Directly in front of him, a faded white GMC Safari minivan with an 8-foot trailer occupies two parking spaces. on Thursday, March 17, after the lunch crowd has thinned out, Nidal Balbeisi stands on the sidewalk with a cell phone to his ear in front of his Zeus Greek and Lebanese Café on Jefferson Street. But one thing’s certain: talk to anyone with a stake in the matter, and one name inevitably surfaces - Frankie.Īt 2:30 p.m. City-parish officials claim that all downtown businesses deserve a level playing field. Others say city-parish officials are singling out one individual with the revised ordinance.
Some downtown business owners say regulation for street vendors is overdue. As a result of the recent flurry of bureaucratic interest in his operation, he moved his trailer to a private parking lot between City Bar and the old Lee Furniture building on Jefferson Street last weekend, without incident. And that was all within 24 hours.įor Yaghobi, business as usual is becoming highly unusual. Later, a Lafayette police officer told him to move his trailer off Jefferson Street or risk having it towed. Then, a state alcohol and tobacco control officer stopped him from selling cigarettes on Jefferson Street. First, a Lafayette fire inspector informed him he was violating city-parish fire codes. Undaunted, he vowed to pay the fines and continue business as usual.īut Yaghobi didn’t count on a number of unexpected visitors. Under the revised ordinance, Yaghobi received three $90 fines within a week. Yaghobi caters to the weekend late-night crowd in downtown on Jefferson Street. The Iranian immigrant and street vendor has sold food from his mobile kitchen on wheels for the last six years under the name Frankie Burger. On March 3, a longstanding city ordinance that prohibited residents from parking vehicles in a public parking space for making repairs to a vehicle, displaying it for sale, washing or greasing a vehicle or “any commercial advertising purposes” was revised to make it illegal to operate a business from a public parking space.įor Faramarz “Frankie” Yaghobi, it was bad news. A revised Lafayette city-parish ordinance turns up the heat on street vendor Faramarz “Frankie” Yaghobi.
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