Last Day Sketches from Surtex

I don't know much about Jacob Javits but he must've been an evil man. A New York Times costs $1.50 at a regular news stand. In the Javits it costs four bucks!


Tea: $3.25; bring your own teabag: still $3.25. Coke: $4.00. As the woman at the little store said, "This is an expensive area."

With the schools closed and people dying, Swiney, the brand, was not faring well. While Purrell stock shot through the roof.

It costs around $100 an hour for that little piece of Surtex real estate. When it's dead you feel the pain.




The crazy ass candy nosher










Here are my last sketches from Surtex. It slowed down to a horrible crawl on the third day under the sodium lights. Note the last day tally, artists and weirdos ran neck and neck with legitimate buyers once again but you'll see the numbers really trailed off. I still continued to make awesome contacts with the world's best manufacturers and sellers of stuff, and I tore out of there for my Sly and Snide Slideshow at 6pm feeling like I had done my job.

I thought I had been sneaking and eating a lot of chocolate from my neighboring booths out of boredom but then Holland alerted me to the crazy-ass candy nosher, a guy in a black baseball cap who was working his way down the aisles scarfing kisses, Rolos, Reese's, whatever he could get, without even making eye contact or glancing at the displays. With the right hand he made furtive grabs at the candy bowls while the left was busily unwrapping and popping them into his kisser. He was a chocoholic in full effect! The singularity of purpose was astonishing. I felt like a piker.