STORIES OF THE STREET
GEORGE ADE STORIES: JUNK SHOPS, STREET MERCHANTS
George Ade, local reporter and master of vernacular slang on city streets, was called Chicago’s Mark Twain. There was educated speech communicating for proper occasions, and there was George Ade’s vernacular slang expressing how business in everyday life–junk shops, sidewalk merchants, wagon peddlers– worked for people on the streets.
“After passing 12th Street,” he observed, “the queer little cheap stores, the comfortable manner in which whole families take possession of the sidewalk, the strange language of bargain and sale at the front of every grocery, and the heaps of faded merchandize exposed for sale, give to Junktown a character all its own. The bottle dealer, the rag dealer, the scrap-iron man, the grocer, the butcher, the cheap store man and the saloon keeper are the business magnates. There are also basement shoe-shops, and a few blacksmithing places.” bjb
- Junk-Shops Of Canal Street by George Ade
- Sidewalk Merchants And Their Wares by George Ade
- Vehicles Out Of The Ordinary by George Ade
- With The Market Gardeners by George Ade
LOCAL STORIES ON CHICAGO STREETS
