A customer peruses Christmas tree options.
(Credit: Ezra Nielson)
It was a holiday tradition; then, during the pandemic, it ended.
At the end of November, Christmas trees used to appear on the western edge of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Washington Avenue. The trees, stacked along the sidewalk, were trimmed, wrapped and then carried off by shoppers.
A group of seasonal workers from Canada drove them down from Quebec each winter. The Canadian workers and their trees arrived after Thanksgiving and, along with the makeshift hut they built, were gone by Christmas morning.
But in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the Canadians stopped coming to Brooklyn. And in the intervening years they have not reappeared, despite the fact that Christmas trees are big business in New York City. Nor did any new vendors replace them. Crown Heights residents did not have a local venue to shop for their trees and instead had to travel east across Prospect Park or north to Prospect Heights or use a delivery service.
This year, though, trees have once appeared for sale, this time on the south side of Empire Boulevard, directly across from the spot where the Canadians used to sell theirs.
Charlie Legre, 56, a self-described “traveling vendor” who usually sells rocks and gems in different locations in Arizona, where he lives, and sells fireworks in the summer, is selling trees this December in Brooklyn.
This is the first year Legre has sold Christmas trees. His friends who own the operation hired him to help out. Legre’s least favorite thing about the job is the cold – December in Arizona, he said, is much nicer.
His favorite thing is the joy customers experience at his presence.
“The tree people haven’t been around in a while. It makes people real happy to pick out the tree they want,” he said.
On a crisp Tuesday evening pedestrians stopped to look and ask about prices. Strings of lights lit up the trees and wreaths.
Melissa Brown, aCrown Heights resident, was cheered by the return of Christmas trees to the area.
“I like that it’s this kind of temporary commerce that we can watch evolve as the trees disappear,” she said. “It’s its own kind of temporary commerce on a traffic triangle.”
Legre is the sole worker at the operation seven days a week. After he works his 12-hour shift, another worker relieves him for the night to guard the trees. The new tree venue appeared on Black Friday and will be there through Christmas Eve or until it runs out of inventory.
The trees he sells range in height from four feet to 15 feet and sell for $70 to $250. Legre said that as of Dec. 10, they have sold around 450 trees and have around 500 left. With half their inventory gone, they have exactly two weeks to sell the other half.
As for Legre, after he finishes selling the trees he’ll be spending Christmas in Pennsylvania this year with friends. He will not be bringing a tree with him.
