After reading, “The good old days of poverty: Merchants and the battle over pushcart peddling on the lower east side” by Suzanne Wasserman and “Push-cart Lane” by Jefferson Machamer, I was reminded of the one, famous Halal food vendor that most people call “Chicken and Rice.” Chicken and Rice, located at 53rd street and 6th avenue is a mix of the old pushcarts and the new licensed ones that exist today.
    Both articles talked about how the old push-carters weren’t as “professionalized” because they didn’t have set prices or because they attracted customers by yelling or pulling people in. The licensed vendors today have set prices for their items and usually wont bargain with you. Chicken and Rice has their set price of $6 per plate but occasionally if you go there with only $5 they don’t mind. Before it became popular, you could sometimes hear them screaming out to all the people walking by. Nowadays however the length of the line at night speaks for itself. If you walk there any time between its opening at 7pm and its closing around 4am, you can always see at least 20 people waiting in line.
    Chicken and Rice is like most of the other street vendors in that immigrants and other first generation children of immigrants run it. It is very popular with the South Asian and Middle Eastern people who live in the city. We can also see the popularity of the Halal food stands during lunch at Baruch College, as there are two vendors on the corners around our Vertical Campus. There are usually small lines of five to six people waiting, nothing compared to the lines at 53rd and 6th.
    As the Suzanne Wasserman piece stated, people tried to get rid of these stands that were the “blatant stamps of ethnicity.” Many people only see New York City as financial capital of the world, but I feel that it is these small, ethnic street vendors like Chicken and Rice that make us one of the cultural capitals of the world as well.