ABOUT THE FILM

Logline: An ode to New York's Penn Station and one of its longest-running businesses, “The Petal Pusher” is a reflection on the economics of love (and desperation), and it's a testament to a bygone era — before recent construction transformed the station into a kind of mall filled with chain stores. At its heart, this is a story about love, loss, and family.

Synopsis: "The Petal Pusher" is an ode to New York City's Penn Station, the busiest and perhaps dingiest transit hub in North America. It's told through the prism of what was one of the longest-running small businesses there: The Petal Pusher. It was a flower shop, with several strategically located kiosks, that served the daily crush of commuters, especially on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. The film is a reflection on the economics of love (and desperation), and it's a testament to a bygone era — before recent construction transformed the station into a kind of mall filled with chain stores. At its heart, this is a story about love, loss, and family. The director’s parents opened The Petal Pusher in the 1970s and ran it for decades, until the station's renovation forced the business to close.

The Full Story: Menace lingered in the stale air. It was dark and dingy. Rats and roaches scurried in the shadows. The stench of urine and skunked beer mixed with the aroma of freshly made popcorn and pizza. 

Growing up as the son of owners of what was among the longest-operating small businesses in Penn Station, I was steeped in sensory overload. There was the non-stop symphony of whooshing trains and tinny, incomprehensible announcements; the steady rotation of earnest violinists and aging crooners; the din of bleating cellphones, clacking heels, and aggressive panhandlers. I was intrigued by the commuters who sipped beer through straws — one of the oddities of this subterranean world — and those who found the time to slurp oysters at a raw bar called Tracks before catching the Long Island Rail Road to Ronkonkoma or the Acela to Boston. 

More than anywhere else, perhaps, I felt at home in the decrepit labyrinth of the old Penn Station — before the renovations in recent years made it feel more like a shiny mall filled with chain stores. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people hurried through its dimly lit concourses, making it the busiest transit hub in North America. There were paupers and plutocrats; cops and convicts; vagrants and zealots. And there was a pervasive feeling, within its organized chaos and relentless pulse, that anything could happen at any moment — a track fire or love at first sight, a hold-up or a hefty tip, a terrorist attack or a random act of compassion. 

It was here at my family’s flower shop where I learned about the economics of love and desperation — how time and space could be warped when there was a train leaving and a spouse or sweetheart waiting, especially on Valentine’s Day. We did our best to give our customers what they needed, with haste, like a relay runner quickly but delicately handing off a baton. Coming home empty-handed wasn’t an option for most, making even a single rose priceless.

It was on that truth that my parents built a business they called Flowerama, one that endured for decades, through stagflation, crime waves, wars, the attacks on Sept. 11, the Great Recession, Superstorm Sandy, repeated busts and booms — longer, as far as I know, than any other small business in Penn Station. William David Abel, my dad, was an accountant, and when one of his clients, a florist with a nearby shop in the old Statler Hilton Hotel, couldn’t afford to pay his bills, he offered my father an interest in his business. My dad ended up taking over the shop, and soon after, he somehow managed to win a bid to operate the flower concession just across Seventh Avenue in Penn Station.

I first experienced this epicenter of New York as a child in the Seventies, gawking at the great mulligatawny of humanity that streamed endlessly through the confusing warren of concourses. My dad put me to work in Flowerama’s hub, a shop he called The Petal Pusher, which fed several strategically located kiosks around the station — near entrances to the New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and the subway. My job included filling buckets with water and removing wilted petals so the roses always looked fresh. When I was older, he taught me how to use a staple gun to wrap bouquets in a sheet of colorful paper while making change for often impatient customers. 

Over the years, I watched thieves swipe bouquets, while others returned after we gave them too much change. I received tips for nothing more than a smile, while others berated me for flowers that died prematurely. Everyone in my family had a story to share, which we did with abandon at late dinners after the big holidays. A cousin recalled how, once, while she was wrapping a bouquet and stapling a plastic square packet of flower food to the paper, the customer began to blush. “Oh no, I don’t need those,” the man told her. “These are for my mother.” She looked at him, smiled, and recalled telling him, “Sir, this is plant food; it’s not condoms.” When his blush turned crimson, especially after my mom started joshing him, she told him there wouldn’t be any charge for the flowers.

Outside The Petal Pusher, I learned to be wary of the public bathrooms. One day, while seated in a stall, a man reached beneath the partition of an adjacent one and grabbed my ankle. (I quickly pulled up my pants and ran for my life.) Along the subway platforms, I was careful not to stand too close to the tracks, where it seemed like someone was falling or getting pushed into the electrified abyss on a routine basis, according to my reading of the tabloids. And as National Guard soldiers began patrolling the station with radiation detectors after 9/11, I wondered how concerned I should be about the threat of suitcase-sized nuclear bombs. 

At rush hour, on the busiest days, my family and those who came to help us resembled a finely tuned machine — my dad, mom, sister, spouses, cousins, and oldest friends, each with a specific job. My dad, who was as hard charging as he was hard of hearing, was the chief engineer, master planner, the one who built the business and made it all happen. My mom was its heart, nurturing relationships and exuding warmth, but she was also its conductor, barking commands, upselling when possible, the ultimate petal pusher. My older sister liked to tell me what to do — and to count the money. She also had a smile that could coax the most reluctant customers to part with their cash. No matter where I was in the world, on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, I always returned to Penn Station to sell flowers. In many ways, this rite was the mortar that bound our family together. 

We worked beside our longtime employees, most of them Dominican; ardent Yankee fans; masters of the station’s intricacies; connoisseurs of its delicacies, especially what was free or could be bartered; and most of all, keepers of its secrets. They knew who to turn to when one of the overhead fluorescent lights flickered out or when something didn’t look right. They showed me how to get around, especially through the narrow passages that seemed like secret portals from one part of the station to another. Even when they couldn’t speak the same language as the many tourists and immigrants from every corner of the world who repeatedly asked them for directions in broken English, they were able to guide them where they needed to go. Many of them watched me grow up; they felt like family. 

In 2011, after several years of fighting cancer, my dad mustered the strength he had left to organize every detail for the upcoming Valentine’s Day. Then he checked into a hospice in South Florida, where he died several days later. We celebrated him and fulfilled his last wishes by travelling two days after the funeral to sell flowers in Penn Station. 

My mom kept the business going for another six years, but it had become too much. The station was changing. Architects were planning long-needed renovations to the concourses. Chains were moving in, and the lease had become too expensive for a small business like ours to keep going. 

The time had come to close, to let go, to move on. 

Now, nearly a decade after Flowerama closed and despite all the changes, this underground world still feels familiar and mysterious; seductive and repulsive; comforting and unsettling. On a recent visit, some of the same musicians — including Sammy C. Davis and his elderly group of crooners who call themselves The Turnstiles — were still there, still singing their wistful ballads across from the old Petal Pusher, still doing their thing after decades of providing a live soundtrack to my upbringing. When I asked Sammie why he still does it after all these years, he said: “This is the biggest stage there is.”

More than anything, Penn Station continues to feel like a home — a mooring to my family, a beacon of the city’s incomparable diversity, a vault for so many memories. 

The 15-minute film premiered at the DOC NYC film festival in the fall of 2025. See more on FilmFreeway here.