May 3, 2003, 5:08 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- The slaughterhouses, breweries and tenements from the 1930s are gone, but the flea market in a neighborhood once known as Hell's Kitchen was back on Saturday.

New York's version of London's Portobello Road or the Marche aux Puces in Paris was revived more than six decades after the original Paddy's Market touted goods off pushcarts.

About 100 vendors set up on a block behind the city's main bus station, in a Manhattan no-man's-land of run-down buildings and empty lots.

The lineup of goods included everything from vintage clothing to cigars, African art, flowers, fruits, vegetables and homemade bread and pies.

"Just to bring something human back to this area feels nice," said businessman Alan Boss, a native New Yorker who negotiated a deal with the city to close West 39th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues to traffic each weekend.

Renting a spot costs from $50 to $75 per day, depending on the space.
"That's cheaper than other street fairs or open markets," said Lisa Daehlin, an opera singer who handcrafts handbags, scarves and hats.

Michael Sheafe billed himself a "toaster historian." "This is a 1952 Sunbeam, cleaned and refurbished _ it'll last another 50 years," said the Upper East Side resident, pointing at a gleaming two-slicer marked $179. Next to it was a toaster with a sliding bread cage, "with pivoting doors _ 1923, Hamilton, Ohio," Sheafe recited.

Even older were some of the 20,000 doorknobs stocked by Olde Good Things, a West 24th Street shop run by the New York office of the Philadelphia-based Church of Bible Understanding.

The table was filled with items salvaged before building demolitions, including a $35 terra cotta "floret" that graced Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, Tenn.

"Elvis Presley had his high school graduation there, and he performed there a few times," said vendor Bob Johnston.

At a nearby table, Joel Perrotta Jr., a music booking agent fallen on hard economic times, was offering jewelry designed by his friend Michael Regan.

"This is the only outdoor market in New York on a street that is closed for this, permanently every week," said Perrotta, whose father used to shop at the old Paddy's Market.

Paddy's operated in Hell's Kitchen from the 1870s to the late 1930s, on Ninth Avenue between 38th and 42nd streets. The carts rolled in on Saturday, doing business into the wee hours Sunday.

The new market operates between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. both weekend days, two blocks down from the Port Authority Bus Terminal _ a traffic-clogged stretch that still has old butchers and fishmongers, as well as the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

The Hell's Kitchen neighborhood _ now more elegantly named Clinton _ is slowly being gentrified, with residential high- rises sprouting here and there.

To sell at the old Paddy's, vendors just rolled in. Now they download an application on the new market's Web site.

It's not all exotic fare.

Said Barbara Kreines, a retired schoolteacher sipping lemonade in the spring breeze: "I got some potatoes _ which I needed."

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