Sto­ries by rad­hi­ca de sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

On a usu­al Christ­mas Eve, High Street in San Fer­nan­do buzzes with shop­pers jostling through the crowds while ven­dors hawk their goods of­fer­ing bar­gain prices in var­i­ous tones and pitch­es.

Yet, this year paint­ed a stark­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture, re­sem­bling an or­di­nary shop­ping day, much to the dis­may of ven­dors who la­belled it as one of the worst in decades.

Jesse Sidoo, a watch ven­dor, not­ed a stag­ger­ing de­cline in sales, es­ti­mat­ing a plum­met of 75 per cent.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Sidoo said, “Shop­ping is worse than it was dur­ing the pan­dem­ic years. We thought it would pick up by Christ­mas Eve but it didn’t.”

Nigel Sinanan, who has been a street ven­dor for two decades, echoed the sen­ti­ment of slow sales, say­ing, “Peo­ple are walk­ing around, but they just aren’t buy­ing.”

Amidst the dis­ap­point­ing sales at­mos­phere, even items usu­al­ly con­sid­ered eas­i­er sells, like kitchen tow­els at $5 each, strug­gled to find tak­ers.

Mid­dle High Street, usu­al­ly bustling, wit­nessed traf­fic con­ges­tion, yet ven­dors there al­so re­port­ed slug­gish sales.

Bet­ty Ann Bha­gan, a vet­er­an grape sell­er of over 40 years, of­fered sound ad­vice amidst the sales down­turn.

“Peo­ple have to learn not to hang their hat where they can­not reach it. Stop wor­ry­ing about Christ­mas. Buy a lit­tle and re­mem­ber you don’t need a lot of every­thing,” she re­marked wise­ly to those cau­tious about ex­pens­es.

Dwaine Bish­op, sell­ing at Rose of Flow­ers, shared his sur­prise at slow­er sales for a typ­i­cal­ly high-de­mand item dur­ing the sea­son.

“Usu­al­ly, this is a hot sell­er for the sea­son but this year I did not get as much sales as usu­al,” Bish­op said, high­light­ing the un­ex­pect­ed down­turn in sales.

How­ev­er, amid the street’s des­o­late sales, toy stores wit­nessed bustling ac­tiv­i­ty, as par­ents flocked in to pick up last-minute toys for their chil­dren’s stock­ings on Christ­mas Eve, the night San­ta Clause is ex­pect­ed to vis­it.

David Bovell, shop­ping at Jay’s Toy­box, re­vealed his rea­son for the late shop­ping spree, say­ing he had on­ly re­ceived his salary on Sat­ur­day.

“My Christ­mas is about mak­ing my chil­dren hap­py. I couldn’t come be­fore be­cause my salary on­ly run through yes­ter­day, and I now get a chance to come,” Bovell said.

Mes­si­ah Jaipaul, ac­knowl­edg­ing the late surge in shop­pers, ex­plained that they had ex­tend­ed open­ing hours to cater to last-minute buy­ers.

He an­tic­i­pat­ed that sales would pick up by mid­night.

Con­trast­ing­ly, cloth­ing stores on High Street en­coun­tered a sim­i­lar lull, with cus­tomers pre­fer­ring on­line shop­ping for cloth­ing, cit­ing con­ve­nience over in-store ex­pe­ri­ences.