Call me provincial (You’re provincial! Sorry — too much time watching either Ben Stein or the Rocky Horror Picture Show).

Anyway, call me provincial, but after six weeks in New York, I’m still amazed at the things people sell on street corners. Not the watches and bootlegged CDs; I expected those. But while walking along one block — one block! — in Woodside Boulevard in Queens the other day, I saw:
* a man selling an exotic form of fruit salad, for which he was chopping up mangoes and papayas using a straight razor;
* a woman roasting ears corn over a small brazier;
* and a group selling pillows (two for $5 — which wasn’t cheap enough for the hagglers arguing with them.)

None of these are particularly unusual or startling, at least not as individual items. The blending together of such a diversity, though, creates a wonderfully unusual streetscape.