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Avalon Fort Greene

It’s no picnic on Front St.

By Adam F. Hutton
The Brooklyn Paper
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The Brooklyn Paper / Julie Rosenberg
Larry Leonardi of Front Street Pizza shows off the picnic tables that have earned him kudos (and complaints) from his DUMBO neighbors. They will soon be gone.

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Those picnic tables at Front Street Pizza, which have been providing a spot for noshers since showing up unannounced four weeks ago, will disappear as soon as the weather gets nasty, said owner Larry Leonardi.

Believe it or not, some neighbors have actually been complaining that the tables, which take up much of the narrow sidewalk in front of the shop, are an obstruction.

But the complainers aren’t ruining it for everyone else, Leonardi said. The tables were always set to have a limited run.

“We put out these tables for the DUMBO Arts Festival last month and the weather has been so nice that we just left them,” said Leonardi.

But now that the weather is about to turn cold (as if!), the tables will go back to the Office of Emergency Management, which loaned them to the pizzeria in the first place.

Still, the complaints stick in Leonardi’s prodigious craw.

“This never would have happened 20 years ago,” said the pizza man, whose family has owned Front Street Pizza for 20 years.

He saw the complainers as ants intent on ruining everyone’s picnic. He’s not alone.

“When I come down here for lunch, it’s packed inside, so I come out here and sit and it’s great,” said Ruben Aminov, a paralegal. “The benefits of having outdoor seating outweighs whatever costs there are for the loss of sidewalk space.”

Rico Furniture

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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