The felafel cart. I ate here whenever I had lunch with a vegetarian.
The dried fruit and nuts cart. There were several of these around the city, all leased out by the Moorues. The vendors were not cult members themselves, but as soon as i found out that Chairman Sun was getting all the profits, I divested myself of all financial ties with the carts. I broke my policy only once, when the vendor appeared with her six-year-old violinist brother and the best sign I saw all summer: "if you like my brother Stevie's music, please buy my dried fruit and nuts."
The Chinese specialties cart. This vendor sold limp, soggy, overfried wontons, eggrolls and vegetable tempura I loved it.
The egg cream and pretzel cart. This vendor gave out a free pretzel with every 75-cent egg cream he sold. At the deli around the corner, you could get an egg cream for 40 cents and a pretzel for a quarter.
The soft ice cream cart. Also known as the milkshake cart, soft ice cream being a tricky thing to keep in your cone in 90-degree weather. I stopped in front of the cart every day to watch a street-mime who had staked out this part of the avenue. His schtick, which attracted a large crowd every day, was to follow unsuspecting pedestrians about a step behind them, imitating the way they walked Every so often, he would run ahead of one of his subjects and dive onto the sidewalk to look up her skirt. One day, an elderly woman he was following whipped around and sprayed him in the face with a can of mace.
The Fu Manchu Stew stand. This item was genuinely wretched--the recipe, as far as I could tell, was rice, soy sauce, grains of hamburger meat, and canned celery. A few blocks further downtown, a vendor was selling the same dish as a Wok-a-Doo Stew.
The fruit salad cart. A stunning Indian woman in a sari dispensed a first-rate cup of fruit here, with watermelon, orange, grapes, grapefruit, pineapple and cantaloupe. It was at this stand, right in front of the Exxon building, that I generally saw a scene that took me all summer to get used to. It went something like this:
Two men in dark suits (never the same two; I saw this again and again with a different cast each time) are standing at the corner, waiting for the light.
Dark Suit I: "Well, Phil, that merger sounds just great. We'll hammer out the details after our squash game, whaddaya say."
Dark Suit II: "Swell, R. J., I'll have my girl get in touch with your girl."
Dark Suit I: "Right, Phil, I'll get back to you with those figures before we meet with marketing."
Dark Suit II: "Appreciate it, R. J."
They shake hands: The light changes, and they each whip out a joint and get wasted.
The shish-kebab cart. The Greek couple that presided over this cart took about a minute and a half to pull some marinated beef off their grill and onto a hero roll, cover it with lettuce and tomatoes, sauteed onions and peppers and paint a little extra marinade on the inside of the roll. I had roast pheasant with truffles once, at a famous French restaurant, and it was almost as good as that hero.
The cheese-steak stand. This stand was right down the street from the Museum of Modern Art and got away with charging $3.50 for a small sandwich. I used to linger in front of it every so often to hear a brass quintet called the Waldo Park Players. "Where is Waldo Park?" someone once asked the tuba player. "This is Waldo Park!" he said, gesturing to the northeast corner of 53rd and Sixth. Later that summer, I ran into the Players on Bleecker St., in Greenwich Village. Someone in the crowd asked the same question. "This is Waldo Park," came the answer.
The taco and lemonade stand. The tacos here were cheap and tasty, but I have never been able to buy lemonade on the street since I saw Harpo Marx (in Duck Soup) hop into a vendor's tank of lemonade and jog in place until the police came to get him.
The roast pork and onions stand. Mimi Sheraton, the New York Times's food critic, singled out this stand as a trichinosis hazard. But it was so good