It’s dim and cluttered as the bottom of a housing-project airshaft. Bongo drum and engagement ring and ghetto blammer: the scant collateral of existence. Lincoln Square Pawnshop is an overtrafficked, big and frantic joint between 101st and 102nd on Broadway —from it comes small, sudden liquidity for the entire Upper West Side. Mexican maraca and tennis racquet and gold chain: you can window-shop human lives there. Gary Kalter, 36, grandson of the business, has his BA in journalism and a smile so communicable, so uncounterfeit he could hock it for rent. This isn’t Rod Steiger. Gary resisted his family trade, summer work aside, like maybe it was an environmental insult. Pawnbroking, after all, isn’t one of those tomorrow skills they tell you to acquire. I’ll let him think aloud about his near-dead profession: a line of work that used to provide both cash flow and social nexus in every urban ten-block square. Call it the Three Ball Blues.
Image? It was a heavy thing when I was single and dating. “What do you do for a living?” “I’m a pawnbroker.” It’d take a woman two hours to get over that. Now, well, I don’t mind. It isn’t my favorite place to work. All you need is the wrong customer. One guy, one old woman, to walk up to the counter and say, “Hey, Jew bastard, gimme my ring.” But I have two kids now. My father is here. I’m not going anywhere.
Comments