life on the sidewalk.

What do you think of when you hear the term “street vendor?”

Maybe you think of the Sabrett hot dog cart on Broadway and 23rd Street. Or the fruit stand on the corner. You may imagine many things, but the image of a tall, white guy whose credentials include an Ivy League education and a Wall Street résumé is probably farthest from your mind.

Sean Basinski, 36, attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. And got his law degree from Georgetown. Before graduate school, he did time on Wall Street.

But between Wall Street and Georgetown, Sean Basinski hawked Mexican food from a pushcart on Park Avenue and 52nd Street.

Fending off Health Department officials trying to take advantage of his ignorance of vending laws, Basinski realized that street vendors – most of whom didn’t hold B.A.s from Penn – faced the same harassment every day. So after law school, he founded the Street Vendor Project, an association for New York’s 10,000 street vendors to organize and learn about their legal rights. “It’s like a union for street vendors,” Basinski said.

The SVP helps vendors deal with issues like police harassment and license scarcity. Merchandise vendors face a daunting waitlist for one of 853 licenses. The last time the waitlist was opened was in 1992. Due to the shortage of licenses, a black market emerged. According to Basinski, in a move akin to illegally subletting an apartment, a license holder can rent out his two-year license (which cost $200) for as much as $8,000.

It is easier for food vendors to obtain one of 300 required Health Department permits, but they have other problems. Held to restaurant-level standards, they are easy targets for Health Department officials. According to Basinski, a Nuts-for-Nuts vendor who leaves his window open to interact with customers could be slapped with a ticket for up to $1,000 for exposing his food to airborne contaminants.

While we may take the corner hotdog cart for granted, Basinski is quick to remind us of its importance. “[Vendors] liven up the sidewalks,” Basinski, who was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study street vendors in Nigeria, said. “This isn’t LA, where we go to drive-throughs in our little boxes. In New York, the first person you talk to in the morning might be the guy that makes your coffee.”