I saw the signs on the Fifth Avenue: Did anyone eat a panini from the panini stand on Third Street? Please call JOANNA EBENSTEIN. Turns out she, a freelance writer, needed a quote for her New York Times City section article. I called her because I have tasted Matthew’s paninis. But she already had a quote from the  Boing Boing shop owner. The photograph of Zach, playing sitar and Matthew manning the stand is a really great photo. Here’s an excerpt from the story.

MATTHEW GLASER, 12, and Zachary Fine, 13, have a lot in common — if not with seventh graders around the country, at least with each other, and certainly with the spirit of their neighborhood, Park Slope, long the stamping ground of the spiritually curious, the upwardly mobile and the gastronomically advanced.

So it is not surprising that on a recent Saturday afternoon, the two were doing their share to keep up the neighborhood’s reputation. They had set up shop on Third Street, a few blocks from both the Park Slope Co-op and the bustle of hipper-than-thou boutiques and restaurants on Fifth Avenue, to sell their homemade panini to passers-by.

Matthew stood behind a table next to a cardboard sign reading "Panini $3," while Zachary stretched out on the sidewalk, lazily plucking his sitar.

"This is an up-and-coming neighborhood," Matthew said by way of explaining why the pair were selling panini rather than a more mundane item like, say, lemonade. "And it’s only getting fancier."

Apparently there was a market, albeit a modest one, for their offerings.