Pushcarts Are Conversations

Not a moment too soon if you ask me and if you don't stop with the questions, my next answer will be a Kreischer-brick kiss on the mouth. Thanks. This watch was spit-shined.

Don't get me wrong, I admire a good pushcart as much as the next smokehouse meat-piper lining Pitt Street. My mother rode one in the reverse-alderman position all the way to P.H. 24 (the "Polio Grounds" my Uncle would say - before he died in their treeless courtyard after a phlegm harvesting experiment) while in labor with me, a famous city story which gave "birth" (snip, spank) to the use of staged re-enactments in newscasts and remains a corollary for today's Broadway revival.

But in recent years the stench of decaying produce, death-packing density levels, and lack of standardized pushcart safety requirements have made the downtown streets a poorly repeated punchline in Malthusian urban planning. Chutes and ladders have been replaced with fire escapes and water balloons.

I welcome this "closed market" development philosophy because there's no better way to clean up the streets than to stick all the trash under one roof.

Read more: New York Times, 9/16/36
Related: To Market, To Market -- Essex Street Style [Gothamist]