The vending row begins on Water Street just outside Bounty Supermarket, pushes west on the pavement towards Stabroek Market then forks sharply in the direction of Demico House. The other fork continues on its southward path, extending towards the furthest extreme of the market. It is, almost certainly, the most congested single trading space in the city, populated overwhelmingly by female vendors offering vegetables, fruit, groceries and assorted items from makeshift stalls packed tightly together.
Some of the vendors are veterans of the streets who have survived what they say were the “bad old days” when the City Constabulary swooped down on pavement vendors with monotonous regularity, seized and impounded their goods and made them pay to retrieve them. These days, the vendors say, the relationship with the Constabulary is one of greater “understanding.” It is a matter, one vendore told Stabroek Business, of “living along.” At nights, the presence nearby of the City Constabulary as well as a Guyana Police Force outpost provides a measure of peace of mind.
There may well be at least 100 vendors trading in what is a highly populated and favoured locale. In the evenings, particularly, people making their way to the bus park to travel to any location in or out of the city find themselves close to this
