Text and Photographs by Stephen Harmon
I met him in the 1970s. He was a vigorous man with a big smile, a friendly sales patter, and a deep, booming voice that told everyone on Broadway from about West 68th Street to West 76th Street that he had “FRESH FLOWERS FOR SALE.” He was easy to talk to and pleased to pose for a portrait.
He told me he was Max Berger from Brooklyn, 82 years old. He said he would work forever, because he loved flowers — especially carnations — and he loved his customers, who kept coming back.
I was fascinated by him, a street magician who often had six or more buckets of water overflowing with flowers, but I never knew him to own a van or truck.
One long-ago Saturday, as I was walking past The Ansonia, I saw Max talking with a woman. He introduced me — the “young photographer” — and told me she had an apartment on a high floor and would invite him up for lunch in the hot weather and to escape the cold in the winter. They posed for a photo which I see from a poster on the wall behind them must have been in the late spring or summer of 1979.
About a year or two later, maybe three, I was again walking up Broadway on a Saturday. The street was mostly silent. I did not see Max Berger that day. The following Saturday the street was silent again, and I knew he was gone.
Stephen Harmon is a longtime Upper West Sider, a retired lawyer, and a world-class photographer whose work is displayed in many of the city’s museums, including The Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The New-York Historical Society, and The New York Public Library.
Very nice a real New York story…
And I remember going to that show in 1979 featuring RITA MORENO at the cabaret disco night club LES MOUCHES, a great classy disco club downtown on 11th Avenue at West 27th Street.
WONDERFUL story and wonderful photos. By the way, I want the red patent leather boots that the woman in the purple velvet coat was wearing…….Thank you again Steve Harmon!
Thank You
Lovely story. I wish we knew more about his past and the ending of his story.
I miss when adult men dressed like Max.
Seriously. I feel like people in NYC are dressed up more than most, but it was great when people were dressed up on a normal basis.
Thank you for this. Very touching.
What a time capsule!!!
Golly, I remember — hazily — Max and his flowers from my earliest years as a New Yorker. More recently there was Kirk Davidson’s sprawling sidewalk display of used books along Broadway below 73rd Street, perpetually subject to police raids. “The mind goes back, but time goes on….”