Local business thrives on shattered glass

By Danny R. Peralta
dannythepoint@gmail.com

If you’ve driven down Garrison Avenue, you’ve seen Maze. And Maze has seen you. For five years, he’s stood in front of Bronx Auto Glass on the corner of Garrison and Hunts Point avenues, watching for cars that have cracked or broken windows.

As a “car chaser,” it is Maze’s responsibility to stop dozens of cars daily, setting up deals to fix windshields, rear windows and shattered side glass before someone from the competition does it first.

With five years experience standing on that corner, six days a week from 9 to 5, Maze is an unofficial gatekeeper of the neighborhood. “I know just about everybody, young and old,” he said from his curbside perch. “I see most people going to work in the morning, and coming back home at night.”

Customers come from all over. Recently, a family of four drove down from White Plains to replace a broken window. A couple from Connecticut spent days without a side window, waiting for the weekend in order to be able to get a deal in Hunts Point.

Maze’s brother Nelson, the owner of Bronx Auto Glass, and his crew of window technicians, Will and Ray, immediately get to work on giving customers quick and cheap service. They know that if a car gets just a couple of yards past their store, they can lose an opportunity to make a decent living.

Traditionally, the auto glass workers of the area have been thought of as a nuisance, or worse, contributing to Hunts Point’s reputation as crime-ridden. Rogue workers were thought to take advantage of locals by breaking car windows to drum up business. It was widely believed that some glass workshops were fronts for car-related crimes or drug dealing.

Spending two recent afternoons with the guys from Bronx Auto Glass, however, made it apparent that the industry has been transformed, and become part of the wave of positive change that has taken place in the community in the past 10 years.

“We have a great relationship with everyone, including the police, who sometimes even come to us for help,”says Maze.

Although they compete for customers, most of the area’s auto glass workers regard themselves as part of a loose team of family men who share a common goal – to provide good service so that customers will come back or refer a friend. If one team of workers can’t fix your car, they walk you over to another business that might be able to help.

“I take my job very seriously,” Maze says, “because at the end of the day I have to take care of my family. Feeding them one window at a time keeps me out of trouble and the shop open.”

A version of this story appeared in the July 2010 issue of The Hunts Point Express.