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White paint scrawled across the shuttered front of Miriam's Hebrew Religious Articles reads: "For rent, store & loft." Pinned there is the phone number of the Chinese broker in charge of the Lower East Side building.
Canal Street, which once was lined with Jewish and other European immigrants selling jewelry, china and clothing, now belongs to Chinese immigrants.
Far from the sleek shops of Fifth Avenue, it remains a bargain bazaar. A couple of days before Christmas, sidewalks were crammed with shoppers from around the world snapping up electronics, luggage, trinkets and just about any knockoff imaginable - most sold by Chinese.
"It's their turn now," says Joe Proto, a 55-year-old jeweler who is among the few Old World merchants left on the street.
"We used to work till 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. during Christmas season in the old days, and people would stand in line with hot coffee in the morning, waiting to get in."
George Gershwin's birthplace is around the corner from Proto's shop on the quieter eastern end of the street. Woody Allen, who once delivered gold engraved by his father to neighborhood retailers, now lives uptown. And the grand Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first one in America built by Russian and Polish Jews, has no rabbi for its congregation of about 50 people.
In the past decade, the action has moved a...