Farewell to Stanley Zabar, the Mayor of the Upper West Side

Clad in green pants, Crocs and a white workman button-down with a pen in the breast pocket as if he was ready to mark the price of a half-pound of lox, Eli Zabar approached the podium at Riverside Memorial Chapel.“Stanley always told me, ‘Eli, three brothers together is stronger than any one of us.’ Last year we were three.Then we were two.

And now,” he said, a crack in his voice, “it’s just me.”Eli, the 83-year-old baby brother of the famous trio of specialty food stores brothers, was speaking on Wednesday at the funeral of Stanley, who died earlier this week at 94, just over a year after Saul, the eldest of the siblings, died at 97.The funeral marked an end of an era for Zabar’s, an institution that shaped food culture first on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and then in the country beyond.It was also a reminder that New York is made up of local, close-knit communities that happen to be situated in America’s largest city.Stanley Zabar’s life was hyperlocal.

For most of it, he never lived more than two blocks from the store....