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In front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art – where vendors have paid the city more than $500,000 a year for the right to maintain hot dog carts – Dan Rossi has for the past seven years claimed the spot directly in front of the museum’s crowded steps, curbside at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street.

Under an arcane state law, Mr. Rossi, a disabled former Marine, has managed to sell at the location without paying the city anything. The museum plaza has become crowded in recent years with other vendors staking their claim to the lucrative location.

Mr. Rossi has kept his prime location by setting up his cart early every morning. But after another vendor nearly beat him to it, almost a month ago, Mr. Rossi has refused to move his cart – not at night and not on Mondays, when the museum is closed.

“It’s illegal to leave it unattended, so I’ve been sleeping in it,” he said, folding out a lawn chair inside the cart Tuesday night. He lay between shelves of hot dog buns and shelves of ketchup, his head next to the grill and his feet sticking out of the cart’s open door. He said he would continue to sleep in his hot dog cart until city officials promised him they would enforce what he called his family’s legal right to claim the spot.

“I never thought I’d be living in a pushcart,” he said. “I’m a hot dog vendor from the Bronx living on Fifth Avenue, the wealthiest spot in New York.”