The Pitchman
Joe Ades has departed this mortal coil. I never knew his name while he was alive, but he was a well-known example of a creature barely known in urban centers anymore: the sidewalk pitchman. I mentioned him in one of my early posts, but at the time I had no idea he had appeared in the local papers and in Vanity Fair.
As I said last March, I could never pass the guy without thinking of the Twilight Zone episode where a sidewalk salesman wants to make one last pitch to “open the heavens”. I wonder now how many people would even understand that such people once worked the urban centers of this country and were not just figments of Rod Serling’s imagination. With Joe gone, New York has lost one of the last of the breed.
Yes, sidewalks are still crowded with people selling crap. Cheap hats and gloves and toys that fall off the backs for trucks, faux designer sunglasses and watches and New York City souvenirs. Those tables are generally manned by sullen types who barely speak at all as they take your money in exchange for their trinkets. Nobody does a real selling job anymore in part because they don’t have to – the vendors populate the areas of the city that are frequented by, shall we say, the less sophisticated consumer. Another reason they don’t bother is that so many people walk the streets in a cocoon: digital music player headphones and phone earpieces distract pedestrians from their surroundings and each other so most attempted pitches would echo off the concrete unheard by potential marks. I mean customers.
I wonder as we continue through the great collapse of the 21st century if muggings and the like will return as criminals take advantage of the distracted and self-absorbed. Time was in many areas of the city that you had to pay attention to your surroundings as a matter of safety. Not so much anymore, and I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing, I’m just sayin’ if you know what I mean.
Another pitchman that I have fond memories of is the rhyming salesman on the Staten Island Ferry. This guy was a tall black gentleman who did laps with a shopping cart filed with batteries, umbrellas and other ephemera saying things like “I got it all for the fall in my little shopping mall” “I got some Duracells, they’ll treat you very well” and so forth. And then there were the shine guys, not pitchmen really but older guys in green overalls who used to shuffle around the boat with shine boxes yelling “shine….shine….shoe shine” punctuated by the occasional whistle. If one of them caught your eye and you had shoes on that weren’t immaculate he’d say “hey buddy, want a shine?” and if you said no he’d look at your feet in disgust and shake his head before moving on. Today all you get on the ferry are the occasional Rasta dudes trying to hit on young pretty women in the guise of selling them incense and oils. Of course the white hippie trustafarians on the boat would be a more likely target audience, but these guys by and large don’t know how to sell, or rather they don’t know how to sell merchandise. They let libido get in the way of business. The old timers would frown on that, I’m sure.
I guess the nearest thing to the pitchman that we have left in this city are the hawkers at street fairs like the San Gennaro festival. Though I think the difference there is that you can always detect the underlying cynicism, a meanness, a naked desire to separate the mark from his money. With a good pitchman you get the sense that he is enjoying his performance. That the pitch is his play, his great novel, his work of art and that the sale is almost secondary. I'm sure in the mind of the pitchman that the sale is certainly NOT secondary, but the ability to create the illusion that it is is a talent in itself. I suppose the knowledge that the "performance approach" will sell more units is a comfort too.
So farewell Joe. Good luck and good selling if there’s a market beyond this one. I’m sorry I never bought one of those peelers. Even if it was junk, the show you put on was worth five bucks on its own.
As I said last March, I could never pass the guy without thinking of the Twilight Zone episode where a sidewalk salesman wants to make one last pitch to “open the heavens”. I wonder now how many people would even understand that such people once worked the urban centers of this country and were not just figments of Rod Serling’s imagination. With Joe gone, New York has lost one of the last of the breed.
Yes, sidewalks are still crowded with people selling crap. Cheap hats and gloves and toys that fall off the backs for trucks, faux designer sunglasses and watches and New York City souvenirs. Those tables are generally manned by sullen types who barely speak at all as they take your money in exchange for their trinkets. Nobody does a real selling job anymore in part because they don’t have to – the vendors populate the areas of the city that are frequented by, shall we say, the less sophisticated consumer. Another reason they don’t bother is that so many people walk the streets in a cocoon: digital music player headphones and phone earpieces distract pedestrians from their surroundings and each other so most attempted pitches would echo off the concrete unheard by potential marks. I mean customers.
I wonder as we continue through the great collapse of the 21st century if muggings and the like will return as criminals take advantage of the distracted and self-absorbed. Time was in many areas of the city that you had to pay attention to your surroundings as a matter of safety. Not so much anymore, and I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing, I’m just sayin’ if you know what I mean.
Another pitchman that I have fond memories of is the rhyming salesman on the Staten Island Ferry. This guy was a tall black gentleman who did laps with a shopping cart filed with batteries, umbrellas and other ephemera saying things like “I got it all for the fall in my little shopping mall” “I got some Duracells, they’ll treat you very well” and so forth. And then there were the shine guys, not pitchmen really but older guys in green overalls who used to shuffle around the boat with shine boxes yelling “shine….shine….shoe shine” punctuated by the occasional whistle. If one of them caught your eye and you had shoes on that weren’t immaculate he’d say “hey buddy, want a shine?” and if you said no he’d look at your feet in disgust and shake his head before moving on. Today all you get on the ferry are the occasional Rasta dudes trying to hit on young pretty women in the guise of selling them incense and oils. Of course the white hippie trustafarians on the boat would be a more likely target audience, but these guys by and large don’t know how to sell, or rather they don’t know how to sell merchandise. They let libido get in the way of business. The old timers would frown on that, I’m sure.
I guess the nearest thing to the pitchman that we have left in this city are the hawkers at street fairs like the San Gennaro festival. Though I think the difference there is that you can always detect the underlying cynicism, a meanness, a naked desire to separate the mark from his money. With a good pitchman you get the sense that he is enjoying his performance. That the pitch is his play, his great novel, his work of art and that the sale is almost secondary. I'm sure in the mind of the pitchman that the sale is certainly NOT secondary, but the ability to create the illusion that it is is a talent in itself. I suppose the knowledge that the "performance approach" will sell more units is a comfort too.
So farewell Joe. Good luck and good selling if there’s a market beyond this one. I’m sorry I never bought one of those peelers. Even if it was junk, the show you put on was worth five bucks on its own.
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