There is an intensity in the engagement between buyers and sellers in the city during the final days leading to the start of the new school year. It may not match the frenzied excitement of Christmas shopping; it is, however, in its own right, an important episode on the local commercial calendar.
This week, the downtown traders, both the pavement vendors and the established merchants, are taking nothing for granted. From the beginning of this year a new army of traders appears to have materialized. On Regent Street, particularly, merchants appear to occupy