Beloved UWS Newsstand Cuts Ribbon on New Future After Legal Battle
Following massive fines and a legal licensing nightmare, the beloved 79th and Broadway newsstand, run by Sadik “Sami” Topia, is back open for business. It took a community to save it.
| 05 Mar 2025 | 12:10
Having just cut the red ribbon and declared victory, Sadik “Sami” Topia cheers and pumps his fists as the crowd cheers for the return of the newsstand, a community fixture on the UWS for over two decades before he ran into fines and ownership issues that forced its temporary closing. (
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Sadik “Sami” Topia, center, alongside his legal team of lawyers from Davis, Polk, & Wardwell. Council Woman Gale Brewer is pictured second from right. (
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Topia and his many advocates cut the red ribbon wrapping his newsstand, signaling a new future for the decades-old UWS fixture. (
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Topia, flanked by generations of his family, poses in front of his “new” newsstand. (
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It’s official: a beloved newsstand operator known to all as “Sami” is open for business again, and on March 3 he staged a grand re-opening party to say thanks.
The newsstand operator, Sadik “Sami” Topia, a fixture of 79th and Broadway for over two decades, cut a celebratory ribbon signaling his return to business as usual. Flanked by his friends, lawyers, and members of the community, Sami cut through the red ribbon wrapped around his stand to the cheers of a small, loyal crowd.
“I’m really glad,” Topia, an immigrant from Gujarat, India, said, smiling from ear to ear. “I’m really excited, I’m happy. Thank you!”
Byron Loyd, an Upper West Side resident and customer of Topia’s for two decades, was happy to see his friend back in business. “It’s great. He’s been a really positive force.”
It’s a welcome relief for Loyd. “I was very upset,” Byron said, when things appeared bleak for Topia. “I depended on his generosity. Sometimes, I didn’t have the seven dollars for my two papers, and he would say, ‘No, you pay me later.’ It was so generous. He always kept papers for me...”
Topia’s return to work is the result of a community on the Upper West Side that simply refused to see him put out of business by bureaucracy and massive fines. It took many, many hours of work, and nearly all that work was done for free.
“We were very moved by Sadik’s story,” said Jillian Berman, one of the five lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardwell who worked pro bono on behalf of Sami. Among the lawyers are litigators and corporate real estate attorneys working together, which Berman described as “not a typical situation.”
Getting Sami back in business was no easy feat. Massive fines from selling unauthorized vaping products to make ends meet, a revoked business license by way of the newsstand’s deceased owner, and mismanagement from the deceased’s next of kin made for a complex mess. At one point, Topia was, unwittingly, operating under a fraudulent license. According to the lawyers, Sami had not communicated with the previous owner, from whom he had been subleasing the newsstand for nearly ten years. The next of kin didn’t renew the newsstand license following the owner’s death, along with the licenses for other products like cigarettes and lottery tickets.
It took a team of five experienced lawyers to work through it.
“We had a hard time navigating some of the licensing requirements, even with our law degrees,” Berman said.
“It takes so long to even get a license,” said Andrea Tan, an attorney for the New York City non-profit Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS). Tan, the Director of the Microenterprise Project at VOLS, continued, “I don’t know how anyone on their own could figure that maze of regulations, set up meetings with city officials, and persevere...I’m really proud of this.”
Tan worked alongside the Davis Polk & Wardwell law firm to help Topia get back in business, a task that she says took many hours of hard work with both the city and Topia, reading up on statutes, and meeting with officials on matters of entrepreneurial advocacy. Now, at the end of the road, Tan calls it “amazing.”
Among the attendees was Council Woman Gale Brewer, a major advocate for Topia through the whole process. “It was a community effort,” Brewer told the West Side Spirit. “Even today, I’ve had emails- ‘Thank you for opening the newsstand.’ It’s very unusual for this kind of love to be for a small business owner.” Brewer went on to thank the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. “They did the right thing to say that this is an issue,” the council member said. “There were so many different places everybody came together.”
Brewer gestured to the stand, Topia smiling beside his family, and the legal team beaming, said, “This is a very exciting moment; in a challenging world, this local love. The council member went on to praise Topia’s and his family, noting what they did with the money they received from a GoFundMe. “They sent it back,” Brewer said.