Public Market Place

The near-by side streets are crowded with lightly stocked drygoods stores, bodegas (grocery stores), and canicerias (meat stores) and with blocks of old, broken-down houses, their stoops alive with people. It is perhaps the PUBLIC MARKET PLACE that expresses most vividly the Latin-American character of the locality. The market, owned by the city , extends along Park Avenue under the New York Central viaduct, from 111th to 116th Street. Its block-long, steel-and-glass sheds. replace and old pushcart market. Besides little green lime, tangerines, oranges, bananas, and lemons, many tropical fruits grown in the various homelands of the inhabitants of Spanish Harlem are in season displayed here Piled high in racks are avocados (sometimes called alligator pears) mangoes with their strong flavor of turpentine, guavas from Cuba, and melon-like papayas, the leaves of which the Puerto Rican wraps around tough meat to make it tender. Tamarinds are sold to make a lemonade-like drink called tamarindo; and the long brown roots of the tropical cassava swing overhead.
Garbanzos (chick-peas), red kidney beans, dried peas, and lentils are in open sacks. Strings of fiery red peppers hang above their sweet-flavored kin, the pimentos. From the spice stalls women pick twenty or thirty different varieties which are mixed and stuffed into one bag. Fish of all kinds are on display, including huge tuna sold in slices. The women shoppers move about with dignity: fair-skinned Creoles with dark eyes, lean faced, copper-complexioned Spanish Indians, sensitive looking West Indian Negroes. Voices are musical, and bargaining is done in a friendly spirit. The first price is always more that the Puerto rican vendor is expected to receive : regater(to bargain) is the custom in his country.(New York City Guide, pp, 266-267)

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