Where Safeway Fears to Tread

[Blue_Tires]

West Baltimore’s unlikely source of fruit.

A large black mare is tethered to a chain-link fence in West Baltimore. She pulls at it, causing the loose metal to rattle, and paws at the hot asphalt beneath her, scratching chalky cave drawings into the blacktop. Her name is Beauty.

“Hey, hey, cut that out, girl,” says Yusuf Abdullah, aka BJ, approaching with an old spray bottle filled with water. BJ’s hair is braided into cornrows, and he wears an oversized shirt, holed jeans, and a pair of purple and green high-top sneakers. In an hour, he and Beauty, pulling a wagon loaded up with fruit, will be heading out into the most dangerous streets of Baltimore to hawk peaches, cantaloupe, and other fresh fruit. Selling fruit in this way is called arabbing here (pronounced AY-rabbing), and fruit sellers like BJ are known as arabbers.

“Do me a favor and roll by my mama’s house,” says a man buying peaches on West Hamburg Street. “She got diabetes, and she needs this stuff. Tell her her son sent you.”
On this day, three men, including Donald “Manboy” Savoy, an 82-year-old widower who has spent the last half-century working as an arabber, help BJ load up his wagon with fruit while BJ heaps a large, black leather saddle over Beauty’s sagging back. All arabber horses are fitted with elaborate tack and regalia—black Pennsylvania Dutch saddles rimmed in gold, caps with red and yellow plumage, and a long belt of bells and white bone rings that hangs from either side of the harness. It’s a style known as Baltimore fancy.

I’ve arrived at the Fremont Stables on the good word of friend Holden Warren, who is the vice president of the Arabber Preservation Society. This is not a full-time job; Warren tells me the preservation society operates on a budget of $5,000 to $10,000 annually. Still, the commitment to upholding tradition runs strong, and Warren has even tried his hand at occasional arabbing himself. (Since he is the only white arabber on Baltimore’s streets, this turns some heads.)

Arabbers are a group of itinerant merchants in Baltimore who have sold fruits and vegetables out of horse-drawn carts since pre-Civil War days. (The practice became almost exclusively African American after World War II.) The etymology of arabber is believed by some to date back to a 19th-century London reference to the homeless, but no one really knows. Today only a dozen arabbers carry on the tradition. Most of them travel more than 15 miles per day, bringing in from $100 to $300, depending on the season. Considering the costs of the fruit and the use of the horse and cart, arabbers leave each day with about $50 in pocket.

BJ, who is 26, has been arabbing for several years, and his father was once an arabber, too. Like many young men from West Baltimore, he has been in and out of prison. “I used to bang in the streets,” he says. “I used to like that fast money. But after a few stints at the D.O.C., I figured out slow money is good money. I can come out here and do honest work that helps people, and I don’t have to look over my shoulder.”

These blocks of West Baltimore are mostly abandoned, with large boards barricading the row homes. White marble stoops crumble into nothing and black plastic bodega bags float through the streets. When we are quiet, the only sounds are the disyllable clop of a shoed horse and the crunch of the wheels. “Suh-weeeeet peeeAAYCH- es!” calls out BJ periodically. “Can’lope! Can’lope hurrr.”

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/where-safeway-fears-to-tread-west-baltimore-arabbers-fruit-95417/

[MADem]

1. Bringing food to the food desert....

It's not just a living, it's an act of love.

[niyad]

2. exactly.

[niyad]

3. k and r

[Dale Neiburg]

4. We used to have them in East Baltimore too.

Even when there were grocery stores available, the arabs (we never called them "arabbers&quot had better and fresher produce -- both fruit and vegetables.

[kwassa]

5. The arabbers were depicted in "The Wire" ...

One of the school boys ended up working with an arabber ... and also doing heroin.