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Armfuls of Wiener Rolls, Mouthfuls of Coffee Milk and Outstretched Palms
Greg Stevens, who runs the family business, Olneyville New York System, in his original Providence wiener restaurant. He now operates three of them.
By DAN BARRY
NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Will you do the right thing?
Not so long ago, that question came looking for one of the regular, hard-working Joes of Rhode Island. In a recent federal indictment alleging audacious public corruption in the small town of North Providence, he is described only as the owner of “Business B,” which in turn is described only as a “hot dog restaurant.” Wieners, actually, but no matter.
The question finally tracked down this owner of Business B — also known as Greg Stevens — caught him by surprise, and challenged his very essence. Depending on how “right” was being defined at the moment, the fates wanted to know: Would he do the right thing?
Mr. Stevens, nearly 50, has been around. He and his sister, Stephanie, run three small restaurants with the deliciously complex name of Olneyville New York System — though, to Mr. Stevens, the name stands for family honor, tradition and decades of serving wieners “all the way,” with meat sauce, diced onions and celery salt. Only $1.80 apiece.
His forebears were Greek immigrants who opened a small sandwich shop in Brooklyn, then moved, one after another, to Providence, to sell distinct, delectable wieners. In 1946, his side of the family opened a restaurant in the Olneyville section, giving name to their product. Olneyville, by way of New York.
The restaurant became a singular Rhode Island place, where everyone gets along: the bookies, the cops, the college kids, the workers from the remnants of the neighborhood’s mills and factories. Where, for some reason, a wiener always goes best with a glass of coffee milk. Where customers ignore health-conscious additions to the menu. Where the cooks array a dozen steamed rolls “on the arm” — literally — and fill them to order; it is a form of culinary performance art designed to set a health inspector’s heart aflutter.
This is Mr. Stevens’s wondrous world.
In 2007, the family opened another restaurant, their third, in North Providence, a close-knit town of 32,000 people with a reputation for farcical local politics and occasional corruption. Mr. Stevens knew of its reputation, and waited for the moment when he would be tested.
That doesn’t happen anymore, his sister said.
Oh yes it does, he said.
After a year of good, but not great, business, Mr. Stevens applied to the North Providence Town Council for a two-hour extension of his operating hours, to 3 a.m.. His reputation was solid; he was confident of approval. The matter was placed on the Council agenda for April 7, 2009.
Then a North Providence councilman, a longtime customer in Olneyville, called Mr. Stevens to say they needed to meet. He was having trouble rounding up the votes for Mr. Stevens’s request and, well, we should meet in person. Mr. Stevens said no. The councilman called again, and he said no again, thinking all the while:
Something’s up.
On April 7, Mr. Stevens walked up the steps to the simple brick building with white pillars on Smith Street: North Providence Town Hall, where those elected by the people conduct the business of the people. He watched as Councilman Raymond Douglas made, Councilman John Zambarano seconded and the Council approved a motion to defer the matter of Olneyville New York System until its meeting in May.
Soon after, a longtime friend, later christened by the indictment as John Doe No. 4, asked Mr. Stevens to meet him in his office in Providence. No problem. When Mr. Stevens got there, the friend vented a little about the so-and-so members of the North Providence Council, held up five fingers across his chest, and mouthed the word: Five.
Mr. Stevens: What? Say it out loud.
Mr. Doe No. 4: They want $5,000 for the approval of your extended-hours request.
Here it was, one of the great cosmic questions. Is Greg Stevens in or is he out? Is he a stand-up guy? Will he do the “right” thing?
“My immediate reaction was...,” Mr. Stevens says, “Wait. I want to get this right. My reaction was: Anger. Surprise. Fear. Because I did not expect that from him. I very vocally expressed all those above emotions with many expletives — and I don’t even swear.”
He recalled laughing as he left, laughing at the cheap absurdity of it all. “They wanted money for me to open an extra hour or two for a couple of nights a week,” he said, “so that I could sell my $1.80 item.”
Former North Providence councilmen, from left, John Zambarano, Raymond Douglas and Joseph Burchfield, in a photo hanging at Town Hall
Wieners.
Mr. Stevens attended the Council meeting in May to see democracy in action, North Providence-style. On a motion by Councilman Zambarano that was seconded by Councilman Douglas, the Council voted to deny the Olneyville New York System request, then moved on to the matter of a license for a business called U Scream Ice Cream.
Mr. Stevens did not call the police, though. It never occurred to him, mostly because, he said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” And partly because, that just isn’t done in Rhode Island.
According to the F.B.I. and the United States attorney’s office in Providence, Mr. Stevens had bumped up against a voracious if somewhat clownish conspiracy of greed, orchestrated by at least three of the town’s seven Council members — Mr. Zambarano, Mr. Douglas and Joseph Burchfield, the Council president — and exposed, in part, by a fourth councilman who often accessorized with a wire.
The indictment says that in early 2009, for example, they sought and received $25,000 for agreeing to rezone some property for a prominent Rhode Island developer who wanted to build a supermarket. When it was suggested that they had sold out cheap, court records say, one of the councilmen said not to worry: The developer was thinking of building an Applebee’s or a Chili’s restaurant, and would need a liquor license.
More often, though, the alleged antics of these councilmen, now known statewide as the Three Stooges, would embarrass any self-respecting stooge. According to the indictment, for example, they used a text message to squeeze another businessman seeking a liquor license. The businessman texted back.
He began with an expletive, then continued, “Nobody is getting anything for that license ... this is real life, this isn’t a movie, like ‘The Sopranos,’ where you have to pay to do things.”
In addition, one of these councilmen, Mr. Douglas, is also accused of running an illegal gambling business while helping to run town business. On June 2, 2009, he attended a Council meeting. The next day, the government says, he left a voice mail for an indebted, suddenly elusive gambler, saying classic phrases like, “I know where you live,” and “It’s out of my hands” and “Someone will knock on your door, I guess, or whatever.”
The three councilmen have at least had the decency to resign their seats while they await trial. The State of Rhode Island is left to wonder once again whether there is something in the water. And Mr. Stevens has no choice but to cooperate with the authorities, telling them what he knows — although, for all his street savvy, the experience has taken him aback.
Sitting in a back booth in his family’s restaurant in Olneyville, while Jimmy and Sal and a few other longtime employees joke with the regulars and prepare a few wieners “all the way,” Mr. Stevens has trouble doing the moral math. He cannot understand why these three councilmen would risk their family names, their jobs, their health benefits, the well-being of their children, all for — a few thousand dollars?
Other regular Joes must be wondering the same thing: Why? So that they could look large in small North Providence? So that they could appear “connected” to some greater power source? So that when they walked into the Twin Oaks Restaurant, or the Capital Grille, people would rise to greet them?
For Mr. Stevens, the question why these men risked so much is much harder to answer than whether he would do the right thing.
“This is what overwhelms me,” he says, as another customer sits down at the counter of Olneyville New York System, knowing exactly what he’s going to get.
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