Seb Evans
Prof. D. Sneppova
Nov. 25, ‘21
SA2662A

UNDOCUMENTED: NYC 1995

For one summer when I was 11, I sold T-shirts on the street in NYC. We put up the tent all over the city. Noni and I would pack up the car super early every day and drive to wildly different areas of the city, doing street fairs. There were vendors of all sorts of stuff: clothes, CDs, punk T-shirts, cheap jewelry, noodle shops galore, meat-on-a stick, knockoff watches and pocketknives and little fake arrowhead necklaces made from soapstone. Noni had made these great graphic T-shirt designs based on the Chinese Zodiac. I wore a small olive-green rat, ‘cause I’m a rat; the tiger was great; there was a dragon and a pig and a monkey and a rooster and a dog and the rest. They were printed on an awesome, carefully selected palette of nice green, yellow, red, pink, olive-green, light blue shirts, in a range of sizes laid out in low piles. So, if you liked one of the designs, you could dig through the pile until you found the right colour and size. They sold well, I was busy, taking cash only of course.

Noni would leave me for stretches and I just sold these t-shirts to people, all the tourists would ask me for directions, they thought I was local. People loved the designs, but in the current day and age there would definitely be concerns about appropriation. I loved those noodles, at the street fair; big fat salty udon noodles, yum. We would line the streets in the East Village, with the young folks who are halfway between hippie and hipster, hanging around in the park. Or on Wall Street where the sun would bounce off tall glass buildings, back and forth until it hit the street, diminished but still bright. Or at Union Square with all the skaters and commuters buzzing by. It was a ton of fun, but I don’t remember that much about it, no more than an impression, and there are no photos.

One day there were three men in baggy pants, one with a cane and an obvious bulge at his right ankle, sauntering down the street. I think that was the day we were in Harlem, which was at the time “The cocaine capital of the world,” -unknown to me at the time of course. Thirty dirty cops, the “Dirty Thirty” had just been caught participating in the drug trade in Harlem that summer; they would sit on street corners, effectively shutting dealers down, and maybe if they went to this certain bodega, they might get a slice, and they might look the other way. The man with the cane came under the tent, and asked me something, I don’t remember what. He wanted to know where the shop owner was, whoever was in charge. I said Noni had gone off for a bit, she should be back in an hour. He looked at me with a heavy, dangerous countenance. I knew this dude was serious business, whatever his business actually was. He seemed to appreciate the simple fact that I wasn’t scared of him. I think that I did not know better-- to fear him. I hadn’t grown up there, so this dude was like something from the TV. I thought it was incredible the way he and his two men could walk straight down the middle of the street, so slowly that you wonder how they ever get where they’re going yet parting the crowd, and obviously carrying at least one gun. I thought this dude was cool as hell, honestly. And I felt I was being sized up for something. I think I should be glad that I never found out what that thing was.

We worked the rest of the summer, and I never had another run-in that was so packed with energy as that with the man with the false limp. I never did get paid any cash, I was supposed to get paid $50 US a day, but that never happened, I think it all got eaten up with permits and gas and food. Later that summer thirty NYPD cops would go down for taking bribes in Harlem, and the corruption went way up the chain. I was just selling T-shirts, that’s it. But around me there was some incredible New York City drama in the air, to which I came very close, for a good Ontario boy.