Somebody in the Columbus city government recently realized they had a law prohibiting people from vending on sidewalks without a permit. (Apparently, hot dog carts have a special permit.) This same city official realized that the Pearl Alley Farmers Market was in violation of this rule by allowing vendors to set up along Broad Street, right across from the Statehouse.
The market has been there for a few years, and to my knowledge, nobody has gotten hurt. No other businesses in the area have complained. The market is generally seen as a good thing, enhancing the downtown experience by creating a fun atmosphere and providing the opportunity for people to interact directly with the folks who grow their food.
If you have a good thing that people enjoy, and it’s outlawed by a small governing body like a city council, and the regulation is so unimportant even to the people who passed it that they’ve overlooked enforcing it for several years, then clearly, it’s the law that needs to change, not the behavior of the people violating it.
You know how the charity newsies stand out in the street every so often in Columbus, wandering around in heavy traffic at the intersections, generally courting disaster to sell some papers for a good cause? The Pearl Alley vendors aren’t doing anything like that. They have stands that stay in one place, clearly marked by a large canopy. Nobody’s tripping over them or narrowly missing them with cars.
Contrast that with a place like Miami, an economically vibrant city that encourages entrepreneurship rather than trying to outlaw it. In Miami, you’ll see people sitting on coolers on street corners. When the light turns red, they wander out to sell all manner of things to the drivers: churros, raw shrimp, oranges, bottled water, flowers, newspapers. To the people who live there, there’s nothing at all strange, shocking, or inappropriate about this. It makes for a colorful, lively atmosphere, and anyone with enough capital to invest in a cooler, a bag of ice, and a case of bottled water need not be unemployed.
But in Columbus? The message is quite different: Go somewhere else to sell your goods. The suburbs have farmers markets. Go there. We don’t want commerce in this city, at least not from small, independent business people.
I think what disturbs me most about this is to see Mayor Coleman’s reaction. He had always supported the Pearl Alley Market before. I got the idea it was a pet project to him, that he visited it every year and tried to make it his baby, his symbol of how downtown could be revitalized. Now he’s distancing himself and trying to stay out of it. What’s the point of having friends in high places if this is how they treat you when you actually need their help? Coleman ought to be jumping on City Council, saying, “Repeal this ridiculous law! I’m trying to get business going at all levels, and you nitwits are trying to drop the hammer on farmers selling tomatoes??? You’re using trivial, forgotten legislation to harass a project I publicly supported? What’s the matter with you?”
At least that’s what I would do in his shoes. If the city genuinely believes there’s a safety issue at stake here, then the regulation should be better crafted. For example, it could say that on a sidewalk 20′ wide, no more than 10′ of it could be used for vending, or something like that, rather than just prohibiting it in all circumstances citywide.
Here’s a link to the Dispatch editorial: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2011/07/26/prevent-spoilage.html?sid=101
One thought on “Dispatch Editorial Calls for End of Ban on Sidewalk Sales”
This really ticks me off! I used to live down there and you couldn’t find a vegetable in a mile radius….or a tampax for that matter. Yet Mayor Coleman wanted to promote downtown as a place you could work, play, and live. Obviously….you would have to eat in a restaurant every night or eat out of a dumpster in my income bracket. I used to go to broad street bagels and the meat market but I could only spend my foodstamps at the meat market. Capys deli closed. After that, you couldn’t get a vegetable or fruit unless you hit pearl ally! In the winter you were screwed. I used to have to walk a mile to the parsons Kroger for my Frankenvegies. He really has always only been a pretender. So don’t expect him to defend what is right. We are lucky to have downtown life at this point at all. A few million dollar sprinklers and a place to have Festivals to make everyone else money is about what you should expect. The burbs might be the only source of real food when gas is so expensive that the trucks cant get any credit. We’ll see. I got 3 coons (babies) comin up on my porch at night. But a shotgun just might be over kill!