By Heidi Kurpiela

Hate the mall? Hate the guilt you feel when buying a necklace from a chain store in the mall, because you know an 8-year-old child made it in Bangladesh? Or do you just plan dislike nasty clerks who could care less what happens to your money so long as their drawers aren’t short that night?

Don’t be so negative. Shop with the vendors on campus, share a story or two with them and go home with a funky gift for someone, or a well-deserved present for yourself.

Glowing cat heads and waterfalls

Holly Ferris, who sits behind the Campbell Student Union information desk, says she bought a waterfall candle last week from a vendor she calls “Candleman.”

She says: “For 10 bucks you can’t lose. And it smells so good!”

You may have noticed Candleman before. His rolling display of tie-dyed sand candles is set up inside the union, beside the cafeteria entrance. And the smell of strawberry oils wafts over the smell of burger grease at lunchtime.

His name is Joseph Sireci; he sits in a leather director’s chair that has etched in it the name of his Lackawanna business, Sands of Time.
Sireci has been coming to Buffalo State College since 1971.

He says: “The students all know me and they keep bringing back their empty candles and I keep bringing ’em home and bringing ’em back filled up for them.”

Student Tiffany West is lugging around two bags of candles (Valentine’s Day gifts for her friends.)

“I live on campus and haven’t had the time to get to a store,” she says. “And the bookstore didn’t have anything unique for Valentine’s Day.”

When it comes to candles, she’s right. The bookstore offered some pink votives for $15 but not wax waterfalls, planters and cat skulls.

Tongue rings and hacky sacks

Tedde Jones sits behind a long velvet table of sterling silver jewelry (tongue, nose and belly button rings included.)

This is his sixth year on campus. His business, Nature’s Images, is based in Victor, NY, but much of his year is spent traveling across the state, selling at different colleges and fairs.

The ambitious shopper, West, moves onto Jones’s spread.

She holds up a chunky wooden tribal necklace and asks Jones if he thinks it will fit her boyfriend.

“Hey I could try it on,” he says. “But I don’t think I’ll have the same size neck as your boyfriend.”

He tries it on for her; she giggles and purchases it for $4.99.

Jones has a better selection of rings on one table than most jewelry stores have in their entire boutiques. He says his best sellers are Irish claddagh rings that never seem to go out of style and lately turquoise rings and necklaces that seem to be back in style.

Then there are worry rings.

If you’re one of those fidgeting ring twirlers, they’ve created a ring for you! The metal band is wide and thick with a thin twisted piece in the center that spins around the rest of the ring in a relaxing way.

Not five minutes pass since West bought her boyfriend’s necklace… and she’s back, this time with him in tow.

“The necklace didn’t fit,” she tells Jones. They laugh about it and then she exchanges it for a hacky sack.

Rock earrings and lobster parties

Not all vendors set up shop in the union.
Retired geology professor Carl Seyfert’s rock collection takes up most of the main foyer of the Science Building during Christmas time.

Cat-head candles and worry rings aside; this selection is a pleasant surprise waiting after biology class.

Seyfert collects and buys rocks from all over the world and his display of glittering amethysts, quartz and hematite looks like it belongs in the Palace of Versailles.

His wife, Carol, says he’s been selling these gems since the Whitworth-Ferguson Planetarium burned down in 1978, after a faulty projector overheated.

“He needed to raise money to build it back up again,” she says. And after the new star lab was constructed he continued to sell the rocks and began to donate the money to the Geo Science Club.

“It’s gotten to be a little ritual,” says Carol. “We take the money from those rock sales and throw a lobster party every year at our house.”

Seyfert’s rocks aren’t just for decorating your mantle. He puts out bins of tiny gems with metal hooks dangling off them and suggests you put together your own earrings, necklaces and bracelets. Not without commenting first on where he found each stone, under which tree and by what river, of course.

Of all the vendors on campus, Seyfert’s assortment is the most unique, his stories the most heartwarming and the history of your purchase the most telling.

But these shifting businesses all have something in common—whether they’re selling prepaid phone cards, wool sweaters, refillable candles or eyebrow rings—each vendor to grace our campus does to raise funds for some organization or another (fraternities, sororities, science clubs, etc…).

What makes our campus merchants unlike mall retailers is that each one has a story to tell and each time you purchase a gift you take that story with you.