το φωτεινό ιπποδρόμιο

[Theseus]

One of the many characters to pressure people to buy their wares is the razor blade seller. The full sentence is this:- Περνάνε κι άλλοι. Ο ξυροφάκιας ξυραφάκιας, το φωτεινό ιπποδρομίο ιπποδρόμιο, τσατσάρες και μπανελάκια για κολλάρα.
Does he actually sell miniature lit-up racecourses?? I've no real idea what it really means. An item like this would be rather large to fit on a seller's tray of wares! What is this φωτεινό ιπποδρομίο ιπποδρόμιο; :twit:

 

[SBE]

Ιπποδρόμιο, not ιπποδρομίο is a carousel

 

[SBE]

Also, o ξυραφάκιας.

 

[Theseus]

Not bad--one misspelling & two wrong accents!? But at least, I think I now know what it means: the lit-up carousel must refer to the saloon in which the guests are eating--the word describes the fairground atmosphere of the place. An annoying chaos, full of salesmen jostling one another as they hawk their wares. Thanks, SBE.

 

[AoratiMelani]

Maybe there actually is a carousel there, next to the salesmen with their wares. I would need more context to be sure.

 

[SBE]

the lit-up carousel must refer to the saloon in which the guests are eating--the word describes the fairground atmosphere of the place. An annoying chaos, full of salesmen jostling one another as they hawk their wares. Thanks, SBE.

I think it describes the merry-go-round and the man who sells tickets for it:



PS and I must have been watching too many american films recently, because yesterday I could not remember what this thing is called in British English.;)

 

[Theseus]

I'm beginning to come round to the view, based on these suggestions, since there is no context help--only a list of salesmen (including a gypsy, pressurising people to have their fortunes told) & wares being sold, that the sentence means 'the lit up racecourse/circus'. In other words, tickets for a horse race/circus. The vocabulary gives only 'racecourse' as the meaning of ιπποδρόμιο. Clearly he means it to refer to a ticket tout. A question to AoratiMelani: how could a racecourse or circus or merry-go-round be there? Outside the fish restaurant?:cheek:
By the way, the neaning of merry-go-round (carousel) is in none of my dictionaries. For the latter, they give for that only "αλογάκια του λούνα-παρκ". :)

 

[SBE]

I can tell you how I found it. It was evident that it was some kind of fairground act (I also thought that ο ξυραφάκιας was not someone who sells razor blades but someone who does something with razorblades, like throw them or eat them or something like that) and I originally thought it was some sort of race with fake horses, where one has to press a button or something for their horse to move. I then googled φωτεινό ιπποδρόμιο and images of a merry-go-round came up, also several documents describing a merry-go-round.
Yes, it is called αλογάκια but ιπποδρόμιο sounds more official and it is accurate, as it consists of horses going around a track.
In the lines you gave us there is no mention of a fish shop, nor any other context that may guide the reader to another direction.

 

[Theseus]

It was a sea shore fish restaurant that had one enclosed room. The first sentence tells us that and that is all. I appreciate all your suggestions: the only context we have here is the large numbers of hawkers who manage to slip into this central room. I did, in fact, give information about it being a fish restaurant & some more detail in my thread οι πελάτες που συνήθως δεν είναι στην πρώτη νεότητα.... The reference to the 'razor-blade seller' was the entry in the vocabulary of the little book I'm using. Thanks for the ιπποδρόμιο research. As I said, the only translation given in the vocabulary was thst it meant a racecourse. I now know that it means also a merry-go-round & a circus.

 

[drsiebenmal]

Κατά τη γνώμη μου, αφού ξυραφάκια, τσατσάρες και μπανελάκια για κολλάρα είναι χρήσιμα φτηνοπραγματάκια, το λογικό είναι να ανήκει και το «φωτεινό ιπποδρόμιο» στην κατηγορία αυτή. Απλώς είναι κάποιο είδος που δεν υπάρχει πια ή ονομάζεται διαφορετικά. Θα μπορούσε π.χ. να είναι μάρκα κάποιου αντικειμένου, όπως λέγανε παλιά κολινός την οδοντόπαστα και όπως λένε στα αγγλικά hoover το καθάρισμα με την ηλεκτρική σκούπα. Δεν μπορώ να φανταστώ όμως καν τι θα μπορούσε να είναι αυτό το αντικείμενο...

 

[drsiebenmal]

Do we know anything about this text? When it was written, by whom etc. I have a very far-fetched theory, that maybe those were "light" cigarettes (and light was mistakenly translated) showing running horses on the pack - some version of Marlboro Lights, for example.

Edit: Or something like that:

A box of cigars, selling them by the piece...

 

[Marinos]

I seem to have heard/read the term ξυραφάκιας as the trickster who cuts his victim's coat (not throat) with a razor-blade, just in the place he knows to find (and, thus, steal) his wallet.

 

[drsiebenmal]

I seem to have heard/read the term ξυραφάκιας as the trickster who cuts his victim's coat (not throat) with a razor-blade, just in the place he knows to find (and, thus, steal) his wallet.

That's correct, though not here, I think.

 

[AoratiMelani]

A question to AoratiMelani: how could a racecourse or circus or merry-go-round be there? Outside the fish restaurant?:cheek:

I hadn't realized there was a fish restaurant there. Even now I cannot see any such reference. Maybe you mentioned it in another post and I missed it.

 

[Theseus]

Sorry, AoratiMelani. See under Greek-English queries οι πελάτες που συνήθως δεν είναι στην πρώτη νεότητα... #1.

 

[Theseus]

Inspired suggestion, ὦ αγαθέ μου, Δρ. I have no information about this story nor where it came from. It is just one of several in the little book A Modern Greek Reader for Beginners by J.T. Pring. 3rd Impression 1972. He tells us that these texts are derived 'from a different number of hands'.

 

[SBE]

Theseus, I suspect that the text is from a longer description of the place, which includes a brief description of the restaurant whose clients are well past their prime, then moves on to street sellers and then the amusements and the merry-go-round. It seems to be a typical seashore scene from ... Britain.

 

[daeman]

... It seems to be a typical seashore scene from ... Britain.

From Britain and Brighton, right on and bright on as the thread title horse-track.


At about the time the book was printed, 1972, although the film was set in the '60s and released in 1979,
"We are the Mods, we are the sods, we are we are we are the Mods":

 

[Theseus]

The title of the whole piece is ΟΙ ΓΑΡΔΕΝΙΕΣ, Ο ΣΥΖΗΓΟΣ ΚΑΙ Ο ΑΓΝΩΣΤΟΣ ΘΑΥΜΑΣΤΗΣ. I am barely a quarter way through it. The next person is the flower seller, hence the gardenias of the title. I wish this editor had given references to his sources. In his preface, as I've just this very minute read, he does say that this comes from an Athenian weekly called Tachydromos.

 

[SBE]

Since we were not Tachydromos readers when I was growing up in Greece I think I have only read a handful of issues from the 70s and 80s (the magazine ceased publication in the early 90s after 40+ years, people will tell you it is now the weekly magazine that comes with some newspaper, but it is definitely not the same magazine, despite the title and logo, and anyway even newspapers are going the way of the dodo nowadays).
I don't remember if it published literary short stories, but it certainly had humorous articles. I suspect this is one of the latter and it is likely it has not been published elsewhere (say, in an anthology or a book of short stories), so you will probably find no more information about it, unless you have the name of the author.