Bananas and New York City Street Venders
1906 photo of a New York City street vender selling bananas, Courtesy of the National Archives II College Park, Maryland
June is national fruit month. Bananas is a great source of potassium that prevents muscle cramps while you’re training or competing. Starting in the late nineteenth century the United Fruit Company’s “Great White Fleet,” a line of steamships began to import bananas to the United States through New Orleans, Mobil, and Galveston from its plantations in Central and South America. They made their way from the South to New York over about a ten year period. Bananas sold on the streets of New York in 1906 were exotic because it had been such a short time since they entered the states.