The Candy Pimp

I finally saw up close the dude who is pimpin’ the youthful M&M vendors on the trains.  The L was just leaving Union Square and a 40 year old man in the first car was setting up a couple 13 year olds with their boxes of Peanut M&Ms.  He gave them a Little League pep talk and then sent them on their way from car to car.  When I say pimping, I should clarify that he is just setting them up each morning to vend candy on the trains--I'm not implying anything more nefarious than that.  When I started talking to him about the whole setup he was kind of defensive.  He admitted his crew is the original one, the guys that announce from the center of the car that they are “selling candy to raise money so we can buy uniforms for our basketball team.”  They’ve been doing it for over two years; those better be some AWESOME uniforms they’re saving up for.  The neat twist of the uniforms scam is that the vendors are cheeky enough to note that “donations are appreciated.”

I tried interviewing the pimp but he didn’t really dig it and he started to just repeat himself about how “they’re not hurting anyone.”  I wanted to find out about his competitors--there is a whole seperate crew of vendors in the subway cars that forthrightly announces “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am not selling money for no basketball team.  I am just trying to stay off the streets and raise a little cash.  Thank you, God bless, and have a safe trip.”  Like the first candy crew their lines are tightly scripted; in two years I’ve never heard either crew's speech vary by even one word.  That’s what made the presence of a pimp so likely.  And now I’ve seen him. I wonder if they have turf wars.  The whole point of the pimp is to protect your territory from the other pimps right?  And I wonder how they prevent kids from going solo. 

Comments

[Pimp Candy]

better to be pimp candy than to just be pimpin candy?

[Jeanne]

Interesting... for as often as I've seen these kids, it never occurred to me that they were being pimped. Now it makes total sense. I wonder how much cash said pimp makes for each candybar sold.

[Evan]

Postscript: They are in Boston now! Last month a boy walking from car to car on the "T" gave the same speech, word for word. Same candy too -- M&M's with peanuts.

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