Car Accident Shatters Metropolitan Avenue Storefront

has been a mainstay on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills for more than 60 years, but at 2:17 a.m. Sunday morning, something happened in the lobby for the first time: a car accident.

According to owner Michael Lieberman, who bought the business three years ago, an SUV and livery cab got tangled up at the intersection of 71^st Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue early Sunday morning, and the accident sent one of the cars right through his storefront.

The damage was evident in photos that Lieberman took himself: a mangled security gate, shatter glass and a decades-old display platform mangled and pushed into the selling floor.

“They knocked out the whole front windows there, they cracked the glass in another pane, they shifted the whole [window-box] stage,” he said. “My wife and I cleaned up the whole inside.”

Lieberman said he, his friend and his wife spent all of Sunday evening securing the massive hole in his store front that the accident left.

A road sign and parking meter were still lying on the sidewalk with some stray police tape as of Monday morning.

As of Monday afternoon, police had not released any information as to charges for any of the drivers of either automobile.