New Yorkers upset they can’t buy ‘Charlie Hebdo’

14 January 2015, 9:29 pm

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The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo may well have been the hottest unavailable item in New York, as phones at magazine and newspaper vendors rang off the hook with thousands of inquiries.

“This is all I’m doing today!” says Ami Patel, owner of the Around the World magazine and book store near Times Square — one of the city’s biggest purveyors of foreign publications.

“There’s a phone call every minute, plus walk-ins,” says Patel, who could barely finish a sentence before another call came in.

It is a similar story at other magazine sellers; even the New York-based cultural division of the French Embassy says it had not yet received any copies.