To business groups, the markets are an ideal solution. "I think the city's done something practical and intelligent in its approach to vending," says Kenneth Adams, the amiable president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. "If there's a lot of illegal vending on a commercial street, ad you want to enforce legislation, you've got to give them somewhere to go!"
The markets are set up by a unit of DBS called the Vendor Micro Enterprise Division, which gets most of its $515,000-a year-budget from federal block grants for community economic development. Once the markets are established, local nonprofits take over day-to-day management and offer vendors classes in business, accounting, English and computer skills.
But for many vendors, the markets are not a popular option. While they fare better in some than in others--some vendors praise Flatbush's well-managed market, but others have gone belly-up in Harlem's--they all make less money than they would on the sidewalk.
Even those who manage them agree that the markets are more successful at assuaging community complaints than at generating revenue. "We were in support of vendors remaining on the street," says Griffith, whose Central Brooklyn Partnership oversees the Bed-Stuy market. "I thought it added a flavor and a vibrancy. It made me feel at home. But we were offered lemons, and so we had to make lemonade."
For Crawford, "the marketplace thing is a problem. It appears to be a way of legitimating vending but is actually a way of eliminating it, because they make such stringent rules." Having studied vending extensively in Los Angeles and currently in Florence, Italy, she concludes, "I'm personally against the marketplaces."
But perhaps there are other options. Vendors and their advocates, politicos, planners, and academics suggest a vast unexplored middle ground for resolving the vendor conundrum. Marketing guru Paco Underhill lauds urban markets, but says planners should take design lessons from "festival marketplaces" like Boston's Faneuil Hall, designed by James Rouse to resemble urban streetscapes--complete with vendors, of course. Kenneth Adams proposes revamping vending regulations, which are so confusing they're hard to enforce (some vendors, for example, are allowed to set up over street grates, while others aren't). Balkin suggests a day tax on a sliding scale to combat what he calls "a big freaker-outer"--the fact that illegal vendors don't pay taxes. Sean Basinski, coordinator of the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project, which organizes and provides free legal services t vendors, thinks the city should simply issue more licenses.
Jaya, who goes by just her first name, hawks handcrafted jewelry in Soho, where local merchants and residents are pushing aggressively for more enforcement against vendors--even legal ones. (Recently, many Soho vendors have started carrying video cameras and tape recorders to ward off illegal seizure of goods by police.)
Cute, calm and extremely diplomatic, Jaya's got alternatives in mind. Vendors could "roll with it," she says, in reference to pushcarts allowed in other cities. And she finds Cleveland's day licenses and New Jersey's assigned spots interesting alternatives worth looking into in New York. Most importantly, though, Jaya believes vendors need to go to community board meetings and tell their side of the story to residents and merchants.
And small shops, says Jaya, need to rethink their relationships to vendors. Having peddled in all five boroughs, she cautions that retailers and residents who want vendors removed should be careful what they ask for. "I worked in each one of those areas where [vendors] were taken away, and watched those businesses lose money," she says. "We bring them business. They're not thinking about that."
