Peddling Pays

Sidewalk hustlers multiply

They stake out selling space on the sidewalks of the world's most populous and profitable avenues. They do not advertise their wares. A simple litany suffices: "Check it out ... Why pay more? . . . Check it out." Fast-buck operators, masters of the quick hustle and the silver-tongued spiel, they are the street vendors of America, peddlers reincarnated from Dickensian England, catering to impulse buyers of every class and whim.

With today's high prices and soaring sales taxes, peddlers are finding eager customers in such disparate places as the Coconut Grove section of Miami, Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill, the French Quarter of New Orleans and Manhattan's Wall Street. New York City, which issued 5,000 licenses to peddlers last year, actually harbors many more--more even than during the Depression. City officials note that there was a threefold increase in the number of peddlers in 1978 owing to a May court ruling that police must first issue a warning and then a summons before confiscating a street vendor's goods.

Many New York peddlers are new immigrants: Lebanese, Puerto Ricans and Africans who readily translate savvy from bazaars back home to the streets of Manhattan. Their merchandise too reflects a worldly variety. For lunchtime crowds there are Vietnamese beancakes, falafel, shish kebab, natural-dried fruit, roasted chestnuts. Peddlers sell both the staples of daily life (frying pans, long Johns, umbrellas, sweaters, gloves, watches) and the effluvia of pop culture (pot pipes, amulets, incense, beads and bells).

No small part of sidewalk sales' allure is the buyer's happy suspicion that he is getting a bargain on hot goods. Police note that most of the merchandise is legally obtained from wholesalers, but there are bargains to be had. In midtown Manhattan, Carl Britt of Newark, N.J., for instance, sells kitchenware from the back of his station wagon: for a set of pots marked to sell at $69, he pays $15 and charges $20; for a set of dishes marked $22.50, he pays $7 and charges $12.50.

Lucrative business, this, largely because there is almost no overhead, no rent, and, usually, no taxes. New York police estimate that a general-merchandise peddler makes an average of $15,000 a year; some boast of taking in $1,000 a day. Lobsang Khendup, 46, an enterprising wood-crafter in San Francisco, supports a wife and three sons on annual street sales of $22,000. "What better job is there?" asks Ellie Cohen, 29, who sells her own home-baked goods in Miami in the whiter and in Portsmouth, N.H., in the summer. " work for myself. If I get tired of Miami, I can set up business some place else without a lot of hassle."

Store owners are indignant. In response to the "peddler plague," and to help control the selling of drugs on the side, New York City Mayor Ed Koch last month recommended that all vendors be required to provide proof of state and city sales tax payment, and display the selling price of all items. Such rules would be even harder to enforce than the present regulation that puts some popular areas of the city off-limits. The public does not support clean-up efforts, apparently feeling that a patrolman's time might be better spent tracking down muggers than peddlers. Moreover, peddling is part of the city's tradition. At least one prominent Manhattan department store family, in fact, can trace its lineage back to a pushcart peddler.

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