Personally, I found the pushcart readings very interesting. Both the primary and secondary sources brought up note-worthy ideas. In the Wasserman piece, she wrote about how the "clean and sanitized indoor retail" merchants wanted to get rid of pushcarts, because to them, pushcarts "stood for immigrant with a capital 'I'." Try as they might, they never really succeeded because even when they stopped pushcarts from clogging their front steps, their business went down. And so in the end, no one really won. 

Then I thought about our world today, and how our streets are littered with revolutionized pushcarts. Today, there are hot dog stands, halal stands, and even food made in trucks, many of which are conveniently parked outside one's doorsteps. Wasserman describes the nostalgia many New Yorkers felt after the pushcarts disappeared. It makes sense, as we have reverted back to open-air markets; the Union Sq. Farmers' Market comes to mind.

However, there are differences between the pushcarts of the 1920s and the pushcarts of today. First, we have replaced the wooden wheels with rubber ones. And many of today's pushcarts are on the streets legally, with permits allowing them to sell for a period of time. Furthermore, there is no such thing as bargaining anymore, and our pushcart merchants no longer have to "sell with every muscle of their bodies" (Machamer, "Push-Cart Lane").

Yet I think pushcarts are still somewhat attached to the "I" word--immigrants. I have yet to see a white man sell me hot dogs or make me a burger from a colorfully painted truck. And despite our more advanced pushcart-ing methods, there are still some poorer pushcart merchants, lingering in filthy subway stations or on some corner of neglected neighborhoods, selling us cut and peeled mangos in the Summer, or offering us sweet fried dough in a cardboard box fastened to a shopping cart.