Print Isn’t Dead in Peru

Few of the last ten years have passed without claims that yet another innovation — the rise of blogging, then microblogging, social networking, then the spread of smartphones, and, most recently, tablets — had the potential to reshape the way media is produced and consumed. The journalism world has been appropriately shaken and stirred: in the US, falling print revenues precipitated a “great magazine die-off“. Taken aback by the rate of change, “legacy” publishers continue scratching their heads in search of future profit models, while academics ponder whether anything resembling the traditional print publication can persist in the brave new world of incessantly streaming, instantly updated, massively mobilized media.

Sifting through this sea of speculation, it’s easy to forget how much of the planet has been left behind by the conversation — and the expensive technology by which it’s made possible. While it’s true that the explosive growth of some communications technologies has been so comprehensive as to reach even war-torn corners of the world (Mogadishu, of all places, boasts a startlingly sophisticated cell network), indicators of widespread internet connectivity — nevermind social networking — are much less evident. A map showing the connections forged by Facebook, for example, renders poorer parts of Africa and Asia as dark as empty oceans. While other social networks dominate some parts of the two continents, many areas are actually still terra incognita for the “world wide” web.

The existence of a “digital divide” has not gone unnoticed in the past. Still, many commentators have barely stopped to think about the impact of new technologies on far-flung regions before applying generalizing, “world is flat” thinking, not only assuming such tools’ widespread use, but crediting them for coincidental social movements, from the 2009 protests in Iran to the uprisings currently sweeping the Arab world. (It’s worth noting that only about 20,000 Iranians had Twitter accounts in 2009, and only 21% of Egyptians have internet access today. Numbers in Libya and Yemen are even lower. Even if some of the protests behind the recent revolutions were initially organized online, they were only won once offline populations had been urged — by other means — onto the streets.)

Unsurprisingly, the ocean of exuberant hype about new frontiers in tech leaves little room for discussion about the way media is experienced in the many niches where print still does reign supreme. It’s a disappointing trend, since it not only means that we often misperceive the ways such places receive and process information, but also the extent to which new media growth over the last decade has (or hasn’t) actually changed the now-wired world.

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Roaming Fish Vendor

Lunchtime brings Bangkok’s street vendors out in force, especially in the business districts like Asoke Road. That’s where I spotted this woman selling dried fish with some stale-looking limes. When she was approached by a customer, she would sit down on the plastic stool she carried around and handle the fish.

Fighting Over Flowers

I’ve never seen anyone get so angry over flowers.

It’s tradition to buy flowers in advance of the Chinese New Year, a festival that celebrates renewal as one lunar year gives way to another. Last year, when I was living in the Mongkok Flower Market, I watched as traffic became more and more snarled as the days led towards the new year. By the time the last week year came around, I was being woken up on weekend mornings by endless honking and angry shouts. Leaving my building meant fighting for sidewalk space with housewives willing to slaughter and maim for the last peach blossom or peony.

When I returned to the Flower Market last week to take some photos, it didn’t surprise me that the first thing I saw was a shouting match. A crowd had formed at the corner of Sai Yee Street as several people stood screaming at a few uniformed men and women.

After a few minutes, the screamers gave up and walked off in a huff. I followed them to a flower stall in a nearby laneway and asked what they were so angry about. I was answered by Kelly Cheung, a petite young woman with plastic-framed glasses and vaguely elfin features whose family has run the stall for more than 30 years.

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Street Food in Bangkok

It’s a familiar scene across Asia: a small cart bright with fluorescent light and flanked by rickety fold-up tables and plastic stools. Simple, inexpensive dishes are served on brightly-coloured melamine plates.

If it’s in a Taipei back alley, it could be beef noodle soup; in a Hong Kong dai pai dong, French toast with a glass of milk tea. In this particular case, it was pad thai on an uneven sidewalk in Bangkok, inches from the roaring traffic of Asoke Road.

I placed my order (which wasn’t hard — most stalls only specialize in a few dishes) and sat down on a bright blue stool at a table with bottles of fish sauce, vinegar and chili. A few minutes later, the cook handed me the pad thai. It struck a nice balance between the full-mouthed savouriness of the fish sauce and dried shrimp and the tang of lime and tamarind. All told, it was probably one of the better attempts at the dish I’ve had. I paid when I left: 30 baht, just under one Canadian dollar.

