The Owner of NYC's Smallest Privately Owned Lot is the Best Landlord in NYC

25 Square Feet

Balla Triangle // Privately Owned Lot // West Village, Manhattan

The spit of land at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and West 10th Street qualifies as the smallest occupied private lot in the New York City. For almost half his life, a Senegalese immigrant named Balla Niang has been the occupant of this tiny triangle. He sells his colorful African wares there from a stall, rain or shine. He mans the place under an umbrella, in an office chair on wheels.

“I’m fifty-seven, and I’m from Senegal. I’ve been here for twenty-five years selling African stuff, and sunglasses and socks and other little things.

I go home to Senegal, and I bring it all back. It’s all cotton and traditional prints. Everything is designed and made in Senegal. The prints are the same as in Senegal, but we make some of it in Western styles. Short pants and stuff like that.

It’s just me here at the stall. Every day I work. Every day. I love to work because my family taught me that you have to work. Work is good. 

The heat? I don't care about that. The cold I don’t like as much. Sometimes I go home to Senegal in the winter to see my family because I have no family here. I go home for sometimes up to three months a year.

And this is why I’m telling you I have the best landlord in the world, Dr. Awan. He is a doctor in Brooklyn. He’s in Bensonhurst. He bought it in the eighties, I think for thirty thousand dollars. This is my best landlord because he lets me go home, come back, and then pay rent. Because some landlords, they don't do that, especially not in New York City. I always pay everything, but sometimes I pay after the rent is due, and he let’s me.

Business is not too bad, in a way. African clothing is popular now. Men and women wear it. Most of it is unisex, so anyone can wear it. The colorful stuff is the most popular. 

These pants are twenty dollars. If you want to go home and try them on, and, if it doesn't fit right, bring them back here to me. That's what I do for everybody. I don't have room to try clothes on. 

“This place has an actual address. It’s 169 West 10th Street. The space is about five feet by five feet, maybe a little bigger. I do want a bigger place, but later. I have no money for that. I can't afford a big rent right now. If I had money I would move, though, because I’d be able to sell more.”

-Balla Niang

They Told Him He Was Too Little for the Big Leagues. They Were Wrong.

5 feet 8 inches, 151 pounds

Ronald Torreyes aka “Toe” // NY Yankee // Yankee Stadium, South Bronx          

Call Ronald Torreyes a pint-sized utilityman, a diminutive infielder, or ‘enano,’ the Spanish term for ‘pipsqueak.’ It doesn’t matter to the New York Yankees’ most diminutive player, who has a big bat at the plate and a big glove in the field.   

“Definitely, there were a lot of people who basically told me you’re not gonna make it because you don’t have the height. There were a lot of teams that wouldn’t look at me, that wouldn’t give me a chance.

But my dad was always there for me. He kept encouraging me and said that if I keep training hard, someone would give me an opportunity. He said: ‘Keep working and eventually you'll get the chance to show them you can play.’

My dad played a lot of ball, so baseball is something he knows. He had it in his blood. I guess at a young age he saw something in me. He dedicated himself to my training ever since I was a kid. He said: ‘You have to train, go to school and study. After you graduate, we'll look for an opportunity.’

When I was growing up, we used to train twice a day. In the morning, then I would study, then train again at night. Even on the weekends. He supported me and dedicated himself to it. He was always with me throughout.

I started playing baseball when I was four years old, just at home throwing the ball and taking swings here and there. But the first memory I have of baseball is when I was six years old going out and playing real baseball with my friends in my town in Venezuela.

 When I was little, I used to watch baseball games on TV and I can remember asking my dad: ‘Dad, when I am going to play there? When am I going to have the opportunity to be a professional baseball player?’

To me, it was a far away, the chance to be a professional player, but I worked really hard with my dad and now I’m here. I’m in the big leagues

I like the story because it can show kids if you work really hard at what you want to do, you can accomplish it. Nothing is impossible in life when you work for it every day. Young players can look at me and see that if you will it – and you work for it – you can do it.

I would tell kids to never lose faith in themselves and to keep working every day. Talk to your parents who support you for that daily energy. To continue in your sport is healthy – it’s good for your education and your well-being.

Being shorter makes me quicker than the other guys. I'm faster than the bigger players.

It helps me on my defense, especially. I play different positions – second base, third base, shortstop and right field – so speed is an advantage in all those places. On the field, I got used to the advantage of my size, moving around the field quicker. And running around the bases fast is also a good thing.  

