For more than 10 years, a little green mini monster truck parked outside a Gowanus auto shop was more than a neighborhood landmark. It was a tribute to the man who built it.<\/p>\n
Andreas Stylianou ran New Millennium Motors on 3rd Avenue and 7th Street in Gowanus for more than 40 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople loved him. It wasn’t just a repair shop to him, it was more than that,\u201d said his wife, Maria Stylianou. <\/p>\n
After Andreas died in a crash in 2019, Maria kept his memory alive by decorating the truck and leaving it parked outside the shop.<\/p>\n
But last Wednesday, it was gone. <\/p>\n
The city’s Department of Sanitation had towed it at 5:30 a.m. and sent it to a scrapyard, where it was crushed.<\/p>\n
“To suddenly do this overnight, not give us a chance, not give us a warning, to me it\u2019s no different than a thief,” Maria said.<\/p>\n
DSNY said the truck was towed because it didn\u2019t have a license plate and VIN, “which is not allowed in any circumstance,\u201d a spokesperson said. “We tagged the vehicle and it was removed six hours later, in accordance with the law.”<\/p>\n
Neighbors mourned the loss of what many called a beloved community fixture.<\/p>\n
“It was like a notable art installment for the community,” one resident said. “Very sad to see it go.\u201d<\/p>\n
A portion of the street was co-named in Stylianou’s honor after his death, a lasting reminder of the man who called this block home for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than 10 years, a little green mini monster truck parked outside a Gowanus auto shop was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-192799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}