The Gentleman Grafter....

If you live within proximity of NYC and/or have ever visited the farmer's market in Union Square- you know Joe.

Our old buddy Joe Ades passed away. :( Here's a great tribute to him.

PERFECT PITCH

STREET HAWKER JOE ADES IS NEW YORK'S

GREATEST PRODUCT MOVER - BUT DON'T CALL HIM A SALESMAN

By CHRIS ERIKSON

I'll show ya 'ow this works!

That's how it begins. And if you're one of the many New Yorkers who've run across Joe Ades at work, you know more or less what happens next. After years of selling the same item - a $5 stainless steel vegetable peeler - he sticks to a set script, though like a jazz singer performing a standard, he never does it quite the same way twice.

Now when you peel a potato, it doesn't matter if you're right-handed, left-handed or, like a politician, underhanded.

Crouched low on folding stool above a Lucite cutting board, he grabs a potato from a nearby tub and puts it through the paces, peeling it in a few rapid-fire moves, using the peeler's "eye" to carve out a handful of french fries, and then, switching the tool to his left hand and using it like a mandoline slicer, reducing the spud to a heap of paper-thin slices. Put those in some hot oil, and when they turn brown you'll have a lovely chip! By now a crowd has typically gathered to eye this bearded, dapper Englishman in a hand-tailored suit, silk socks and gold cufflinks. Ades grabs a plump carrot and juliennes it in a flurry of slicing, while crowing in his broad English accent about the glories of his instrument.

You couldn't slice a carrot like this with a knife. I wouldn't know where to find a knife sharp enough, but anyone can do it with my machine.

He picks up the pace now, extolling the Swiss craftsmanship ("They don't make cheap things in Switzerland") and the blade's eternal sharpness ("You'll never buy another one as long as you live!"). Now it's closing time - the moment of "coming to the bat," as Ades calls it. He pulls a thick wad of bills out of his pocket and riffles through it while announcing the price: "Five dollars each, and worth every penny."

At this point, more often than not something extraordinary happens. In this crowd of jaded New Yorkers, purses fly open and hands reach into pockets as though lured by magnets. Hands clutching bills reach out one after another, Ades plucking them while delivering a stream of quips. When the wave subsides, the roll returns to his pocket, the spent peels get swept into a tub, and within seconds the whole thing starts all over again. Anyone watching this scene unfold might conclude that they've just seen the greatest salesman in New York City in action.

Ades, though, doesn't care for the word salesman, which to his mind summons up images of a wage earner making client rounds with a sample book. "I'm a grafter," he says. Since he picked up the trade as a lad, grafting - pitching goods in the street, or at gatherings like fairs or marketplaces - is the only profession the 74-year-old Englishman has ever had. And for the last 15 years he's plied it on the streets of New York, where except for a lucrative stint selling children's books, the peeler has been his sole item. On any given day he might be reeling in "punters" in Union Square, or Chinatown, or Downtown Brooklyn, or Herald Square, bringing in $500 or more (quite possibly a lot more) a day. Anyone who's seen Ades (pronounced like Addis) haranguing a crowd and figured him for an eccentric who must sleep under a bridge somewhere would be thrown for a loop to see him after quitting time.

That's when the devoted father of three (whose children include a Brooklyn schoolteacher) returns to a spacious, tastefully appointed apartment on Park Avenue near 88th Street. An erudite gentleman with a love of jazz, classical music and Woody Allen movies, Ades was long in the habit of following days on the street with nights spent stepping out to haute haunts like Jean Georges and the Café Pierre, sipping champagne with his fourth wife, Estelle, an artist. Since she died of breast cancer last November, though, he's spent his nights in the rent-controlled apartment he inherited from her, where paintings and sculptures line the walls and a piano sits in the living room by a marble coffee table stacked with art books. Sipping coffee there on a recent morning, Ades spoke to @work about how he fell into life as a grafter, and why after all these years the call of the street is still strong. ********************************************************

My father died before I was born, and left Mum with six kids and me on the way. He was a textile importer and exporter, and he lost most of his money in the slump of '29. When he died it was such a change. Before that they'd lived in big houses and had servants, and all of a sudden it went away. I started working when I was about 12. I'd started smoking, and when you smoke, you need money for cigarettes. I had a paper route, I used to cut hedges. I was always conscious of the need to get my own money if I wanted it. Nobody was going to give it to me.

I did quite well in school, but I dropped out when I was 13. I had a mastoid, and I lost about six months schooling, and by the time I got back I was so far behind I lost interest. Mum said you've got to get a job at an import/export company like your father, so I got a job at a shipping firm, where my job was to post letters. On the way I used to walk past this big bomb site in downtown Manchester. It was a derelict site, and all the spiffs, as they called them in those days, had set up and impromptu market. But it wasn't the sort of flea market you see in this country. Everybody was a grafter. It was tremendous - a very colorful scene with an amazing array of characters.

They were all performing, and I used to stand and watch it for hours and hours and hours, and it just fascinated me. They'd sell fake medicine in those days, cure-alls, but the wonderful stories they'd tell with this crap! It was so convincing. They'd be doing what we called a ring pitch, just standing there with no props, no nothing, and they'd have 60 people in a circle all around them, and they're holding them.