If I had to say a disadvantage of my size, it would probably be the same thing I encountered early in my career. That people would kind of dismiss me because of my stature. But I’m very, very thankful to the Yankees for giving me the opportunity to play and to show that I can really play this sport.

Being a New York Yankee means so much me. It’s one of the most important things in my life. Being on this team is something I carry in my heart. There have been so many legends that have passed through here, retired or gone. That’s what makes you give everything you have. It’s an extra boost of energy you get just from wearing this uniform. You wear this uniform with honor.

If fans like me, it has to do with the way I work. I come every day and try and do my job and I think they’ve noticed that. Also, they see the relationship we all have here on the team and how we enjoy each other.

There’s a special handshake I have with [outfielder] Aaron Judge. He’s a foot taller than me and 100 pounds heavier than me. He puts his hand up high and I jump up and high-five him. Whenever we have an opportunity to do it, we do it. At the beginning of the game or after a big play. It’s fun. And not only that, it goes to show you, he’s so big and I’m so little and yet at the same time we’re on the same team giving it all we’ve got.”

-Ronald Torreyes aka “Toe”

Missing Gritty Dirty Old NYC? Meet the Artist Who Resurrects it in Miniature

½ inch = 1 foot scale

Alan Wolfson  // Miniature Urban Sculptures  // Hollis Taggart Galleries, Chelsea

Artist Alan Wolfson takes one of the world’s most massive cities, empties it of its people and condenses it down to its grittiest core. His pieces are astonishingly realistic but fictionalized dioramas of a bygone New York whose meaning must be construed by the viewer. Just make sure to look closely or risk missing a tiny clue that unlocks the real story.

“I want the viewer to get involved in what they’re looking into. I want them to come up with a scenario of what happened here: Why is that sandwich on the counter only half-eaten? Is there a tip on the table? What’s with those stomped-out cigarette butts by the subway entrance?

I try to tell a story with these minute details. My work is not about how small everything is but the stories these small things tell. I don’t put in people because three-inch tall people remind you you’re looking at a miniature. I want you to be thinking about the narrative. One-foot in real life is one-half inch in my pieces so the environments are intricate. And, because the scale it so small, it’s intimate.

For many years, hardly any artists were working in miniature and I felt my work wasn’t being taken seriously as an artist. Only painting and sculpting were considered real art. I consider myself to be a sculptor. My work is considered hyperrealism. Now, with more people working in miniature, it’s taken more seriously. For me, it’s always been the way of doing my work.

I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. My father worked as a commercial artist as a letterer and sign painter. In school, we had to build a diorama in a shoebox as for homework. I loved that. I made scenes of what I saw on my walk to school – butcher shop, police station, that kind of thing. That’s essentially what I’m still doing. I just kind of got carried away with it.

I was a pretty rebellious kid. Then Vietnam came and I was one of those hippies that got drafted. I saw so many lives get ruined. To cope, I started thinking about the New York City I grew up in and longed for. It removed me from the reality I was in. I said to myself: ‘When I get out of this situation, I’m going to build a diorama of a subway station.’

I make every element by hand in my pieces. All the lighting, the props and the architecture. I’ll think about the piece for a long time, visualizing, problem-solving. By the time I start, I’ve thought about it for months – years maybe. I make a rough sketch to refresh my memory. I do research and pull photographs. Then I build a cardboard mock-up mainly to figure out sightlines. Then I replace the cardboard pieces with acrylic plastic. Some of these locations never actually existed. I make them up. I also make up 75 percent of the narrative as I go along and build the appropriate things to tell the story.

People ask me why I always do environments with graffiti. It tells part of the story. When I went away in 1968, there was no such thing as graffiti. The first time I saw it when I came back from the service I thought, ‘Well, it’s kind of a mess and I kind of like it.’ I want it known that graffiti was part of the character of New York at that time.

I live in California. When I go back to New York it’s changed so drastically I don’t even feel like I’m in New York. I have fond memories of walking around 42nd Street when I was a teenager. Maybe it wasn’t the nicest place in the world but it was my place and I felt comfortable there.

