The sidewalk fruit vendor who sold a $6.2 million banana for 25 cents
Credit: NYT Photo
New York: A week after a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur bought an artwork composed of a fresh banana stuck to a wall with duct tape for $6.2 million at auction, the man, Justin Sun, announced a grand gesture on the social platform X. He said he planned on purchasing 1,00,000 bananas — or $25,000 worth of the produce — from the Manhattan stand where the original fruit was sold for 25 cents.
But at the fruit stand at East 72nd Street and York Avenue, outside the doors of the Sotheby’s auction house where the conceptual artwork was sold, the offer landed with a thud against the realities of the life of a New York City street vendor.
It would cost thousands of dollars to procure that many bananas from a Bronx wholesale market, said Shah Alam, the 74-year-old employee from Bangladesh who sold the original banana used in Comedian, an absurdist commentary on the art world by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. And, it wouldn’t be easy to move that many bananas, which come in boxes of about 100.
And then there is the math: The net profit from the purchase of 1,00,000 bananas by Sun — who once bought a nonfungible token of a pet rock for more than $600,000 — would be about $6,000.
“There’s not any profit in selling bananas,” Alam said.
Plus, as an employee who makes $12 an hour during 12-hour shifts, Alam pointed out that any money would by rights belong to the fruit stand’s owner, not him.
Reached by phone, the stand’s owner, Mohammad R. Islam, 53, who goes by Rana, said he would split any profit between himself, Alam and the six other people he employs at his two fruit stands. No one had contacted him about any such purchase, though, he said.
Islam had learned from a reporter of Sun’s plans, which also included offering the bananas from Islam’s stand for free worldwide, to anyone who showed identification, according to his post on X. Sun — who has also announced plans to eat the original banana during a Friday news conference at a Hong Kong luxury hotel — did not respond to a request for comment.
Working in the rain on Thanksgiving Day, Islam’s brother, Mohammad Alam Badsha (who is not related to Alam) said he would welcome the bulk purchase. But it would have little tangible impact, Badsha said, either on the daily life of the fruit vendors, or on the gulf laid bare by the $6.2 million banana and the stand that sold it for a quarter.
“It’s definitely an inequality,” Badsha said in Bengali.
He added a Bangladeshi idiom: It was, he said, the difference between heaven and hell.