Of course, later than 1910, I recall the vendors selling from a metal cart, hot coals to keep the pretzels warm, sort of a tin cup with a pierced cover salt shaker attached by a chain - and he'd be wearing a coat in about this condition, along with gloves with no fingertips so he could handle the money. The good old days.

Hey Dave - John Braungart's comment contains one of your Most Hated Words !!! Were you asleep at the computer ? because I doubt that you are really capable of relaxing your ultra picky fanatical comment rules !!! Are you finally giving up on being such a control freak ?

[Actually we pay someone else to read your comments. He deserves a raise! - Dave]

I'm amazed to learn that other cities like St Louis had street-side pretzel vendors. Getting soft pretzels from the car was a highlight in Philadelphia. I even had city bus drivers stop and buy a brown paper bag of them. This was going on past the 1990's, or early 2000's last I was there.

Interestingly enough, the folks who sold them on every street corner didn't look as professional as the gentleman in the photograph seen here.

I long for those pretzels every day, although apparently you can order them online for a quite a few pennies.

In the 50's and early 60's we had street, pretzel vendors in St. Louis also. They would usually ply their wares from the median island of a busy intersection and you would catch him at a red light. His basket of small sacks of straight pretzels would be on the ground while he held up a few in his hand. My mother would just shake her head when a typical grey smoke belcher would sometimes be stopped with it's tail pipe in perfect alignment with the basket, giving them a little extra flavor.

sure look good. Two of them could keep you going for most of the day. Back in the 1960s, I used to get them ten cents each, three for a quarter, I wonder how much this gent charged.

When I grew up in N.Y. in the 40's we would have said "The pretzel man is down by the Johnny pump". The term at the time for a fire hydrant.

to be a cane, the stick is probably used to pick pretzels from the basket. After being seasoned by whatever has floated through the gutter. Yum.

Hey you, you can't park pretzels by a fire hydrant, move along.

Looks like he's using the remains of an umbrella as a walking stick.

When even peddlers dressed for success. This fellow's gravitas belies the humble status of his product line, and while his children might not have attended college, I'll bet some of his grandchildren did.