Can you imagine the talent that takes? I got in with fellows who were much, much older than me - in their 50s and 60s - and they were so adept at what they did, and so eloquent. I learned it by watching. And I knew how to do it from day one. I could open my mouth and get a crowd. There was a chain of six coffeehouses in Manchester, and each one was a meeting place for different workers. There was one for the clappers, or antique dealers; there was one for the textile merchants; there was one for the racing people - the clerks and the tic-tac men - and there was one for the grafters. And that was my college.

We'd meet there before work in the morning, and that's where you'd hear the stories, who went there and who did this. There were gamblers and there were alcoholics, there were family men - they were all different. But they had the common trait of living on their wits.

I'll give you an example. Someone goes into the druggist and buys a big block of inexpensive soap, what we called carbolic soap, and cuts it into tiny cubes. (In pitchman's voice) "Excuse me! Sir, looks like your glasses could use some cleaning" (mimics cleaning the glasses). And he sells the bits of soap for a shilling, when the whole block costs a shilling. At the end of the day he's got three or four pounds. That's initiative. There were many who'd work just long enough to get enough money to go sit in the pub, but for me it was all about treating the game as a business.

Because it is a game. How much am I going to get today, and nobody's going to stop me? That's the game. I like the excitement of it, the challenge of it - the fact that if you do it right you get paid, and if you do it wrong you don't. When I told my Mum what I wanted to do she was horrified. It was a bit below the level of respectability, definitely. But I laughed at that, because I knew I could go into the best restaurant and have the best meal and wear good clothes. To go out broke in the morning and drink champagne in the evening, that's always been my thrill.

I got a stall in a market, and worked there with a board and trestle, or just straight on the floor. Comic books were the first thing I ever sold. I sold tea towels and pillowcases. I sold bedding for a long time, sheets and blankets. I traveled all over the country - I went to fairs, I went to markets, I went to agricultural shows. We moved to London and lived there on and off for a couple of years. In '69 somebody sent me a letter from Australia saying there was an opportunity to work. It arrived around Christmas, and in the winter it's cold and miserable on the streets in England, and you can't make any money. So I went.

Coming from Manchester, the sunshine of Australia was lovely. I was there about six months and I called Shirley, my wife, and said get rid of the house and get out here as quickly as possible. I worked in Sydney first, selling fancy goods.

Then I went up north to Newcastle and set up a business with a truck, selling everything. Sheets and blankets and toys and pots and pans and giftware and china and crockery - everything, everything. All off the back of a truck. I sold really, really cheap, and people used to come from miles away, with no advertising - it was all word of mouth. I bought a Rolls-Royce, and I used to park it next to the truck. It was lovely. You know why I left it? I was bored. It was like fishing in a trout farm. It was too easy.

Honestly, I could have had blocks of flats, if I had been that way inclined. It was never my forte to pile money up, or invest it, or become wealthy. I like the challenge of going out every day and getting enough money for the day. Though it hasn't always appealed to the women I've been married to. I first came to New York City in '83, on a trip with my first wife. I moved here permanently when my third marriage broke up, in '93, and started working the peeler.

At first I didn't realize its potential. I thought, it's a thing that must burn out, because everybody has one, you see. But it's not that at all. It's a consumer item. Experience has taught me that, because people throw it away by mistake with the peelings, or they give it away, or somebody steals it. They always need another one. Once they've used this, they need another one if they lose it. It has to be a very quick demonstration, a very compelling one in the street. At a fair or a carnival, people are quite happy to spend ten minutes, but if you've got people on their lunch hour, or rushing from one place to another, ten minutes is an eternity.

I've managed to boil it down to a two- or three-minute pitch. And that in itself is quite an art, to gather a crowd, and hold them, and convince them in such a short period of time. The pitch is never exactly the same - there's always a slight change.

Which is thinking on your feet. You change according to, the crowd is out there, or they're here, are they moving away, are they not moving away. You're fine tuning all the time, making little adjustments - timing, body language, intonation. And it will make a difference. This is the beauty of it, you get told right away if it's working, with dollar bills. I got arrested quite a lot early on. You take it in your stride.

It's a misdemeanor - you can't go to prison for it. They may lock you up for a couple of hours, but they have to let you out. I've always treated the police with respect, I've always showed up in court, always paid my fines. And I don't have much trouble with them anymore. It's like I've told them: They'll get tired of chasing me before I get tired of running. I usually work four or five days a week. It depends on the weather and how I feel.

I've worked seven and I've worked two, there's no rule. I'm working more now, since my wife passed. She died last November, and it's really the only thing I have, you know. And now I'm saving, because I've got three granddaughters, who go to St. Anne's school in Brooklyn - and I've taken on the challenge of sending them to college. My oldest is 17 and she's applying to Yale, and she may get in; she's very academically inclined. My wife and I were very close, a very happy couple. When she was alive I spent all the money I'd got taking her out and spoiling her. We'd go out to good restaurants every night, party and have a nice time. I don't do that any more, so I work, that's my relief. I haven't had a drink since she died. There's no value, I don't think, in getting drunk by yourself, and waking up on your own. And I've really got no desire, no interest in meeting anyone else.

Not at my age. I don't think there's room in my life for it, at this point. I've got my grandkids, and I've got my game, my business. And I love it. I just love it. I look forward to getting up every morning. It's not simply a way of getting a living. It never has been. It's the excitement, it's the challenge - the glorious uncertainty. Every day is fresh. The only time I'm really happy is when I'm set on that stool.

chris.erikson@nypost.com