Just Like Everyone Else

New York City has its own solution and/or variation on most business services and holiday celebrations. In many cases, an innovative and resourceful approach is required to provide desired products and services in a city with limited space and astronomical rents. The sale of Christmas trees is this type of business, so here, we take it to the streets.
Like umbrella sales people who sprout in the rain, Christmas tree vendors germinate at holiday time, offering an impressive array of trees. With such an affluent community as customers, sellers can offer a range of trees and variety of species - the classic Balsam Fir as well as the Noble Fir, Norway Spruce, Fraser Fir, Douglas Fir, Norfolk Island pine, Scots Fir and potted trees.
When vendors are needed with product expertise typically alien to city folk, outsiders, seeing opportunity, fill that need. In the case of Christmas trees, we have sellers from Quebec who camp out on the streets, setting up makeshift living quarters and selling trees around the clock. A number of reasons are cited to explain the domination of Quebecois - I think familiarity with the product in tandem with the hearty nature of French Canadians and their ability to tolerate days on end in cold weather are reasons enough. Read the fascinating story from the New York Times about Daniel Lemay, The Stranded Elf of Second Avenue.
Many New Yorkers do leave the city to visit tree farms in the tri-state area (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York State), making it a day-trip adventure and saving some money.
However, most New Yorkers love convenience and are willing to pay for it.
There has been a growing trend to order trees online which are delivered to your door by UPS but most still enjoy the immediacy and holiday shopping process. The experience of choosing a tree from a large selection on a street in your neighborhood, having it bagged and dragging it home is perhaps unique to the urbanite in its details. But it's a real tree, we get to choose it, we bring it home, we decorate it and its fun. Just like everyone else :)

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