photos: Emiliano Granado
as told to: Jason Perez
Oscar Bentancourth and Cecilia Gomez have no regard for benevolent distress. The Colombian couple, 46 and 55 respectively, are a step above drug dealers in the realm of parental nuisances. They sell cotton candy. Coincidentally, the couple immigrated to Brooklyn from their native Medellin to escape a much more dangerous distributor, Pablo Escobar. Who knew that in their refuge they’d be doing some slanging of their own? Yet they see no harm in providing your children with what equates to edible rocket fuel. And can we really be mad at them? Cotton candy at the right time in the right place can make the fairground fantasy complete. But don’t sleep thinking everything’s sweet—a good gust of wind can make for a quick mess and the hot sun can turn your fluffy stuff into the stickiest of the icky. Still, a little money spent on a yarn full of pretty pinks or baby blues is an investment for a child. In their world, that cotton candy’s sweet as gold.
“It began with our cousins. They started about 20, 25 years ago with a truck that sold snow cones. They would go around selling in Queens, Manhattan, some parts of Jersey. After that they sold ice cream from a mobile freezer. Then they bought these mail trucks to sell cotton candy. We inherited five cars, but we couldn’t keep up with them all. We kept two and threw the others away. The candy is relatively easy to make. We can’t give too much information on the process because we have secrets that have allowed us to be successful for so long. People have been watching us trying to learn. We have many friends that have tried and quit.
“For one, the cars and the machines get messed up a lot because they’re old and they’re hard to fix. The machines can be new and they’ll still get messed up. If you take one of these machines to a shop to fix, it takes them 8–15 days, so you end up losing work. People have asked [Oscar] to fix it for them, but we have to fix our own cars.
“We decide what fairs to go through from street vendor organizations. They distribute a schedule with all the fairs in the area. There are three major organizations. We used to work with one, but we switched to another because they don’t charge us too much for the permit. Different events have different prices. We always stay from the beginning to the very end. Even if we’re not making anything, because once you go in you can’t leave until everyone is gone.
“We sell the most cotton candy wherever the kids are, residential areas. We sell a lot in Queens and Brooklyn, the Bronx, sometimes New Jersey. We used to go to Manhattan a lot. We don’t sell in Manhattan anymore because there aren’t a lot of kids there. We sold the least in the village because those men don’t have kids.
“Everyone always asks how much do you make a day? The truth is, it varies. Something you have to take into affect is the climate. If we could work every hour we would, but it would be pointless. When we go to fairs if it is too hot, no one will buy any cotton candy. We sell more when it’s cold out than when it’s hot. When it’s very sunny out the cotton candy melts. Also, if it’s really windy the wind blows the cotton out of the pot and we can’t grab it with the sticks. It blows it in people’s faces and clothes. It can be funny watching people try to brush it off.
“You see a lot of things selling cotton candy. Mostly you just see people; how they act. You’ll see kids smack their parents with umbrellas because they don’t want to buy them cotton candy. A lot of times, the parents make them choose: Do you want a jump rope, a toy or do you want cotton candy? So the kid is pacing back and forth trying to make a decision. Usually they choose the cotton candy.
“The job is just a lot of fun. We have a lot of time to sleep, run errands and do whatever else we have to do. There’s really no stress. We have fun just being entertained watching stuff like when pigeons steal popcorn from the children. There’s not a lot of money, but the peace and tranquility is worth more than money. We can sleep at night. That’s what we value the most. That’s how we take life.”
