News vendors..where arent they now?

Sam Rosenberg operated a newststand at Mountain and St. Catherine for six days a week for 49 years without missing a day.

He's standing against the CJAD bldg, with Bessie's Dress Shop behind him, looking up Mountain. He even worked Sundays, delivering the NY Times to his clients up the hill on Mountain and Drummond. This photo was taken in the early 70s by Sam's cousin, pro photo vet Harold Rosenberg. Harold would stop by after class at McGill to help Sammy check his Benjamin News order invoices. Sam could not read. He was still able to buy his own house and support his family. He offered the young Harold the biz when he decided to pack it in.

Sam eventually dropped the A bomb on Harold, telling him he was adopted, a famous local story that we shall relate another time.

A few years before the city phased these kiosks out, they designed a more modern news kiosk for all the vendors in an effort to standardize the look. They were small but well heated.

Sam's brother-in-law Max operated the stand on the southwest corner of Mackay and St. Catherine, in front of the post office/army recruiting centre, until he died in the 1970's.

When Max died, Rene Levesque - one of his regular customers during his stint at CBC around the corner - sent his condolences. On Sammy's last day on the job, the owner of Ogilvy's across the street presented him with a fancy raccoon coat.

Another news kiosk was run by Morris Tenzer (or Tenser) St. James, (aka St. Jacques) outside the main Post Office (the block between Metcalfe and Peel). It closed up in 1976. Morris was illiterate and Karl Gerhard used to check Morris' bills since The Gazette was the only corporate customer that Morris had. With Karl gone to retirement, who would check the bills?

There was a newsstand right outside the head office building of The Bank of Montreal (St. James and F. Xavier) owned and operated by George Carydia, a Greek born in Egypt. George sold his newsstand to Jack Somberg, who passed it on to his son Albert in the 60s. It was operated by Mildred Somberg until July 31, 1996.

According to reports Metropolitan News has recently closed. It was opened by a war veteran in 1918 at Peel and St. Catherine - a corner that once hosted four newsstands - and moved around the corner to Cypress in recent years. It allegedly had a habit of advertising for workers as a ruse just to get customers in.

Another longstanding newsstand at Main and Pine was run briefly by Kenny Hertz, a poet and literary figure about town, in 1976 for about a year.

Hertz considered his corner of St. Lawrence the most polluted in the city. Christy McCormick interviewed Hertz for his paper the Ghetto Ferret. Hertz said that after a rain storm he felt like an Indonesian peasant when all his belonging were blown, sodden and scattered in every direction. He also said the the suppliers - Benjamin News - paid no attention to what he wanted. "I could sell many more Polish newspapers, but I never get any more," he said, "I hardly sell any Penthouses or Playboys, but they keep on coming in by the ton. Whenever the bureacracy does that, they put another wafer between themselves and reality." Hertz died of Parkinsons in 1991, aged 46. He once did a poetry reading at the Seven Cents Bookstore in Montreal with Seymour Mayne, the opening act was Bob Dylan.