Third Avenue Street Fair

In many ways it was a departure from my usual for this particular blog, but I was on the way to the bank this past Sunday when I stumbled upon the entirely unexpected presence of a street fair in the upper regions of Third Avenue. After dazedly winning a burrito from a magical spinning wheel, I proceeded to examine just what was going on.

After wandering around and finding vast numbers of things utterly irrelevant to what I usually like to write about here, including numerous bedsheet sellers, more $1.00 Thai food than you should be allowed to shake a satay at, and a short course in why I don't like Radio Disney, I found a block near Cornell Weill (around 72nd street) with a number of green businesses that had set up stalls.

These, I figured, would be of interest to other people who sit longing for the day when concrete contains chlorophyll and cars run on sunshine and smiles, or at least just sunshine.

For one thing, I had been looking for a green dry cleaner for a little bit, since my shirts are starting to pile up and I'd like to know that getting them cleaned isn't killing the old furry lobsters of Jonathan Coulton fame. Luckily, Green Apple cleaners came to my rescue. They had a rather impressive display out at the street fair, though I have yet to avail myself of their services- I will let you know how it goes! Apparently they use a carbon dioxide jetting system to clean clothes, and as we all know, carbon dioxide seriously needs to be put to some good use around here. Here being planet Earth. Good use being anything other than melting the ice caps. To be clear.



Given that this seriously reduces the number of weird soaps and other compounds being released all over everywhere in the process of dry cleaning, I was pretty happy to see it. Given that they gave me a free $20 gift certificate, I'm going to be pretty happy getting free dry cleaning at least once.

Another interesting little establishment was what I would call an utterly ridiculous green business, but that is because I don't really think keeping pets is a particularly "green" enterprise, unless your pets happen to live on those oh-so-underused sunshine and smiles rather than processed meat and fish. At any rate, this place, GreenPaws, offers green grooming and care supplies for your pets; if you're going to keep animals, might as well keep them sustainably.


It was, all in all, a pretty unexpected little adventure, but by far the most interesting part about it was when one of the bedsheet vendors tried to set me up with his daughter. Apparently graduate students are kind of attractive to fathers of young, marriageable women. I figure if he decides to email me, I'll figure out how much livestock he'll give me for a dowry and then get back to him.

Of course, now that I've been to the street fair, I'll be able to take care of that livestock sustainably, so it's a win-win. Next time, you'll hear about the St. Mark's Greenmarket.