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Peel Street’s Umbrella Man

Sitting in front of his makeshift green stall on a particularly steep block of Peel Street, Ho Hung Hee could be mistaken for one of the many fruit vendors and junk dealers that work in the narrow back streets of Central, uphill from the offices and department stores of Hong Kong’s financial district and in the midst of a rapidly-gentrifying enclave of restaurants, bars and art galleries. Like the other vendors, Ho is old and withered, but his bright, expressive face, more youthful than you would expect for an 82-year-old, hints at the energy it takes to work long hours in the street. But the service he provides is unusual: he makes and repairs umbrellas.

Ho’s career began in an umbrella factory just after the Second World War. In 1948, he set out to start his own umbrella business, riding his bike around the city, offering his services. That’s when he met a grocery store owner who let him open a stall in front of his Peel Street store in exchange for helping him write receipts. While the grocery store is long gone, Ho and his umbrella stall remain, and he continues to receive free water and electricity from the adjacent business owners. Ho’s decades spent working with umbrellas have even led to a certain notoriety: in 1994, he won a Guiness World Record for making the world’s most expensive umbrella, crafted from American ox-hide and a century-old German umbrella frame Ho found at a construction site in 1982. He used the material to make two umbrellas, one of which he sold for $2,000. Ho donated the other one to the Hong Kong Museum of History — even after he was offered $5,000 for it.

Surrounded by a colourful mess of umbrellas, bags and old cookie tins full of tools, Ho works carefully, pulling at an umbrella’s wires with a pair of pliers. Behind him are newspaper articles and a laminated certificate of his Guiness World Record. Craftsmen like Ho are increasingly rare in Hong Kong, and especially in Central, where soaring rents are displacing decades-old businesses. More than rent, though, it’s age that threatens the neighbourhood’s traditional shops and businesses. Ho is about the same age as many of the other people who work in the tiny stalls on Peel and other nearby streets. Several years from now, when they die, there will be no one to take their place. A centuries-old tradition of street vending will disappear.

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Street Vendor Songs

Montreal did away with a big chunk of its cultural heritage when it started cracking down on street vendors in the 1960s. Food vendors were the first to go and, although City Hall has been easing its restrictions on street vending for a number of years, allowing people to sell art and crafts on Ste. Catherine Street and at the tam tams, it still refuses to allow anyone except mobile ice cream vendors to sell food on the street. This makes us one of the only major cities in the world with a near-total ban on street food.

Not only does this deprive us of delicious snacks, it eliminates a great source of streetlife. Today, on Coolopolis, Kristian Gravenor posted a bit about the calls of early twentieth century street vendors. He points to an article in the May 19th, 1929 edition of Le Petit Journal:

La corporation des marchands des quatres saisons, ou “colporteurs” comme on les nomme ici, est composée de braves gens qui gagnent honorablement leur vie en vendant de porte en porte, les primeurs, fruits ou légumes. On pouvait autrement classer dans cette catégorie les vendeurs de crême à la glace et les petits marchands de galettes et de blé-d’inde bouilli.

Le marchand de crême à la glace se tenait au coin des rues avec une petite voiture où était installé son bidon d’ice cream qui’il débitait à un sou le cocotier. Celui-là, il va sans dire, était particulièrement l’ami des enfants.

Un autre petit vendeur très populaire était le marchand de petites galettes et de petits pains chauds: “Galettes! Galettes! Madame!” criait-il, “pas trop de beurre dedans! … Cinq pour cinq sous! … Galettes! … Galettes! …”

Puis le marchand de blé-d’inde bouilli qui parcourait les rues avec son haridelle, en criant sans cesse, et en vers, s’il vous plait:

“Bon blé-d’inde bouilli!
Trois sous pour un épi! …”

Et qui ne se rappelle le vendeur de bluets, annoçant sa marchandise avec un trémolo dans la voix, tout comme notre marchand de bananes d’aujourd’hui: “Bluets!… Ah! les beaux bluets du Saguenay!…”

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Coke Machine Glow

Chinatown was probably the oddest part of central Boston, mostly because it had yet to be scrubbed clean of its grit. This old Coke machine, randomly found in the middle of the sidewalk and stocked not with soft drinks but with Miller Lite and Budweiser, is a prime example.