Neighborhood News: No More Pork Stores

A Ridgewood landmark closes, and the herd thins.

- Chris Crowley

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, butcher shops have been on the chopping block, as a generation of meatcutters retire with few apprentices behind them. In Carroll Gardens, the century-old G. Esposito & Sons Jersey Pork Store closed this past April because its aging owners couldn’t find the right successors. Staubitz Market, up the street from Esposito & Sons, and Greenwich Village’s 88-year-old Florence Prime Meat Market have faced recent near-death experiences. Now, the cleaver is coming down on Morscher’s, which for nearly 70 years has been grinding, curing, and smoking an overwhelming range of German, Austrian, Polish, a