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A Guss by Any Other Name

Lower East Side picklery to lose name, too

by
Jesse Oxfeld
August 03, 2009

Last week brought the news that Guss’ Pickles, the stalwart Lower East side vinegared-cucumber emporium, would soon be relocating to Brooklyn. Which was bad enough. But now it gets even worse: As New York’s Daily News reported Friday, a 2007 legal settlement between Pat Fairhurst, who owns the Orchard Street store, and the father-son duo of Steve and Andrew Leibowitz, Bronx picklemakers who had purchased the rights to the name, allows Fairhurst to peddle pickles as Guss’s only at the Orchard Street location. Which means that when Guss’ Pickles moves to Brooklyn, it’ll no longer be Guss’ Pickles. “We have a following, they don’t,” Fairhurst told the News. And yet somehow Fairhurst Pickles of Flatbush doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Jesse Oxfeld, a former executive editor and publisher of Tablet Magazine, is a freelance theater critic. He was The New York Observer’s theater critic from 2009 to 2014.