Tuesday, July 15, 2008

STREET SALE

I have been a garage-saler my whole life. I love garage sales. It doesn't take an eighty-year-old cat lady to realize that there's no need to buy everything brand new. Upstate, we put up signs days in advance. People take out ads in the paper. There's balloons tied to the mailbox, a lemonade stand run by six year olds, and occasionally $1.00 hot dogs on the grill.


If you go into suburbia, the neighbors will go all out and plan a street sale. All the soccer moms pull out their best PTA planning skills to organize such an event. If this is the case, you are really in luck. A street sale in suburbia is a like a fucking festival complete with color coded price tags and overpriced McDonalds toys. It's a little sad to think the idea of getting rid of plastic figurines and beanie babies is only thing keeping the neighbors together.


In Harlem, a street sale is done a little differently.

For starters, I’ like to say that in the summer time the streets are filthy. Not dirty. Filthy. There's no neat and trim lawns, no sprinkler systems, no grass. Just sidewalk. It’s not uncommon to have to dodge vomit, trash piles, people and piss. Once, I was quite confident that the pile of dog shit on the sidewalk did not come from a dog.

Among the filth, between the hours of sunrise and sunset from May-October you will find the Harlem Street Sale where vendors come to sell their unwanted items. It’s conveniently located on 125th St and Park Ave directly next to the Metro North overpass, with quick access to the 4,5, & 6 subway trains.

The items are lined up along the sidewalk. Old shoes, CD’s, clothing, and television sets are commonly found here. In order to walk along the sidewalk, you must step around these items that are so strategically placed. This sales technique is genius. Why not blockade the street so that customers must “browse“ through your goods?

If you do spot something that catches your interest, you may have to wake up the sleeping homeless person from his or her cardboard box and/or shopping cart in order to purchase the said commodity. Interestingly enough, even though the street sale continues throughout the summer, it never runs out of items. This leads me to believe that if I am ever missing my television or old McDonalds figurines, I know where to go to get them.

Who knows? Maybe I can talk them down in price.

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