Then they watched as the crowds came, with wallets out.
Children, pets and sentimental keepsakes topped their lists, along with wallets and credit cards.
As a result, many consumers have ended up with wallets full of sometimes forgotten store cards.
Most unions represent workers with wallets of similar size, but SAG is a hodgepodge of wildly varying careers.
The west side of a southbound street is good because that's where buses stop and people fumble with wallets as they get on.
And with wallets being battered daily, ease of entry and easily met tabs give beer gardens the edge among the thirsty.
For those brave enough to plunge into the fray with wallets open next week, Melissa Geick, a manager at the Victoria's Secret Pink store at the Queens Center Mall, has some advice.
But some of those same parents have been less attuned to finances in another area, sending their children off to college with wallets bulging with high-interest-rate credit cards.
Yet the gains in jobs followed a surprisingly upbeat report on retail sales for March, which showed consumers freely spent on clothes and household goods with wallets fattened by government handouts.
Runners, many wearing sneakers and various items of blue-and-yellow official marathon gear, waited in a line to present their race numbers in exchange for the belongings — bags filled with wallets, cell phones, warm clothes — that they had checked before the race and then been forced to abandon.
There was nothing unusual in the robber's methods — stalking victims into elevators, beating them with fists and making off with wallets, purses and cellphones — but his choice of victims added an alarming and, for Spanish Harlem, perhaps unexpected demographic twist: all were Chinese.
