Wednesday, October 31
Gerrit Hall was sitting cross-legged on one of the low stone tables in Kohlberg Coffee Bar, calling out about selling melons. Sure enough, there was a row of five or six canteloupes in front of him, each with a long-handled kitchen knife stuck into it. Mixed in among these was an onion, also with a knife in it. A melon at one end of the row had a pineapple and a green pepper stacked on top of it. The pepper bore a pink post-it note that said "the fruits of globalization." Gerrit was attempting to sell the melons for two dollars apiece; when asked what for, he merely replied that melons are the fruits of globalization. "Do you realize that globalization affects nearly every aspect of our world economy?" A few people managed to talk him down, to $1.50, or to one penny (actually, someone talked him down to sixty cents, and then Gerrit talked him down farther), and he turned his head to allow Morgan and Alex to steal one, after he had taken two pennies from them. By the time I left for French, with a slice of Morgan's melon in my hand, he was down to the stack of melon, pineapple, and pepper, and was in the midst of explaining to a customer that he was "fresh out of pineapple."