An Ode to the Great Peeler Dealer

By Michael Wilson NY Times February 3, 2009

Joe Ades demonstrating the use of his $5 vegetable peeler outside the Union Square Greenmarket. Mr. Ades, known for his memorable sales pitches in his English accent, died on Sunday at 75.

"Grab on here," Joe Ades instructed me a couple of years ago in front of a small crowd in Union Square, "and pull it toward you."

What the heck, I had nowhere else to be. I grasped the little vegetable peeler and dragged it across the carrot in his outstretched hand, and presto, a perfect little orange sliver curled off. My other hand darted into my pocket like it was part of the routine, pulling out a $5 bill.

"I'll take one," I said, thinking, just wait until the wife sees this.

I brought the new peeler home and faced her skepticism with my own demonstration. I peeled the carrot all right, but not with anything near the flair of Mr. Ades, the Englishman and street salesman with the silver tongue:

You can use it right-handed, left-handed, or like a politician, underhanded.

They're made in Switzerland; they're not made in China.

Buy five for $20. You've got friends, haven't you?

Later, I'd see Mr. Ades once a week in Downtown Brooklyn. I introduced myself and told him I wanted to write about him, and he smiled and gave me a photocopy of an exhaustive profile Vanity Fair had written about him in 2006. My heart sank. There was no way to advance the rags-to-relative-riches life story the magazine had published.

I asked if he still enjoyed Champagne at the Pierre, and he said not as much as in his younger years.

We used his peeler all the time at home for salads. It really works.

On warm days, I'd bring my sandwich to where he was stationed and listen to his spiel:

You can't sell the same thing for 15 years in this town if it doesn't work.

Only one? You've got no friends, like me.

My wife hadn't met him, so one morning I called her and held the phone toward Mr. Ades while he was selling peelers in front of about a dozen people. He saw me and stopped cold, pointing his finger. "Who's on the other end of that phone?" he demanded.

I stammered, "My wife."

He smiled and said, "As long as it's not my wife," and jumped right back into his pitch:

They don't make cheap things in Switzerland. You can't buy toothpicks there for $5.

This is the best $5 you'll ever spend.

I bought two peelers that time, for gifts. I thought that someday, I'd persuade Mr. Ades (pronounced AH-dess) to record the outgoing message on my voice mail, in that great English accent, but I never got the nerve to ask him.

He died on Sunday at 75. New York lost one of those greats from its cast, for whom there is no understudy. But there is some small comfort in knowing that now you can get a good salad in heaven.