Young Adam

Petty Capitalism in a Bucharest Central Square

The image of fluorescent capitalist consumption created at Unirea Shopping Centre is challenged by an equally vivid area of street, marginal consumption. On the opposite side, seasonal street markets are authorized on several occasions during the year: at Christmas, Easter, or Spring’s and Mother’s Day (at the beginning of March).

The seasonal marketplace stretches on the pavement bordered by two main boulevards that cross the square. It is located next to the tube and an important bus station, and there is also a tram end-line that connects one of the districts of Bucharest to the centre. Basically, this part of the area attracts a dense flow of pedestrians.

If one would expect to find merely “Christmas goods”, well, then this is not quite the case. Vendors themselves had to provide the stalls, which are nothing but camping or plastic tables with some cloth to cover them, to display their goods. Most of the products are clothing items, purchasable as Christmas gifts, as one vendor told me. Turkish pyjamas, blouses, shirts or trousers, Chinese underwear or Russian sweaters and stockings. Then, there is the “winter-gear”: caps, mufflers, and gloves – woven or knitted, all of them combined in a set if that is what you wish. Once, I saw a counterfeit GAP set. Import leather belts and wallets. Other goods on the tables included home-made silver laces, earrings, bracelets and rings, jade stones brought from India, or home-made necklaces, but with Brazilian pebbles. For it is the time of the year, the vendors also offered candies and pralines in a wide variety of packs and wrappings, Chinese toy cars, puppets and small plush animals, tree decorations, garments and ornaments, together with pendant horoscope signs, little angels and Christmas cards depicting Mary, Joseph and the child. But the point here is not the products on the brink of kitsch, nor the “unpleasant out-of-place image that the street vendors and their tables create in the centre of a European capital”.

The real source of the products is rarely disclosed in a first interaction. When asked about the provenience of their goods, some of them rather conceal it, while others mention India or Brazil as country of import (but labels in Cyril) or boastfully say the jewelleries they sell are home-made. Phantasmagorias or not, it’s how vendors promote the products, sometimes using the “authenticity” discourse common in marketing. (When asked whether 'the tallest Christmas tree in Europe' brought more customers to the marketplace, a vendor there proved to be extremely dissatisfied with it, saying the "it's only a pile of metal and some lightnings... They'd better brought the real thing, and not this fakery!".

Other selling techniques include bargaining, discounts through the end of the period, several identical items for a certain price, first product paid entirely the second for free and so on. Except the former, all these strategies are similar to the formalized sale in modern trade. Even if not as common as in flea markets, bargaining still holds an important place in the persuasion methods used by vendors. While some of the exchange participants might experience bargaining as a form of social degradation, vendors who sell jewelleries make use of it in particular. Other forms of attracting customers include hawking “unique offer” or displaying large cardboards with “the deal of the day”. Beyond formal trade practices are also “on-the-spot try-on’s” and “the mobile stalls”. I once saw one of the vendors taking a table on the opposite side of the pavement, which had a jewellery case on. She took and set it by her larger table, carefully put a cloth over and then started displaying a sweater, some gloves and some trousers.

Pictures taken by me and AmbraBlu