she is the rightful possessor of Guss's good name. She bought the shop from the Baker family in 2004, along with the original recipes.

In his corner in, ahem, Cedarhurst, Long Island, Andrew Leibowitz claims he is the real heir to the legacy of Izzy Guss, who sold his store back in 1976 to the Bakers. He opened his LI concern with Tim Baker in 2002. Leibowitz's family owns United Pickle, a Bronx business that provided Guss's with its cucumbers for years.

Then, in 2005, Leibowitz started asserting that only they sold true Guss' pickles; told Fairhurst to stop selling under that name. Fairhurst sued Leibowitz. Fairhurst sued back. It's no coincidence that 2005 was the year that Fairhurst decided to stop buying Leibowitz pickles, and get her vegetables elsewhere. Then there's the fact that Tim Baker refutes Leibowitz's claim that the Guss legacy was bequeathed unto him. It's not a simple story.

Now, Fairhurst is waging war on Whole Foods, of all places, for carrying Leibowitz's pickles and calling them Guss's. Whole Foods is standing by the Cedarhurst store. (Me, I don't really have much faith in Whole Foods' takes on food authenticity.)

The Times also tells us that a third pickle business, The Pickle Guys, on Essex Street, is run by Alan Kaufman and other former employees of Guss’s Pickles. So, they've got a claim, too.

There's plenty in this saga to make you heave a heavy sigh, but the part that distresses me the most is that, whatever the outcome of these legal battles (a court date is set for July 16), the true Guss's pickles are already erased from history. With all the claims and counter-claims, and the convoluted and contradictory histories, how is the consumer ever to know for sure which pickle place is the historically true one. The court may side with Fairhurst, or with Leibowitz, but a nagging doubt in the collective New Yorker's brain will never be fully convinced. And that's too bad.

There's a positive way to look at the story, too, I suppose. Three stores, all in the New York area, all serious about pickle making. That's good, right? Well, it's not bad, anyway.

More About Gertel's; Guss's in Danger?

An article in the New York Sun provide a wealth of interesting information about Gertel's Bakery (RIP), the great kosher bake shop which closed its Lower East Side retail branch today.

Abe Stern, the owner, owned the building, it turns out. So he was in not danger from some greedy landlord. He chose to sell the building to a developer, netting $2.9 million.

Stern is not a descendant of the original owners. It was founded by Izzy Gerber. Gerber, not Gertel. The shop was named after his son-in-law. (That was some loving father-in-law.) It then changed hands twice. Then there was this horrifying tidbit:

Last month, the building where Guss's is located was purchased for $16.5 million, according to PropertyShark.com, though plans for the property, at the corner of Orchard and Broome streets, are not yet known.

Yikes! Russ and Daughters, on the other hand, owns its building and seems to want to stay.

I ate my final Gertel's challah tonight. It was yummy.