In response to that sort of criticism, a city task force intends to release a report by the end of the year recommending revisions in the way sidewalk newsstands are regulated.

Right now, in a city where retailers often pay rents of more than $100 a year for each square foot of store space, sidewalk newsstands stand out as an exceptional bargain.

About 250 sidewalk newsstands operate within the city, two-thirds fewer than 20 years ago.

Whether the task force will be willing or able to reshape City Hall into a more adroit landlord of sidewalk newsstands remains unclear.

The news dealers asked the court to declare these provisions - part of a wider new regulatory plan for the city's approximately 300 sidewalk newsstands - to be unconstitutional.

Since the 1850's, generations of blind New Yorkers have operated sidewalk newsstands.

The number of sidewalk newsstands has dramatically declined from 1,325 in 1950 to 298 today.

Like steam-shrouded streets and kamikaze cab drivers, sidewalk newsstands have long been a quintessential fixture on the New York landscape.

Police called for reinforcements as the fighting spilled into the street, where a police car had all its windows broken out and a sidewalk newsstand was burned down.

You can pick up almost any publication at the sidewalk newsstand and read it free.