Having lost his lease on Essex Street,
the fourth generation pickle guy has set up
his great grandfather’s ancient barrels on Orchard Street,
right outside the Lower East Side Tenement Museum,
which recently evicted the tenement’s real tenants,
installed turn-of-the-century fixtures, and repopulated the place
with actors in authentic period dress.
“Over a hundred years my family’s been
in this neighborhood,” he says, plunging his arm
to the elbow in brine. “But people don’t want
pickles no more. Now they just want pubs and boutiques.”
While he feels quite real to himself, to the trendy couples
who stop occasionally to sample his goods (it’s cool
to eat them right on the street, like they did in the old days,
when pushcart peddlers catered to the immigrant hordes), the pickle guy
is just another living diorama in a neighborhood where reality
is increasingly being usurped by fantasy, as film crews
in search of authenticity swarm the streets, leaving
ordinary citizens to gawk from the sidelines.
Ed McCormack.
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