Help the “Comedian” Banana Vendor Shah Alam

UPDATES BELOW

You may have heard about the banana that was duct-taped to the wall and sold for $6.2 million in a New York art auction. The NYT has now reported on the man who works at the sidewalk fruit stand in front of the auction house and sold the banana in question, a nearly blind 74-year-old immigrant named Shah Alam who makes $12/hour manning the stand and lives in a basement apartment in the Bronx with 4 other men. When a reporter told him how much his 25-cent banana sold for as “art,” he cried in bewilderment. Asked for comment, the “artist” said: “the reaction of the banana vendor moves me deeply . . . However, art, by its nature, does not solve problems.” In other words, none of my business.

Full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/nyregion/banana-auction-sothebys.html

Do we really want to live in a city where we can shrug off a street vendor who’s moved to tears by the fact that he’s been made the butt of a joke involving an amount of wealth obscene to him, while celebrating some smartass for figuring out how to make $6 million from that joke? If this utter and gross indifference isn’t what ails us, what is?

If you feel the same way, join me in helping this man benefit, however minutely, from a story that is otherwise vulgar in every way imaginable. I will walk to the fruit stand myself next week (after Thanksgiving) and take a video of me handing him the money myself. If I don’t find him, GoFundMe will return your money.

I will donate $500 myself and additionally match every dollar donated here, dollar for dollar.

Please feel free to share widely and reach out if you’d like to join forces and think of ways to do more.

UPDATE 1: For other ways to help Shah, you can contact the reporter Sarah Maslin Nir by email, which can be found at: https://www.nytimes.com/by/sarah-maslin-nir#contact

UPDATE 2: I have no idea where and how this is circulating now but it has become slightly more successful than when I started it on a whim expecting roughly $0. I will still honor my dollar-for-dollar match up to the $5,000 goal and obviously I’ll make sure every cent I get from here is delivered to Shah even beyond the match. If anyone else wants to jump in to keep the match going please feel free to contact me. Thanks so much for your support.

UPDATE 3: I got a question about when I will give the money to Shah. I was told Shah wants to protect his privacy so I don’t want to post any personal information here but I was given the specific days of the week that he works at the fruit stand so my plan is to pop by on one of those days next week. Because of his privacy concern, the evidence for giving him the money may not be in the form of a video (which I proposed above) but I will definitely work out some way of providing people here with assurance.