'Things Can Be Quiet'

Manuel Rivas stands in front of a meat cart next to his workstation in the West Side Market basement.
PHOTO: James W. Pindell
Manuel Rivas stands in the same small basement room in which he has cut meat for more than 10 years. Rivas, a butcher, began working on the ground floor of the West Side Market after immigrating from El Salvador at 16. Then the grocery store expanded its basement, and down Rivas went.

Ripping open the thick, air-tight plastic in which raw beef is wrapped when it arrives at the store, Rivas slips the meat onto a hard plastic butchering table. His hands, covered by green surgical gloves, feel the meat for large chunks of fat. Rivas takes a large, wide knife in his right hand and begins the process of cutting off strips, which will shortly be packed and then sold upstairs. "I work quick," says Rivas, pointing to three five-pound meat slabs that he says will take him less than 10 minutes to prepare.

A tan model in a yellow bikini smiles from a calendar hanging on the wall behind one of the two workstations in this narrow room. "That’s his calendar, not mine," says Rivas, coyly smiling as he points to his co-worker. He gestures toward a different calendar with a picture of a World War II-era automobile. "Mine is that one over there," he says.

Rivas, who lives a few blocks away from the store, is surrounded by an electric knife sharpener on the floor near his left foot and a portable radio next to his ear. His 14-year-old daughter Jennette teases Rivas for liking what she calls "old music" – ’80s tunes, especially Rod Stewart. "I listen to Spanish music too, but any sound helps," says Rivas. "Things can be quiet down here."