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Liz Smith, Vendor of the Week.
Photo by J.P. Gritton |
It works like this: a needle, once inserted into one arm, draws blood through first a tube and then a centrifuge (where plasma is extracted); blood (sans plasma) is then forced — read, forced — into the opposite arm. When done successfully, donating plasma is sort of like having your elbows chewed by a toothless hyena. If it doesn’t work — if, like Vendor of the Week Liz Smith, your blood clots too quickly — then you’ll be jabbed in the arm repeatedly with what is essentially a steak knife, then told, “Thanks for your time but you can’t give plasma.”
Whoever said that the capitalist machine was oiled with the blood of the proletariat was wrong: sometimes, the proletariat’s blood clots too quickly.
Shortly after a failed attempt to sell her plasma, in a sore-armed state of deprivation, Liz Smith made friends with Real Change vendor Jerry Scott and began selling the paper herself. And, once she’d eked out a turf at the Fremont Market Time, she became one of the paper’s top vendors. Writing comes pretty naturally to Smith, so she began writing a light-hearted column about food, full of good, cheap, and time-effective recipes.
On hearing about her column, I spout some crap about how writing is “therapeutic,” a real “creative outlet.”
An affably conspiratorial grin sprawls across Smith’s mouth: “I did it to increase my sales,” she says, her voice still carrying a hint of Dallas twang.
Though she quit writing the column a while ago, she still can’t go to her turf at the Queen Anne Thriftway without running out of papers; her customers don’t seem to mind that her blood clots too quickly.
“I love my customers,” she says. “Real Change saved me from utter destitution.” |
