By Matthew Silveraman

Who wouldn’t want to live on the grand isle of Manhattan, in all its fluffy Dutchness, amid the hustle and bustle, the taxis and pretzels, the subways and stabbings, and the glittering heaps of refuse that spill from every orifice of every building? Nothing says big city romance like an old, one-eyed man in a coon-skin cap trying to sell you Pokemon cards on the corner of 34th and Lexington. And they weren’t even good Pokemon cards.

My girlfriend Lauren and I decided to spend a “culture day” in that urine soaked metropolis last weekend. After taking in a delightful gallery show by photographer Serge Mephistopheles entitled “High Falutin’ Euro-Trash,” we made our way down 82nd toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were less than a block away when we were halted by the gleefully piercing cries of small children.

“Lemonade! Lemonade for sale!!!”

“Oh, how cute! They set up a Lemonade stand!” Lauren swooned, pointing to the two blondest children on Earth.

“That’s nice dear,” I said, pressing onward. We walked another quarter of a block when something came up behind us.

“Hey you! Lemonade for sale!” shrieked the little boy as he came trouncing up the sidewalk. We stopped again. “Lemonade for sale! LEMONADE FOR SALE!!”

“CHRIST, I’M NOT THIRSTY!!!” I replied with a smile, patting the quaint urchin on the head like a Dickensian well-to-do.

“Okay, how much for a lemonade?” Lauren asked the boy.

“You can get a small cup or a big cup,” he replied. “A small cup is fifty cents, and a big cup is a dollar.”

“We’ll have a small cup please,” she replied. Blondie escorted us back to the table so we could seal the deal. I rifled through my blazer for some loose change.

“Uh oh, we’re all out of small cups,” said the boy’s older sister after checking the inventory. “Only big cups left.”

“What a scam!” I scoffed. “Aren’t you kids a little young to be pulling the ‘bait and switch’ routine?”

The little boy looked up at me and blinked slowly. “LEMONADE FOR SALE!”

“For God’s sake! Here’s a dollar,” I handed over my hard earned bill, which Blondie promptly stuffed into a brimming cup of ones and fives.

“Hey, how much have you guys made so far?”

“I dunno,” the sister shrugged, neatly placing the top back on the pitcher.

“Looks like you’ve got quite a bit in there,” I said, eyeing the cup.

“What’s your profit margin on this stuff anyway?”

“Huh?”

“Your profit margin. How much do you guys take home after expenses and taxes?”

“I…dun…no..”

“Well, what’s your production cost?”

“Huh?”

“Your production cost! How much does it cost to make the lemonade in the first place? Where do you get it from?”

“Oh, my mom makes it,” said the girl.

“Your mom, huh? And what does she charge you for it?”

“Nothing.”

“Free labor?” I stepped back and leaned over to Lauren, who was enjoying the beverage. “They’re operating at 100 percent profit!” I moved in a little closer to the table. “Ahem. How would you folks like to expand your market a bit further?”

“Huh?”

“Get your product to the people. Right now you’ve got traffic coming from both directions for about a block and a half. If you cut me in with some startup cash now, I could have kids from Chinatown pushing your lemonade in a ten to twelve block radius. That’s like a 1000 percent market increase, with 75 percent of the profit still flowing right back to this table.” They seemed interested. “You guys get paid, and I’ll take a cool 10 percent off the top for my services. What do you say?”

The siblings glanced at one another, then looked back at me.

“MOM!!”

It was a lovely day for jogging anyway, and we ran down 82nd and hid behind some benches in Central Park until Blondie’s step-dad finally gave up and took his baseball bat home. It was about that time when the faint smell of urine returned and a coon-skin cap crept up behind us.

“You wanna buy some cards? I’ve got Pikachu goin’ real cheap.”