Thursday, May 17, 2007
NY Street Fair - an ethnological and folkloric event
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The street fair season is upon us, seriously, and none too soon. After a bitter winter and a blowsy and cold early spring we are all ready for seasonable weather and a nice walk on a weekend afternoon along a shady avenue, with smells of sausages cooking and sounds of salsa music from the $10 CD vendor, ready to exclaim “look at this” at every turn. And there is plenty to look at, New York street fairs have turned into exotic bazaars, with ethnic art and outlandish goods a-plenty, a study in folklore of far-away cultures, some artificed to entice the gee-whiz tourist.
My original purpose to visit the 3rd Avenue 14th to 23rd Street Fair was an everyday one – to find a socks vendor who carries soft-top socks, so called medicinal socks, at a price below the $13 last noted at a medical goods sales site. Indeed there was one, with my type goods at $10 the half-dozen. Along the way, though, I got carried away, with brand new-experiences.
Even the foods were different. Next to the socks monger, a Mozzarepas stand offered a variation of the mozzarella stick usually sold alongside the Italian specialties, calzone and cepole and calamari and fried dough. The trade-marked Mozzarepas are two pancakes fried with a you-know-what cheese filling. They come in a printed wrapper from a dot.com, with an “extremely hot“warning. That’s where I begged off. More tempting seemed the candy apples, sold by an Oriental lady, alongside chocolate-dipped bananas on a stick. Wow! There were also crepes, with fillings of unknown origin, and Thai food, chicken satay and spring rolls; charcoal grilled chicken and French fries, with Asian overones, were also available. I eventually settled for a shish kebab, something familiar in this strange world.
Even cowboy hats were strange, some made of tanned leather stitched with thongs, some of straw, in the familiar jaunty styles, sold by Nepalese family who held a family conference to figure out where their goods came from (it was China). These were sold alongside straw and tatami handbags from Cambodia, the tatami work quite elegant. Chinese leather bags, at another vendor’s, featured the soft and sloppy casual look for the blue jeans crowd.
I should be careful speaking of the latter, many women wear jeans today with killer stiletto heels, top of the line. The upscale shoppers may also can find appropriate polo shirts at the Fair, Guatemala made (that used to be the country where intimate underwear came from, now the line seems to have expanded), and classy cable-knit wool ski sweaters from Ecuador. As for the exotic Indian textiles, $10 pashmina scarves were easy on the eye; as for the bedspreads and tablecloths, embroidered silk with beads called nokchi (can be soaked and hand-washed), there appeared to be decidedly less interest on part of the modern women shoppers. Jewel stands featuring miniature gowned figures with hangers for beads and bracelets also had limited appeal, although sellers of beads proper, of all types, had scads of critical shoppers checking them out, particularly at the stand featuring Burma natural jade goods. You may note that topical tee-shirts – such as “Gramercy Park 10010” and “I never thought I’d miss Nixon” – did not make big waves either.
Now to the art goods, mostly what my highly East Asia and Pacific traveled lawyer neighbor would call “a notch or two below airport art.” Actually the fair ware has improved. An outfit called Afromarketplace.com has Senegalese sellers not only offering their specialty, leather goods, but also inexpensive sweetgrass placemats, the stems twisted in strands and turned into ovals and rounds, sown with what appears to be plastic. The vendor swears that they will wash off clean and last for years. They are certainly affordable, compared with the fine woven place mats we know, woven by the Embera Indians of Darien Jungle (that’s in Panama). Senegalese traders also sell sophisticated Kenyan wood carvings, colored wooden bowls with giraffe-head handles, black warriors with multi-colored decorated contrasting shields, and Masai masks. The twisted-limb human figures of soapstone and wood (Ivory Coast? Ghana?) are less appealing.
Among novelties, $12 figurines made in Mexico, shaped from twisted newspaper sheets, hardened with starch, shaped, painted and placed on small stands, were appealing, also large straw market baskets from Senegal, painted in earth colors, with similar sturdy wares also available from Ghana There were $20 black wooden ebony-like vases carved from mango tree trunks, with decorative patterns, Thai in origin. A velvet display bag for a wine bottle, with the top shaped like a dress, from China, did not attract. And I did not accept a $10 neck massage offered by a tribe of Chinese healers who come with their own reverse barber chairs. As for native US products noted, some good framed posters were on hand, and clothing, clothing and soaps. The next fair. on Mother’s Day Weekend on Park Ave South, had mostly clothing, less folklore.