I had meeting a few years ago with the Times Square Alliance about doing a commission: I said to the guy: ‘I have a question. ‘Why the fuck did you screw up Times Square?’  His eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. He said: ‘We had to clean it up, Mayor Giuliani this and that.’ And I said: ‘You didn’t do it for New Yorkers. It’s a place where tourists buy T-shirts and postcards, like Main Street in Disneyland. You didn’t clean anything up. You moved it on and made it someone else’s problem and found a way to make money off of the place it had been.’

Needless to say, I didn’t get the commission.

New York was more interesting back then. More genuine. People wanted to scribble on the subway so they did. If they wanted to vomit in the subway because they snorted too much heroin, they did. What I do is an accurate representation of New York whether you like it or not.”

-Alan Wolfson

Yo! Chase Bank, Keep Your $2M. My Shop's Not For Sale and Neither Am I

125 square feet

Greenwich Locksmiths  // Locksmith  // Greenwich Village, Manhattan         

Philip Mortillaro cannot be described in one word, unless there is a term for locksmith-philosopher-artist-renegade-first-generation-family-man-wiseass-badass. Since 1980, he’s been cutting keys and cracking safes out of his store, the smallest freestanding building in New York City.

“My parents were born in Sicily and I was born on Elizabeth Street. I only went to school up to eighth grade. I was left back three times because I was a terror. It was just my nature. I did whatever I could to aggravate them. That was my sole occupation and I did a good job of it. I'll never forget what the principal told me. He said: ‘You're gonna be a burden to society.’

The thing is, I have this trade. I've been locksmithing since I was 14. I’ve always had a shop. I’ve been employing people since I was 18 years old. I never get bored of it. It’s all about solving problems. You're working with puzzles.

I have such a good reputation here. All my keys work because I use a micrometer, which no one else does. It measures to the thousandth of an inch. You only have to be 1/10,000 of an inch off for a key not to work. That’s the width of a piece of paper. I cut thousands and thousands of keys a week. And if I get one back it's a lot. Precision is the whole name of the game. Something we're lacking today is quality.

Keys are numbers, just like hacking is numbers. When you code computers, it's the same as setting up a master key system. My son is in the business with me. He does all the computer stuff for the electronic jobs. He's smart. He loves math. We all love math. Math is so true, so honest. It's always gonna be what it is.

When I first bought this building, the owner wanted $40,000. I offered him $20,000 cash and he took it like a thief in the night because he wasn't getting any money out of the place. A fortuneteller was in here that never paid rent. You gotta realize it was almost fifty years ago. That building across the street was empty. Only gas stations here. Cars and trucks all over the sidewalk. It was like hell. I liked it because it's where I belong. But not today, everything's so nice now. It's such bullshit. I don't need nice. It was working fine for me before.

This is Disney World now. You go on a safari in Disney World, right? You wade through water but there won't be any poisonous snakes. No giant anything is gonna come out and get you because it’s all plastic plants. That's what New York City is now. Fucking Disney World.

I make metal sculptures. I decorated the store’s facade with 10,000 keys including a Van Gogh ‘Starry Night’ mural out of keys. Why? To bring some art and individuality back to the Village.

The store is 125 square feet and I use every square inch. Drawers, counters, six machines, keys covering every wall, shelves all the way up the ceiling. I even have Sidney Solomon’s ashes in a box in that corner up there. He worked for me for 18 years. Thing with Sid is, he was a good friend of mine. So when Sid said: ‘Phil, when I die I want my ashes thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge,’ I said: ‘Fine, I could do that for you.’

But I hadn't been on the Brooklyn Bridge in a long time – you can’t get to that outside ramp. So now I'm gonna be the Sicilian guy who looks Arab throwing white powder off a bridge. I have to put it on hold until politically it’s a more suitable time. Until then, Sid’s up there in the corner. He loved this shop. Sid worked all the time, Sid liked work. Taught me a lot about business.

I guess if you've been around long enough, you get philosophical. What are the really serious questions? It’s just: ‘Why the fuck are we here?’ It's too horrible to contemplate. So you distract yourself with a Canada Goose jacket. But the real question is still there.

Chase offered me $2 million to buy the building to build an ATM. I turned them down. They came back with a better offer and I said: ‘Not interested.’ They said: ‘Do you even want to hear what it is?’ I said: ‘No, what do I want to hear it for? I'm not gonna sell it.’

Because what am I gonna do with that money? I have everything I need and that's a great way to live. Nobody owns you. That's how to get around in this society without having to put up with all the bullshit. That might even be the key to life.

-Philip Mortillaro