Old-time meat purveyor Walmir has closed, leaving future generations one step closer to total confusion about the meatpacking district’s name. Walmir, a major source of meat for the likes of Peter Luger, was one of the last of the butchers who still brought meat in “on the rail,” as whole hindquarters of beef. It was a wildly expensive and inefficient system, which is one reason Walmir went under. (The company, in a statement, blamed rising meat costs for the closure.) But the practice was universal for most of the area’s history, until, bit by bit, Walmir was left as the only business keeping it alive. Another neighborhood meat man, Pat La Frieda Sr., says there is no replacement for the likes of Walmir. “You go and try to find guys to move a 180-pound hindquarter. That’s not how people work today, ” he laments. “The trucks aren’t equipped for it. We have it done at the slaughterhouse. The meat business here doesn’t work the way it used to.”
