Photo Memories of NYC in the 90s

From 1993-2004 I worked as a foot messenger in NYC. I picked up and delivered checks and currency for a foreign currency exchange, mostly from galleries, upscale hotels, and various boutiques that catered to the rich from other lands. I walked, bussed, and trained my way around the city. It paid poorly, but provided me with health insurance, and plenty of time to pursue creative endeavors. At some point I started carrying a camera with me, and I took a lot of pictures. I wish I had taken more. For years after I carried around a shoebox of undeveloped rolls of 35mm film. Apparently, I had just enough money to buy film, but not quite enough to develop all of it.

A year or two ago a friend turned me on to a great place in New Jersey called Gelatin Labs. A father and son run business that develop film and do it well. I started sending in these old rolls of film, a couple at a time, not sure if they’d even produce images after this long. It’s not like I’d kept them in pristine conditions, just an old cardboard box that had followed me from coast to coast, stored in a closet or the back of a truck.

Well, it turns out the photo lab was able to coax some pictures out of these vintage rolls after all. It was addictive, getting to look back on my early days in New York, some images I’d all but forgotten. Not every picture was stellar of course, it was not the digital age of photography, so I didn’t have unlimited snaps, and I was often walking by something, or witnessing it at a stoplight. Pulling out my camera and snapping a picture was sometimes an afterthought. So, there’s blur, and bad framing in many shots, but then there’ll be one in ten that’s makes it all worthwhile.

Like this one.

If you were in midtown in the 90s maybe you saw this guy regularly like I did. An Englishman, always dressed well, he would set up his wares in the middle of the sidewalk, or near a fountain (Plaza Hotel; Columbus Circle, etc.) and begin his poetic spiel to get passersby to purchase whatever product he was offering that day (that had clearly fallen off the back of a truck). He would have multiple boxes of some cheap gadget, for instance a newfangled potato peeler, and he would begin peeling potatoes and slowly coaxing those beginning to gather that yes, they, could skin potatoes as easy as he made it look, and he did indeed make it look easy.

He would keep his demonstration short and sweet, then he would open a second box and begin to wave folks over to give up their money for a deal. “Three for five dollars!” he’d bellow enthusiastically. “One for your sweetheart, and two for your mistress!” He’d grin and wink and people would line up and buy whatever he was selling that day, usually every last piece, and then he would break down his boxes, strap them to his cart and wheel it all away.

Where did he come from? Where did he get his goods? He was unfazed by the law, as you can see in this photo, and the cops paid him no mind, or if they did it was merely to be entertained by his patter. He was good, a great salesman, fearless and hardworking, and I know nothing about him. If my memory serves, and it doesn’t, usually, I have a vague recollection of a small news item about him posted somewhere, in the years since, but I can’t recall where I saw it, and clearly did not save it. But that’s the magic of New York City, or it was then, when I was out in it, all over Manhattan five days a week, my only job to travel from one business to another carrying the paper that runs the world. My eyes and ears were my own, to do with what I pleased, and they saw and heard so many things.

Here are a couple more photos, with more to come as I find them. And here’s to memories large and small!

Postscript: My friend Jen Walter in NYC reminded me that the gentleman selling potato peelers above is Joe Ades, known as “Peeler Man,” or the “Gentleman Peeler.” And there was an article, in Vanity Fair of all places which is where I was working at the time of its publication, but still forgot where I saw it! Haha. Thanks, Jen! And I apologize for saying his wares fell off the back of a truck. I stand very much corrected.