The Vendor Issue
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 04:31PM By Tim Covi
This issue of the paper is dedicated to Denver VOICE vendors, the hardworking folks that hustle hour after hour each day peddling this monthly newsmagazine.
It’s not an easy job. It takes no small amount of grit to handle such a social enterprise, one that involves as much rejection as it does reward. Almost every vendor doubles down on the emotional impact of the work: most people who are homeless at some point internalize that state of being. They begin to feel that they’re not capable of accomplishing much; their self-worth decays; their self-image gets as beat up as hanger meat. So every “no” can be potentially personal at first. And the flip side, every “yes” can be potentially transformational. If you’re reading this, you’ve taken part in that.
I can be pretty disconnected at times from the street side of the paper as an editor. My focus is on putting together a product that will make our vendors’ jobs easier, a product that people will want to pick up each month. Of course some buyers will simply give our vendors a dollar, take the paper and toss it. But our hope is that by constantly improving our content, we’ll help our vendors get out of that charity niche. Maybe I’m naively optimistic, but I imagine that very few people actually want to live off charity. When it comes to our vendors, I’m quite sure that most want to work for their money, and take pride in their jobs.
I think this synthesis between our vendors and our newspaper is crucial to our product. The truth of the matter is, the paper couldn’t exist without the vendors; our mission is defined by them. The truth of the matter also is, 1,000 homeless people wouldn’t have had jobs last year without the paper. Our vendors are defined by it. Both are critical.
It’s a delicate equation, an improbability that seems perfectly fine defying rules: homeless businessmen and women. That’s right. Business. At the end of the day, we can say we have a vendor “program,” you can look at the paper as a form of charity, but the reality is that this is a job. It’s not a “hand out” or a “hand up” when you give a buck to a paper vendor. It’s a well-earned dollar. It’s work. It’s business.
If you read this, I want you to pay particular attention to a vendor this month. Spend five minutes on your lunch break watching what work is like for them; you’ll see that it’s very much a job. They account for their time, their inventory; some make intricate displays to help move the paper, others put a deposit down on a vendor vest. They attend sales workshops, cultivate their pitches, try to find the best turf.
We’ve been lucky as an organization to have immense support from our publisher and the Phoenix family of businesses. All of us owe a lot of gratitude to you, the readers, and to donors as well, who have helped the VOICE grow into a substantial publication with a 16,000+ distribution each month. Last month we held our first annual comedy show/silent auction and with your help sold out the show and raised over $10,000. We’d like to thank comedians Greg Baumhauer, Andy Overdahl and Chuck Roy, as well as the bands Tin Horn Prayer, Missing DuFrenes and Joshua Novak for donating their time and talent to the event. And a special thanks to Lannie Garrett, owner of Lannie’s Clock Tower, for hosting us.
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