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NEW YORK CITY. It was the kind of business opportunity she could never have planned on, yet Fern Chapnick knew exactly how to react: she quickly began photocopying various parts of her body.
Chapnick owns the Longacre Copy Center, until recently one of several struggling retailers surrounding the Ed Sullivan Theatre, which CBS revived three years ago to house its new Late Show with David Letterman. When the show started, Chapnick was only too willing to go along with Letterman's pranksblithely photocopying her kisser for a national audience-hopeful that her business would benefit from the influx of visitors and TV cameras. "I was very excited," she says. "I thought there would be a lot of hype for me and the neighborhood."
She was absolutely right. Not only did CBS make this once-dismal stretch of Broadway "cleaner, brighter, safer, nicer"-as one satisfied restaurateur puts it-but Letterman's on-air visits turned his neighbors into minor celebrities and their businesses into tourist destinations.
Down the street, trinket salesmen Mujibur Rahman and Sirajul Islam parlayed their Late Show exposure into bit movie parts, turning their employer, K&L's Rock America, into a mecca for stargazers. And the adjacent Bagel Cafe flourished after Letterman's mother, Dorothy, was captured on film stopping in for a nosh. "I think the show is a beautiful thing," says owner Nick Glendis, beaming. He has leveraged his Letterman cachet by renaming his two other establishments Bagel Cafe. (But since Glendis neglected to register the name, impostor Bagel Cafes have also sprouted up.)
With fame came fortune: average sales on the block climbed a...