the street vendor project

A lot goes into that cheap cup of coffee that you may buy from the man on the corner every morning. Sean Basinski, the director of the Street Vendor Project, knows just how much that is.

After graduating from law school at Georgetown University, Basinski decided to combat the issues that vendors face in their attempts to earn a decent living in America. During a summer spent as a vendor, Basinski’s mastery of the English language helped him navigate the system better than some current street vendors are able to do. Now, he opens their eyes to areas of their work in need of improvement.

Street vendors have to follow a long list of strict rules and regulations. Tickets begin at $50 for the first violation and increase from there. Subsequent fines can reach $1,000, a large sum for anyone, let alone a street vendor working to support a family in the area or back in the vendor’s home country.

“The rules don’t really make a lot of sense and they don’t have a lot to do with food safety,” Basinski said.

Following these rules isn’t always easy for street vendors. The city has put a cap on the number allowed. The Department of Consumer Affairs hasn’t opened the waiting list for non-veteran merchandise vendors since 1992, and there are only 3,000 food vendors allowed in the city at a time. Compare this to the 25,000 that covered the city at the turn of the century. For many vendors, renting or purchasing someone else’s license is the only way to obtain one, though this is as illegal as going without a license at all.

The possible violations don’t end there. Certain streets are off limits to vendors. On the Lower East Side, you’d be hard pressed to find a vendor anywhere but on Delancey Street, despite the fact that many other streets in the neighborhood receive plenty of foot traffic. Certain blocks in the city are also off limits certain days. It’s difficult to keep so many different regulations straight, which is why vendors can become targets for police looking to write tickets.

Basinski will be further studying the obstacles street vendors encounter in Nigeria on a Fulbright award. If he has his way, you may one day be able to say that the cup of coffee from the stand on the corner came to you just as easily as the decision to purchase it.