Every morning except on Saturday, the buses stop at a bustling corner of Manhattan, and bearded men in dark suits and felt hats, some clutching prayer books and speaking Yiddish, step onto the sidewalk and disappear into a brick building.
But this is not a yeshiva or synagogue.
This is B&H Photo-Video, one of the biggest and most famous camera stores in the world.
PHOTO: AP
On any given day, 8,000 to 9,000 people pass through the front door a block from Madison Square Garden.
Known as "Beards and Hats" because of the many Hasidic Jews who work there, B&H has become an authentic New York experience. Shopping there is akin to ordering a pastrami on rye at Katz's Delicatessen.
It is a loud and frenetic scene that involves fast-moving lines of customers, all pushing and elbowing to reach the cash registers. Above the many bearded cashiers, conveyor belts move merchandise from one counter to the next.
"I live in Minnesota and the sensibility is not always Midwes-tern," said Alec Soth, a photographer with the legendary Magnum agency and a B&H customer for a decade.
"It's a little more abrupt. But they're cheap and they have a huge selection," he said.
For many, the store has become indispensable. If you can't find it elsewhere, B&H probably has it. When NASA needed a rare lens years ago, it turned to B&H.
"They are the 500kg gorilla in the photo specialty business," said Greg Scoblete, an editor at Twice, a trade publication that covers the consumer-electronics industry.
But don't expect any miracles when you walk into B&H. Asked recently when the hot-selling iPod nano would be in stock, a salesman laughed and said: "When the Messiah comes, and then he's going to want one."
B&H executives refuse to discuss sales figures at the privately held company.
Ask how many cameras B&H sells every year and Herschel Jacobowitz, the company's chief information officer and business director, answers: "How many quarts of water are in the Hudson?"
Ask how business is going and you get this: Baruch Hashem, or "Blessed be God" -- meaning, roughly, "Thanks to God, things are good." (Store Manager Eli Daskal said he has always been told that the name B&H comes from Baruch Hashem.)
One indication of B&H's success that cannot be concealed sits in the Brooklyn Naval Yard: a nearly 80,000m2 warehouse that feeds its online division, which represents about 70 percent of B&H's business.
B&H began in lower Manhattan in 1973. To some, the venture probably seemed like an unusual blend: Hasidism, a form of mystical ultra-Orthodox Judaism whose adherents look and dress like their 18th-century Eastern European ancestors, and the latest in electronics.
But the pairing made perfect sense, said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American-Jewish history at Brandeis University. In Europe before World War II, Orthodox Jews and Hasidim in particular worked as peddlers, and after the Holocaust, many came to the US.
"It was a skill that they brought with them," Sarna said. "They knew about buying and selling. In the case of the Hasidim, many of them also came with these commercial skills and they looked around for a good product."
Since moving to its current location in 1997, B&H has expanded rapidly, advertising aggressively on the radio.
Already, B&H has outgrown its giant store. By April, B&H executives hope to double the retail space.
The company employs 800 to 900 people, many of them religious Jews. The store closes each Friday afternoon until Sunday in observance of the Sabbath, and on about a half-dozen Jewish holidays each year.
Richard Spiess, 34, a salesman at B&H for two-and-a-half years, said there are some advantages to being non-Jewish in such a heavily Jewish environment.
"We get a lot of nice holidays off," he said.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2