Also: Tamale hookups from local abuelas selling them for church fundraisers.
Deal sweetened by the most senior abuelas giving me kisses on the cheeks as I’m trying to leave with the tasty bounty.
when I first moved to Denver in 1996, worked in an office, the breakfast burrito lady with the cooler selling brekkie b's for a dollar OMG they were so simple and so good.
I miss the tamale lady who used to walk around the neighborhood, pre COVID, yelling, "tamales, tamales!" IDK where to get them now. I've also lost track of my drug dealer. *Sigh*
One time I was leaving my CARDIOLOGIST and these extremely enterprising abuelas had the late 90s Ford Explorer/cooler combo waiting outside like a damn police sting op.
Tasty, tasty entrapment.
I look like a high-level dealer then because I buy them a couple dozen at a time and have to pick them up at my vendor's house in packages that do look a little like a kilo bag!
For real. I was on the phone with my brother while he was walking home from his college class and he was like, "Hold on, the guy with the backpack full of tamales is on the other side of this crosswalk, gotta stop and get a couple."
It was a whole thing in Wichita. In South Jersey it's just the Sons of Italy selling five dollar hoagies which, they're fine but it's not the same.
Did meet up a dim sum guy outside the shuttered Cherry Hill Mall during lockdown though.
The ambiance of going to a then-dead mall and meeting a nervous guy who barely spoke English and venmoing cash was somewhat spoiled by the vehicle wrap on the minivan though.