Vanishing Breed : Pickle Maker in N.Y. Keeps Up Tradition

The firefighters leaped from the fire truck as it stopped in the middle of the block in the busy Manhattan neighborhood shopping area.

They hadn’t come to fight a fire. They stopped to buy pickles.

It happens all the time. Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances double park in front of Guss Pickles Products.

Firefighters, cops and paramedics come to buy homemade pickles scooped from a dozen huge barrels lining the sidewalk under a green awning at 35 Essex St. on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

They join the throngs patronizing the last of New York City’s sidewalk pickle markets.

“Greatest pickles on earth,” insisted firefighter Gary Bulger, 26, of Ladder Co. 18 as he munched on one of the crispy green goodies. “Where else could you find a place that sells nothing but pickles? You should be here on Sunday when the line is often nearly a block long.”

Scooping the pickles from the barrels was Sol Kaplan, 75, a Manhattan pickle maker since 1921, when he was 10. “We’re the last of a kind,” sighed the old-timer who always wears a derby when working.

$6.75 a Gallon

“Years ago, New York City had hundreds of pickle places like this where pickles are made and sold on the spot,” he explained.

The pickles sell for $2.25 a quart, $4 a half gallon or $6.75 a gallon. Guss Pickles also sells sauerkraut, pickled tomatoes and pickled sweet peppers. Pickles come new, half sour, three-quarters sour and full sour. It takes three months to a year to age a full-sour pickle. The pickles are made in the building behind the sidewalk sales area.

“Everybody has a different taste, that’s what makes the world go round. Some like mild pickles. Some like pickles with a bite,” said Tim Baker, 24, a fourth-generation pickle maker and son of Harry Baker, 47, co-owner of Guss Pickles along with Bert Blitz, 40.

The owners of the pickle business do not reveal gross sales. When asked if he made good money during his 65 years of making pickles, Kaplan replied: “I didn’t lose any.”

He blamed the disappearance of the quaint New York sidewalk pickle markets on “the lack of interest by children of traditional pickle makers. It was a skill handed down father to sons. But nowadays the kids go to college. They become doctors, lawyers, teachers. They don’t want to be pickle makers. Nobody wants to be a New York City pickle maker anymore.

“It’s hard work. It’s a different day. This type of business is dead already. It was dying 25 years ago.”

Tastier Than Others

Those who buy the pickles swear they are much tastier than pickles made by pickle factories. “I have been buying pickles here 50 years,” said salesman Benny Harris, 65. “The average person has no idea how much better these pickles are than the ones you buy in a supermarket.”

Customers come from as far away as Upstate New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to buy the old-fashioned pickles at Guss Pickle Produce.

“Years ago, we never pulled the pickle barrels in at night. We just threw a tarp over the barrels. Nobody bothered them,” recalled Kaplan. “Now they steal the phones off the streets. It’s a different day,” he lamented.