Day 54 Come Again?

A thin man with a busy moustache sidled up to me on a quiet  side street. "You need socks? You want socks?" He had a thick accent so I misunderstood. "Look please." Alarmed, but unable to help myself I looked and, to my considerable relief, I saw that he was in fact wielding a fistful of Calvin Klein knock off dress socks.

I have seen many things sold by street hawkers in many parts of the world, but socks are a first - no stand or bag or box, just a half dozen neatly folded socks and a generous amount of hope. I have to give the guy credit.

You might imagine that Istanbul is utterly aswarm with street vendors and touts and hustlers, but in fact it is not really. Even the famed Grand Bazaar's merchants were a curiously subdued lot, more intent on their smartphone screens than on the packs of nervous tourists shuffling by. The main exception you do encounter everywhere though is the result of the Turkish government having declared 2015 to be the Official Year Of The Selfie Stick. Now I don't know that for sure for sure as "an actual fact", but it's the only reason I can come up with to explain why you cannot walk 20 meters here without someone trying to sell you one (~$5 in an astonishing array of colors). Doesn't every tourist with flailing arms and an idiot grin already have one? Groups of tourists now look positively spiky from a distance. I expect the selfie stick market bubble to pop at any moment. Followed, no doubt, by a surge in sock sales...