A Brighton Beach restaurant owner will open a modern mom-and-pop pharmacy on Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park, and she has some fighting words for her two competitors located just a few doors down.
Staten Islander Julie Khenkin says her Ditmas Park Pharmacy will offer a new twist on the old-time pharmacy, stocking a soda fountain with fresh juice and beer in addition to Coke floats, and is filling the aisles with organic products — some things her competitors at Duane Reade and Greenfield Pharmacy on the other side of the Q-train tracks won’t be able to touch, and the feisty newcomer pulled no punches when it came to discussing her neighbors.
“You go to Duane Reade, there’s no one to talk to,” Khenkin said. “And Greenfield is only serving one community. It is an ethnic pharmacy. Mine is going to be multi-cultural.”
Greenfield owner Jabir Husain bristled at the characterization that his pharmacy only serves people from “India or Pakistan.”
“If America is a melting pot, Brooklyn, this neighborhood is the best example,” Husain said. Indeed, the neighborhood which was predominately Irish and Italian American when Husain bought Greenfield in 1978 was, by some measures, the city’s most racially and ethnically diverse by 2005.
“For the last 30 years we have kept pace with the neighborhood,” Husain said.
Ultimately, residents will determine who wins this battle of the Rx-es, and it appears that some neighbors think Khenkin’s plan is a prescription for redundancy.
“I think it is a terrible idea,” said David Strathy, a property management company supervisor who lives nearby. “It’s not just silly, it’s slightly idiotic.”
Residents say a third pharmacy on the block between E. 16th Street and Marlborough Road will just take away business from the other two, and said they’d prefer to see a new bar replace the old one.
“Put something else there or put the pharmacy somewhere else,” said Robert Velazquez.
Some residents suggested opening another watering hole similar to the one Khenkin plans on replacing with a drug store.
According to her, crime and fights at the old Solo Kitchen Bar left the building owner wanting nothing to do with another business that sells hard liquor. The prohibition is fine with Khenkin, who has no sympathy for bar-lovers wishing to see another saloon in the place of her store.
“The people who come around asking if it will be a bar again, most of them are alcoholics,” she explained.
