Taken to the Cleaners
Remember that Adrian Walker column from a couple days back about the plight of Elias and Caroline Mavroidis, owner-operators of South End Cleaners and winners of a 2007 Best of Boston award? Walker’s piece had obvious good guys, an even clearer bad guy, unconscionable injustices, the works. It was so satisfyingly simple it even fooled us. Well, turns out there’s an absurd saga behind the affair that involves, among other things, angry in-laws, alleged death threats, police reports, and one hell of a slow-witted painter.
The gist of Walker’s column was that the Mavroidis’s landlord, Wayne Doherty (cast as the villain), told the couple that they had a choice between having their rent raised from $2,900 to $5,000, or being evicted. Worse, Walker reported that Doherty intended to open his own dry-cleaner shop in the same location, cashing in on his former tenants’ clientele and reputation. Doherty stayed inexplicably mum at the time, but called back yesterday angry as hell and ready to tell his side.
For starters, Doherty said (more shouted) that when he originally negotiated the five year lease for South End Cleaners, there was a “crystal clear” understanding that the contract would never be renewed. At the time, there was already a dry-cleaner operating out of South End Cleaner’s current spot. After that operator decided not to renew her lease, Doherty said he would have taken it over immediately if he weren’t so busy with “other things.” He says that when he negotiated the deal with Louis Dakoyannis, Elias’s brother-in-law, everybody understood the Mavrodis’s were getting the spot for five years and no more. Dakoyannis said the same thing.
The Mavroidis’s, of course, beg to differ, saying not only that there was never any such understanding, but that Dakoyannis was uninvolved in the negotiations. The owner of Baker Street Cleaners in West Roxbury, and husband of Caroline Mavroidis’s sister, Dakoyannis employed Elias in his shop before the Mavroidis’s opened up in the South End. Doherty says Dakoyannis hammered out the negotiation as a favor to his in-laws; the Mavroidis’s say he had nothing to do with it.
When I called Dakoyannis, things only got messier. A decidedly surly character, Dakoyannis lectured me on the foibles of the media before getting around to saying that he had, in fact, negotiated the lease and it was agreed by all that there would be no renewal after five years.
There’s just one problem: Dakoyannis hates his brother-in-law. A lot. “I ended up getting screwed by them,” Dakoyannis said. Long story short: Dakoyannis used to do business with the Mavroidis’s, now he doesn’t. Everyone has their own account of why, but frankly it doesn’t matter. Just know it’s so bitter that Dakoyannis’ wife and Caroline, her sister, haven’t talked in five years. On top of that, Caroline accuses Dakoyannis of lying about negotiating the lease because he’s plotting to take over the shop with Doherty.
Things escalated on the afternoon of August 15, when Doherty and Elias met on Springfield Street, near South End Cleaners. Doherty says he was leaning back against a car, minding his own business when Elias came out of nowhere, cursed at him, threatened his life, spit in his face, and would have started clobbering him if it weren’t for a painter who got in between them.
“He said, ‘Fuck you.’ Really vile, really visceral,” Doherty said.
Elias counters that all he said to Doherty was: “I don’t want to talk you, what you’re doing is unethical, you’re trying to steal my business, and my livelihood, and how I’m going to feed my kids.”
The police were called to the scene and a report was filed. In it, an independent witness reported Elias to have told Doherty, “You are a mother fucker; You’re a marked man. Do you know what a marked man is?”
When I called Elias today to ask him about the police report, he flatly denied it, alleging that Doherty coerced the witness, an employee of his, into making up the quote. Then he yelled outside at someone to come and talk to me. It turned out to be the painter who got between Doherty and Elias.
The painter, who requested anonymity because he works for Doherty, told me that he was the one who “broke it up” and that nothing really happened. How, I asked, can you break up a fight that doesn’t happen?
