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'Sopranos' Pork Store No More

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By JANET FRANKSTON LORIN, The Associated Press

Published: November 12, 2007

KEARNY, N.J. - Eight months ago, James Gandolfini drove his white SUV out of the parking lot of Satriale's for the last time, as HBO wrapped up the final season of "The Sopranos."

Now, the building has followed the same fate as the popular show.

It met its end.

Last month, owner Manny Costeira demolished the structure, home to a fictional pork store where TV mobster Tony Soprano and his Jersey crew hung out on the acclaimed mob drama. On TV, a life-sized pig sat atop the building.

"We whacked the pork store," said Costeira, who leased the empty building to HBO.

Nine condo units will replace the former storefront. The project is called "The Soprano," and prices range from $325,000 to $385,000. Construction is expected to start in the spring and would be finished in about a year.

The show was mostly filmed at a New York City sound stage, but many scenes were shot across the Garden State to provide a real Jersey feel. Several sites, including the fake pork store, were shot in Kearny, a working-class town across the Passaic River from Newark and about nine miles west of Manhattan.

Now that Satriale's has been demolished, Costeira has been using the Internet to hawk chunks of cast stone from the facade. He said he's already sold about 1,000 pieces in two sizes, for $25 and $50, to fans as far away as Ireland and New Zealand.

The 2-inch-square smaller chunks are mounted on a black wooden block with an "authentic porkstore" name plate. A "certificate" that accompanies the larger chunks promises it came from the building that once stood as "the familiar location of the fictional Satriale's pork store featured on the hit HBO television series 'The Sopranos.'"

"It's quite a little gag gift," Costeira said. "For a real Sopranos fan, it's a real piece of the show. It's a piece of television history."

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