Job Discussion Forums

[Mark Loyd]

Please describe the most interesting street seller you have encountered in Turkey and perhaps we can have a poll to vote for the most interesting street seller later on.

In Beylikduzu under one of the overpasses there is a bearded man who wears a skull cap and a long dirty overcoat. He wears the overcoat in all weathers and has an ecstatic smile that can only be that of one of the born again. He has a small pram body with a small tray of baklava which he sells by the piece to those getting off the Cekmece buses. Who would get off a bus after a gruelling commute home and then decide to buy a piece or pieces of baklava? Why not just get an albeni? Would you eat it on your walk back or save some for the family. Why not buy 250 grammes from a pastane? God knows where he gets the baklava from, perhaps he makes it in his hovel.

[tekirdag]

I recently saw a young simit seller who tripped and the metal baking pan of simit fell off his head and onto the dirty street. He picked all the simit up, arranged them nicely on the pan and walked off. My dolmuş driver and I both tsk tsked and agreed that young man would sell those simit.

Recently there has been a "crack down" on street vendors in Tekirdag. They must have a license, id pinned on their jacket, and display the name and tel number of the bakery producing their simit. The police have also been busting butts for illegal parking in front of my building EVERY DAY. Ahhhhhh does my heart good to see all those cars getting towed.

[calsimsek]

Only in Turkey story.

A few years back the same middle age guy stood outside Marmmara Uni selling simits. I saw him everyday and often brought my simit from him.

One evening my wife and I went to the Opera at AKM and guss who was sitting right next to me.... .......

None other than Our local simit man and his wife.

[tekirdag]

[tekirdag]

ye EERS and YEARS ago I lived in Kurtuluş. (For those who dunno-it's Şişli way)It seems ladies there don't have a tradition of leaving their homes. They leaned on cushions in their windows, held on to their headscarves, and had absolutely everything delivered.

Of course, veggie guys came to our street... and so did fruit guy, biscuit guy, plastic bucket guy, fish guy, get a freshly killed sheep guys(yes they brought the flock), glass wares guy, do odd jobs guy, simit guys, and Hakan the bakal to whom you can just shout your orders for bread. Apparently Hakan has no telephone.

Question remains- why was there no doctor with a cart?

[Mark Loyd]

In Avcilar, especially on Fridays on E5 they have loads of desperados selling stuff on the pavement to people getting on and off buses. They sell cig kofte off the back of a pram body even though there are loads of decent restaurants that sell cig kofte in Avcilar and even a genuine Elazig cig kofteci. Do people who buy cig kofte off the street not realise that the seller must knock up the stuff in his bath and do you think that he can afford to throw away the unsold cig kofte?

Years and years ago, maybe dmb remembers, on the corner of bar street in Kadikoy late at night there was a fantastic sandwich seller. He sold sandwiches to drunks from a 3 wheel cart that had a glassed in compartment with selections of meats, cheeses and hard boiled eggs. You could watch him make your sandwich and choose what you wanted. I was always drunk when I went there and so he used to put a bit of everything in it.

Is a hurdaci a cut above an eskici?

[yaramaz]

I'm in Harbiye/Elmadağ (though not the part of it where the trannies kill each other regularly) and we seem to have all the sellers that Tekirdağ found in Kurtuluş (mind you, it's just around the corner from here so that may account for the similarities). My favourite is the guy with the glass box cart full of skinned lamb heads that he turns into sandwiches. I'm not sure if the Ladies-Who-Lean get lamb head sandwiches sent up in their baskets but I have noticed a kind of multi-tiered shopping system happening: a basket will go down from the top floor, it will be filled by fish man, veggie man, bread man etc, then as it is raised, various windows on the way up open and take out their orders. Or maybe they are just stealing from the poor woman on the top floor.

[Golightly]

why do all those blokes with the glass-topped trolleys always have emblazoned, in cut-out fluorescent orange lettering, phrases like 'Ali Usta's Famous Kofte', or 'Mustafa Usta's renowned chickpea, chicken and rice melange', or 'Hakiki Kemal's famed kokorec'?
Who are they trying to kid? famous for what? giving you three varieties of intestinal parasite?
Mind you Ali's famous Kofte didn't half smell good at three in the morning. After, of course, your sense of smell had been blitzed by a night of raki, cheap fags and the stench of the Eski Kemanci bar.

[Golightly]

the beeped word in the previous was f4gs. British, not American, usage.