A Street Vendor Takes the Biggest Step, Indoors - NYTimes.com

A Street Vendor Takes the Big Step, From 59th Street to the Indoors
By KIRK SEMPLE

In his most trying moments, when the winter winds and the summer storms bore down with unforgiving intensity, the Senegalese street vendor would gaze across the street at Bloomingdale’s and allow himself a fantasy: his own concession inside its gilded doors.

“I would wish they could give me a spot inside to put my stuff, especially when it was raining or it was too cold or too hot,” the vendor, Cheikh Fall, recalled, chuckling at the audacity of the idea.

For seven years, Mr. Fall sold hats, handbags and other accessories from a collapsible table on the streets of Manhattan, mostly at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.

But while he never managed to move into Bloomingdale’s, he recently accomplished a feat that is quite rare among the city’s street merchants: He opened his own shop. A small storefront on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near 132nd Street in Harlem, it is called Ob’Prama — an amalgam of Obama and Oprah, two people who, he said, have inspired him.

Sean Basinski, a leading advocate for street vendors in New York, said he knew of only a few people, mainly food vendors who opened restaurants, who had made the shift indoors in the past decade.

“It’s a remarkable thing that he’s done,” said Mr. Basinski, founder and director of the Street Vendor Project, a program at the Urban Justice Center in New York that provides support to vendors, the overwhelming majority of whom are immigrants. “It’s what’s supposed to be happening.”

The street-to-store transition was once far more common, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mr. Basinski said. Some of New York’s most prominent retailers made the leap: Nicholas D’Agostino Sr., founder of the supermarkets that bear his name, operated a pushcart after immigrating from Italy. Jack Cohen, who created the eyewear chain Cohen’s Fashion Optical, peddled glasses from a cart on the Lower East Side.

But Mr. Basinski said the dreams of most vendors today had been stifled by government regulations and costly fines for minor code violations. And the switch to a sedentary location behind glass and a door, he said, is often harder than it seems.

“It’s a totally different skill,” he said. “Being on the street, you don’t really have to have a fancy display. People just see your stuff. But when you have a store, you need to have a display, and vendors aren’t used to that.”

Mr. Fall, 44, was born in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and grew up in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where his father was an airline executive. In 1990, because he wanted to attend college abroad, he flew to New York. His parents predicted he would return after a few months once he learned how tough it was to survive on his own.

Yet Mr. Fall found work as an interpreter, a busboy and a waiter, eventually enrolling in John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He dropped out after two years — unable to attend school and to support himself at the same time, he said — and joined the Navy. After an honorable discharge in 2003, he started street vending.

He colonized a corner near Bloomingdale’s, where he had more than a passing familiarity with the kind of commercial traffic the area drew. For two months in 1998, he had worked in the store’s shoe department.

Days on the street were long and sometimes arduous, he said. His goods, arrayed on a 3-by-8-foot table, changed with the seasons: sun hats, headbands and sunglasses in the summer; mittens, earmuffs and wool caps in the winter. But he managed to earn enough to support himself, buy a van and raise a family.

Last year, he decided he was ready to take his business to the next level. On Aug. 12, he opened Ob’Prama, an 870-square-foot shop next to a Fine Fare supermarket, a block from where he lives with his wife and four children. In both form and content, it is a bricks-and-mortar expression of his vending table.

On a recent afternoon, handbags and belts dominated one wall; hats hung on a rack against another. A display case showed off jewelry and T-shirts. Pashmina scarves in a rainbow of colors were stacked on a table, and the front window was crowded with goods.

The simple aesthetic of his street business had carried over to the store, which was without decoration, save for a shiny silver garland that remained on the wall from his opening party. There were no signs outside — Mr. Fall said he was awaiting the delivery of an awning emblazoned with the store’s name. He had turned off the fluorescent lights to cut his electricity bill, pitching his goods into semidarkness.

Passers-by could be excused for thinking the shop was closed. He had had only one customer all day, a woman who bought several bracelets.

In the quiet of his shop, Mr. Fall admitted that he often missed the commotion of the street. “I used to be in an area where hundreds of people would pass by, and I would at least have a smile or a hello,” he said. “And now I have a window between me and the passers-by.”

But if he was discouraged, he betrayed no sign of it. On the street, he said, it had also taken time to get up and running. “It took me at least a few months to know what the customer needed, to redirect my buying strategies,” he recalled.

For now, he is using his downtime — and the comforts of a roof, air-conditioning and an Internet connection — to develop other enterprises, including an African hair-braiding salon he plans to open in an empty storefront next door; his wife, Diobe, will manage it. He also has plans to start an import-export business with friends in West Africa.

“For me to make some kind of money, this,” he said, waving his hand in a gesture encompassing the store, “has a limit. I have to look elsewhere.” He paused, then smiled knowingly — a man about to impart a tip.

“There are a lot of opportunities in Africa now,” he said.

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