Even On Fifth Avenue They Don’t Go Calling The Mayor . . .

This should probably end the woman’s outer borough experiment:

Her face was as creased and worn as old leather. A semicircle of blue ink was tattooed between her eyebrows, a sign of tribal belonging, and despite the sweltering heat, a thick scarf was wrapped tightly around her head. Sitting on the sidewalk on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, she rattled a plastic yogurt container filled with coins at passers-by.

In the sari shops, gold jewelry stores and curry houses that dot the commercial heart of South Asian Queens, many theories are offered as to where the woman is from. Romania? The former Yugoslavia? Russia? Turkey? No seems to know for sure.

But among business owners, there is consensus on one thing: She is not welcome.

For more than a year, she and several others like her have been fixtures on the neighborhood’s streets, portraits of the kind of poverty and desperation more commonly found in developing countries. And in this immigrant enclave, where most residents have roots in developing countries themselves, resentment against these female panhandlers has festered.

“Around here, people are tired of it,” said Pigeon Islam, a cherubic-faced phone card seller at the Dynasty Deli, at 73rd Street and 37th Avenue.

Kanubhai Chauhan, president of the Jackson Heights Merchants’ Association, who was drinking chai in his real estate office on 74th Street, added: “I don’t like people standing in front of my building begging — who does? It doesn’t give a good impression of the neighborhood.”

On Tuesday, the mayor and other top city officials met with local residents at the Jackson Diner, and a member of the merchants group asked the mayor if his administration could address the problem.