String beans pile high in some crates; apples threaten to roll out of others. Every fruit and vegetable has its place; there are bananas and pears, cucumbers and carrots, and also kumquats, even loquats. At Haymarket, even the air smells green. Cardboard signs scream out: “Jumbo and juicy limes – 5/$1!” “Ready to eat avocados – 2/$1!” Exclamation points abound.
Vendors behind each stand, wearing hooded sweatshirts, jeans and, often, Red Sox caps, never stop moving. They always see another customer to attract, another box to unload. The stalls compete for the same clients, so presentation and service are everything. Plus, on this brisk October morning, it’s much too cold to sit still.
“Red or green peppers. For you, just $3,” one heavily accented man says to a woman debating whether to buy from his stand. “The prices went up, I promise! I sell to you what I get,” swears another. A child, barely taller than the pile of bananas he stands behind, beckons: “One dollar. Really – just one dollar!” An assortment of languages fly about; though plastic bags hanging behind each stall read “thank you,” shoppers are more likely to hear “gracias” yelled across the way.
Haymarket officially opens at 7 a.m., but serious customers arrive much earlier. Restaurateurs stock up for the week’s meals, and storeowners carefully pick the roundest apples, the juiciest lemons. Some shoppers stop by before work in the area, while others trek from New Hampshire and beyond.
The market opens every Friday and Saturday, regardless of the weather. “There’s a saying we have,” said Otto Gallotto, president of the Haymarket Pushcart Association, who has run a produce stand for about 23 years. “The airport may close, but Haymarket stays open 52 weeks a year.”
Every Thursday around 2 a.m., he buys his goods at the New England Produce Center in Chelsea. On Fridays, he arrives at the market around 2:30 or 3 a.m. to set up his booth and unload food, even in the rain, snow and bitter Boston cold. (It’s tough, he said, but this is what tents and space heaters are for.) He stays through the evening, and returns early Saturday morning.
The HPA oversees about 50 vendors who set up shop in a horseshoe covering Hanover, Blackstone and North Streets, squished between Faneuil Hall and the North End. Most sell produce, but others offer cheese, meat, fish and flowers. Gallotto estimated that the market has been open between 150 and 200 years, but said no one is certain. Most things have stayed the same in the time he’s worked there, he said, but the ethnicities of people selling have changed. “It used to be just the typical white, Italian, Irish men,” he said. “Now there are Muslims, Asians, Moroccans… Where else can do you find all of these people together?”
Gollotto’s friend Joseph Onessimo started helping his older brother sell produce in 1948, when he was about seven years old. “The only real difference is that there used to be wagons, or pushcarts, and now there are stands,” he said. “It’s the same idea, an open produce market.” He grew up in the North End, blocks away. “I’ve done it all my life, and just love it,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of nice people. Lawyers, doctors, judges, cops, they all come down here and shop.” Many customers have been with him for decades. “See that guy over there?” he said, pointing to a gray-haired man, “I bet he’s been coming around for 50 years.”
Gus Sanfilippo, an old man with hard-working hands, sells fish. He wakes up at 4 a.m. early in the week and fishes for hours, but doesn’t mind the time. “It’s all we know how to do,” he said, picking up a slimy selection with his bare hands. “It’s our trade. Some people are lawyers, I’m a fisherman.”
By sundown on Saturday, these merchants want to clear out their stock. While late shoppers may need to sift through piles of sad-looking pears and bruised apples, they’re likely to find that a sign advertising “4 juicy lemons for $1” will actually yield eight, or ten. “Once the prices start going down, people come out of the woodwork, no matter what day it is,” said Bob Randall, a seller for B&R Produce Packing Company, Inc.
Stopping by the market on beautiful spring or fall day is easy to picture, but why do customers continue to visit during the dreadful Boston winters? “They may be convenient, but most supermarkets do not pick the fruits they sell,” said one, Balbenah Williams. Grocery stores can’t beat Haymarket’s prices, either, he said. “There, I get fresh limes, maybe two or three for a dollar. Here? Ten for a dollar. And don’t they look good?”
“We would come all the time if we lived here,” said Christy Benefield, a Tucson resident vacationing in Boston with a friend. “We have nothing like this, all this fresh fruit. If I was able to hop on the plane right now and bring it all home with me, I would.”
Haymarket also offers variety that’s hard to beat. “Supermarkets don’t have food from the tropics,” said Puritan Beef Co. employee Balfour Gyew, standing under a sign that read, “Order your fresh killed goat – whole or half.” As he weighed a huge leg of lamb, he described how customers from abroad come to Haymarket when they seek hard-to-find items. “We’ve got hog and goat. We’ve got goat heads, even,” he said.
“People are used to routine,” said Gallotto. “Every Friday morning, Saturday morning, we get many of the same people – it’s a way of life. We rely on those people to keep coming back. It’s a nice thing.”
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