Tag: Vendor Profile
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Vending from Coast to Coast: An Interview with Marlon Crump
My name is Mike, and I’ve been a Spare Change News vendor at Whole Foods Market on Prospect Street in Central Square, Cambridge for over six years. This past October, I visited a friend in Portland, Oregon. One day, while in downtown Portland, I came out of a 7 Eleven Store and saw a blue-suited…
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Voices from the Streets: A Story of the Vendor
With the holiday season upon us, I’ve been having thoughts about the many years I’ve been working as a Spare Change News vendor. I started working for the paper in March 1993 in the Porter Square area and I stayed there for about one year. That was the time of the Big Dig. I had…
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LAST WORD: Walter Stewart
Walter Stewart was born in Gary, Indiana, a city founded by the United States Steel Corporation in 1906. Steel production ran in the blood of Garyites for over a hundred years and still, today, the city produces 7.5 million tons annually. With their combined careers, Walter’s father and grandfather worked in steelmaking for over 70…
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LAST WORD: Michael Shorey
“You’re interviewing me now?” says Michael, with disbelief in his voice, when I corner him after the weekly vendor meeting at the Spare Change News headquarters. Michael is in the office to pick up his papers and the last thing on his mind is an interview with me. However, when we get started, he has…
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LAST WORD: Gregory Currie
When Gregory Currie said he came from a political family, I had no idea he was the son of Jackie Currie, a woman described as a “Detroit legend” after serving many years as Detroit city clerk and Wayne County commissioner. As he was growing up, Currie sometimes felt like he was being groomed to be…
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Beatrice Bell is SCN's vendor/writer of the year
When I first met Spare Change News reporter and vendor Beatrice Bell, she was standing across from the mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, holding her recording device in front of the newly elected politician’s face. It was the opening of the rush-job Southampton Street shelter and she, along with a team of Spare Change News…
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LAST WORD: Beatrice Bell
It’s the morning of Good Friday at Spare Change News, and Beatrice Bell, one of the newspaper’s longest-serving reporters, is telling me an amazing story. At the age of seven, after a terrible asthma attack, she found herself having one of those life-changing experiences that are called, in the literature, “near-death.” For three days, which…