The street fair season is upon us, seriously, and none too soon. After a bitter winter and a blowsy and cold early spring we are all ready for seasonable weather and a nice walk on a weekend afternoon along a shady avenue, with smells of sausages cooking and sounds of salsa music from the $10 CD vendor, ready to exclaim “look at this” at every turn. And there is plenty to look at, New York street fairs have turned into exotic bazaars, with ethnic art and outlandish goods a-plenty, a study in folklore of far-away cultures, some artificed to entice the gee-whiz tourist.
My original purpose to visit the 3rd Avenue 14th to 23rd Street Fair was an everyday one – to find a socks vendor who carries soft-top socks, so called medicinal socks, at a price below the $13 last noted at a medical goods sales site. Indeed there was one, with my type goods at $10 the half-dozen. Along the way, though, I got carried away, with brand new-experiences.
Even the foods were different. Next to the socks monger, a Mozzarepas stand offered a variation of the mozzarella stick usually sold alongside the Italian specialties, calzone and cepole and calamari and fried dough. The trade-marked Mozzarepas are two pancakes fried with a you-know-what cheese filling. They come in a printed wrapper from a dot.com, with an “extremely hot“warning. That’s where I begged off. More tempting seemed the candy apples, sold by an Oriental lady, alongside chocolate-dipped bananas on a stick. Wow! There were also crepes, with fillings of unknown origin, and Thai food, chicken satay and spring rolls; charcoal grilled chicken and French fries, with Asian overones, were also available. I eventually settled for a shish kebab, something familiar in this strange world.
Even cowboy hats were strange, some made of tanned leather stitched with thongs, some of straw, in the familiar jaunty styles, sold by Nepalese family who held a family conference to figure out where their goods came from (it was China). These were sold alongside straw and tatami handbags from Cambodia, the tatami work quite elegant. Chinese leather bags, at another vendor’s, featured the soft and sloppy casual look for the blue jeans crowd.
I should be careful speaking of the latter, many women wear jeans today with killer stiletto heels, top of the line. The upscale shoppers may also can find appropriate polo shirts at the Fair, Guatemala made (that used to be the country where intimate underwear came from, now the line seems to have expanded), and classy cable-knit wool ski sweaters from Ecuador. As for the exotic Indian textiles, $10 pashmina scarves were easy on the eye; as for the bedspreads and tablecloths, embroidered silk with beads called nokchi (can be soaked and hand-washed), there appeared to be decidedly less interest on part of the modern women shoppers. Jewel stands featuring miniature gowned figures with hangers for beads and bracelets also had limited appeal, although sellers of beads proper, of all types, had scads of critical shoppers checking them out, particularly at the stand featuring Burma natural jade goods. You may note that topical tee-shirts – such as “Gramercy Park 10010” and “I never thought I’d miss Nixon” – did not make big waves either.
Now to the art goods, mostly what my highly East Asia and Pacific traveled lawyer neighbor would call “a notch or two below airport art.” Actually the fair ware has improved. An outfit called Afromarketplace.com has Senegalese sellers not only offering their specialty, leather goods, but also inexpensive sweetgrass placemats, the stems twisted in strands and turned into ovals and rounds, sown with what appears to be plastic. The vendor swears that they will wash off clean and last for years. They are certainly affordable, compared with the fine woven place mats we know, woven by the Embera Indians of Darien Jungle (that’s in Panama). Senegalese traders also sell sophisticated Kenyan wood carvings, colored wooden bowls with giraffe-head handles, black warriors with multi-colored decorated contrasting shields, and Masai masks. The twisted-limb human figures of soapstone and wood (Ivory Coast? Ghana?) are less appealing.
Among novelties, $12 figurines made in Mexico, shaped from twisted newspaper sheets, hardened with starch, shaped, painted and placed on small stands, were appealing, also large straw market baskets from Senegal, painted in earth colors, with similar sturdy wares also available from Ghana There were $20 black wooden ebony-like vases carved from mango tree trunks, with decorative patterns, Thai in origin. A velvet display bag for a wine bottle, with the top shaped like a dress, from China, did not attract. And I did not accept a $10 neck massage offered by a tribe of Chinese healers who come with their own reverse barber chairs. As for native US products noted, some good framed posters were on hand, and clothing, clothing and soaps. The next fair. on Mother’s Day Weekend on Park Ave South, had mostly clothing, less folklore.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:11 AM 
