NO EMERGENCY! By Ed King Every Friday evening in the summer of 1972 my buddy Munchy and I would work our way up the East Side of Manhattan from 42nd Street to 59th Street and Third Avenue. We were street peddlers and we carried with us our little folding tables and old-fashioned suitcases filled with our wares. “Handmade Moroccan sheepskin wallets!” we would shout out when we stopped and set up on a corner that looked like it might produce some paying customers. We had to keep moving because the New York police were under strict orders to chase and harass and ticket any unlicensed peddlers they could catch (and there were a lot of us). There were licenses available, but they restricted the holder of the license to selling in areas where there were not any customers, like 12th Avenue near the West Side piers, where the only people you'd be likely to run into would be drug dealers and pimps.) Not like 42nd Street and Third, where the secretaries would pour out of the...
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