“It just looked like it was going to be a little too much. I just stood in between them and let the words fly. At least no fists flew,” he said, adding that never heard Elias say, “Fuck you” or anything about a “marked man.”
Then I asked him if he thought it was ultimately necessary for the police to be called. “At the time I thought so,” he said. When I asked why, after a tense moment of silence, he said, “I’m going to give the phone back now,” and handed the receiver to Elias.
Who’s telling the truth in all this? Who knows. In the meantime, Elias reports that all the positive press–and there’s been lots–from Walker’s black-and-white column has helped him and his wife land a new spot across the street from the place they’re about to be evicted from.
This would be especially good news, if the couple didn’t have a second shop at 297 Huntington to fall back on, a fact omitted or missed by Walker.
Ah, the power of the press.
August 31st, 2007 at 1:19 am
I am the brother of the sisters in question. I have not taken sides. This article seems like a pretty biased article. I wish you would show both sides. Does it sound reasonable to anyone that someone would agree to run a store for 5 years and then just leave, especially after it supports a family? As far as the “other” store….well yes, it exists. It was opened 3 months ago. However, boston Magazines devoted reporter decided to “omit” the fact that this store has been losing money and will most likely be closed if it doesn’t drastically turn around. A money losing store is a great fall back! As far as dakoyiannis, he never brokered anything. No lease was ever negotiated by him. He has been plotting to take over the store ever since they opened it. As a matter of fact, he made a comment once to me about how we should “watch our lanlord” This is about greed in it’s purest form. Dakoyiannis has one of the most succesful drycleaners in boston, it was handed to him on a silver platter by his father and uncle. But this isn’t enough. Do you mean to tell me that there are no other locations in boston to open a store? Isn’t a bit too coincidental that the store in question is being sought by family? He approached the lanlord after he had a falling out with my other brother in law, and told him that if he didn’t renew the lease, they could open the new store together and sell it in a year and split the profits. The lanlord has been avoiding talking about the lease for a year. He is a snake in the concrete grass. It is a shame that a reporter such as yourself would take a stance on something like this when you have not done the proper research. You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m happy though because people are not stupid and there is a great deal of support from within the community. You can write your articles and print lop sided views, but don’t cry when you are on the other side of the stick…the unforgiving side. Until you lose your livelyhood to people who are already rich, you will never know. Good luck.
September 17th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I am the sister of the above mentioned crew. I would like to add some clarity to this whole debacle. I don’t personally know the landlord of the South End cleaners and tailors building. I have never even spoken to him. I do know that the man gave a five year lease and that he has honored that lease. Why the sour grapes. There was never an option, or any promise to give more time. As a matter of fact they actually double crossed the previous tenant of that building, which also happened to be a dry cleaning store. They walked into an existing successful business, without paying a penny. Isn’t that injustice? Where were the reporters then? Elias Mavroidis is not as innocent and clean cut as you’ve made him out to be. He came here to go to a community college working as a part-time waiter in the North Shore, not the famous professional basketball player he so claims.
He accepted our hospitality by living in our house for free. My husband gave him a job to help him support his new family. Elias learned the dry cleaning business from my husband Louis Dakoyannis at Baker Cleaners in West Roxbury, where he was employed for about 3 years. Not in Roslindale or Roxbury as he says.
My brothers’ above response is full of inaccuracies and untruths. He has never once in 5 years come to either my husband or I to ask our side of the story. My brother has a lot of his own problems that he needs to take care of. He shouldn’t bother getting involved in things that he knows nothing of and that is none of his business.
My husband is a good person, a good husband and father. He has only tried to help my family, especially my brother and sister, all they have done is take complete advantage of him. It’s funny my brother mentions that everything has been handed to my husband, my father to this day pays a lot of my brothers’ and sisters’ day to day expenses and bills. My husband works very, very hard to be able to provide for his family. Nothing has ever been handed to him, he has worked for everything he has accomplished.
September 20th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
The above statement has terrible grammar!!!!