Island Bazaar

IT is the season of yard and tag sales, when you slam on the brakes to stop at the table set with rusty silverware, Darth Vader masks, assorted dinner plates (the only ones that were once costly all now chipped), and a cardboard box full of books, their back pages swollen and ruffled with water damage. That means that in New York it is the season of street fairs.

Street fairs last through the swelter of late summer, into the chill of fall. But now, while the air is dry and thick with pollen and the heat of the waxing sun is diminished by stiff breezes, is the time to sample them. Weather must provide an inducement to go, because their wares are as uninviting as they are predictable. Every weekend, the police close off ten to fifteen blocks of some Manhattan avenue. The merchants line the curbs, and the New Yorkers slowly perambulate up and down. What the former display and the latter inspect is always the same.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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IT is the season of yard and tag sales, when you slam on the brakes to stop at the table set with rusty silverware, Darth Vader masks, assorted dinner plates (the only ones that were once costly all now chipped), and a cardboard box full of books, their back pages swollen and ruffled with water damage. That means that in New York it is the season of street fairs.

Street fairs last through the swelter of late summer, into the chill of fall. But now, while the air is dry and thick with pollen and the heat of the waxing sun is diminished by stiff breezes, is the time to sample them. Weather must provide an inducement to go, because their wares are as uninviting as they are predictable. Every weekend, the police close off ten to fifteen blocks of some Manhattan avenue. The merchants line the curbs, and the New Yorkers slowly perambulate up and down. What the former display and the latter inspect is always the same.