NEW YORK — Candles, flowers and handwritten tributes flow onto the sidewalk like surf filling a void in the sand, replacing the body just taken away. Memorials in Chinatown this week marked the spots where four homeless men were killed Saturday, their heads smashed while they slept by an attacker wielding a metal bar.
Akdeniz is Kurdish, was raised in Turkey and emigrated to Canada as a young man. Back in Turkey, he had worked in cafes making lahmacun, flattened dough topped with spiced meat, and he aspired to make its Western cousin, pizza, in the United States. He showed up in New Jersey in unwashed clothes. The owner was skeptical. “He thought I was so dirty, unclean,” recalled Akdeniz. Desperate, he asked, “Can I make a pizza?”
A year later, he had saved enough to move into an apartment with a roommate. He got a new job in early 2003 washing dishes at a restaurant on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. On St. Patrick’s Day, the regular pizza maker didn’t show up to work, and Akdeniz was promoted on the spot. He was featured in a cover article in PMQ Pizza Magazine, which gave him thousands of copies that he handed out outside schools in the neighborhood near his shop. The teenagers laughed and called him “Champ,” but they bought slices, too.He paid off the shop. He heard of another one for sale nearby, on Rivington Street, and he made an offer that was accepted. Now with two places, he figured he needed a brand name, and he thought of the nickname the teenagers had given him.
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