Ed King

September 11, 2015 
Shared with Public
Public

A Peddler's License in Washington, DC
By ED KING

I arrived in Washington, DC from Boston in the fall of 1972 intending to start a street-peddling operation selling handmade Moroccan sheepskin wallets from my supplier in New York. Street-peddling in New York and Boston the previous two years had been a free-wheeling, anything-goes sort of affair, but I soon found out that Washington was a little different.

Attempting to play by the rules, I went to the government office where they issued street peddlers' licenses. I filled out the application I was given and turned it back to the clerk who told me that it would take three or four weeks to process my application. She didn't seem moved by my story that I had just arrived in town and needed to get out on the street right away to start making a living. I looked around the office and there must have been fifty workers sitting at their desks, none looking terribly busy, and I couldn't figure out why it would take three or four weeks to process a simple peddlers' license application.
I thanked the clerk and took my already-completed application with me out the door. There was a space on the application for a photo, so I went to a photo booth and got my picture taken, glued the photo (below) to the official-looking application, and got the whole thing laminated. I stuck a safety pin on the back of it and the next day I was out on the street peddling with my new 'license'. Several DC police walked by to check that I was legal and gave a nod of approval.

Over the next few days, several guys came up to me and asked me how I got my 'license'. I told them what I did, and over the next few weeks and months, I noticed more and more peddlers on the streets of Washington sporting their shiny new 'peddlers' licenses'. Years later, when I was visiting Washington, I saw that Connecticut Avenue was lined with all sorts of licensed street peddlers, and I couldn't help but think of myself as possibly being 'The Father of Modern Street Peddling' in the Nation's Capital.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
        Scholl's Cafeteria In the summer of 1973, I operated a fruit and vegetable stand at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street in downtown Washington, DC. One day, a well-dressed elderly gentleman came up to the stand and asked if there were any good restaurants in the area that I might recommend. Without hesitation, I told him about Sholl's Cafeteria, which was right up the street; about its great food and low prices and good service and on and on, sounding like a paid ad for the place. When I finally finished, the man reached into his pocket and handed me his card. "Here, have lunch on me." It was Evan Sholl, founder and owner of Sholl's Cafeteria, who walked around downtown Washington in his later years buying lunch for anyone who gave a good review to his restaurant.                                      Evan Scholl, his son, wife, and mother.
Read more
Image
Ed King So, this one guy is looking through the sample copy of 'Alternative Facts' and he looks at the sign and he says, "You sellin' these for twenty-seven cents each?!" And I say, "No, that's twenty-seven DOLLARS." And he gets a shocked look on his face and mumbles something and quickly puts the book back in the bin. I guess he was disappointed because for a second there he thought he was really gonna get the buy of a lifetime!
Read more