By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
UNION SQUARE — After the peaceful leader's iconic round-rimmed spectacles were mysteriously ripped from his face in Union Square Park last week, Parks Department workers welded a spare pair onto the bronze Mahatma Gandhi statue Friday morning.
Many of the vendors, who sell art near the statue in the park's southwest nook, were pleased to see the glasses replaced.
"You want him to be all together and see the world," said Susan Isaacs, who has been selling photos and pictures here since 1989. "He always showed us the world. It's good he got his glasses back so he can see. They did a beautiful job."
Parks officials admitted they go missing "once in a while," necessitating a stash of spares.
Several of the park's regulars hadn't even realized the glasses were gone.
"I never noticed," said a bookseller who calls himself "Wild Bill. "As often as I look at that statue, after a while it always looks the same. Who is going to steal those glasses? You can't wear them. What idiot did that?"
Scott Rogers, who sells DVDs of classic films, wondered if the vandalism could have been connected to "backlash" following the recent publication of a new Gandhi biography. That book, by former New York Times editor Joseph Lelyveld, has caused a stir in India — even before its release there — for alleging that the leader was bi-sexual.
"I've been working outdoors for 35 years, so I'm not surprised by anything," Rogers said of the act of vandalism to the mythic leader.
Other vendors had more banal theories: drunkards, prankster kids, someone looking to get money for the metal.
In a park dotted with statues — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, the Marquis de Lafayette and now art star Andy Warhol — the vendors all agreed that Gandhi was the most popular.
He's also the most accessible, standing not on a lofty base, but in a pocket of the park with some shrubbery, allowing the public to bequeath him with garlands and hats and to make him the focal point of ceremonies. Vendors thought he should remain that way, despite the occasional glasses theft.
"He's with the people in a garden frolicking with flowers," said artist Stephanie Chisholm. "It's better that he's down here. People flock to him. Nobody does that around anybody else."
Bill Peaks, who sells T-shirts, said tourists constantly ask where the statue is. "They don't ask about any other statue. It's all about the Gandhi," he said, speculating the glasses could have only been stolen in the quiet of the night.
"He inspired my favorite person, Martin Luther King. His non-violent tactics were inspired by Gandhi," Peaks added.
But that's not why the vendor likes to snag a spot vending near the 25-year-old figure.
"I like to be near the statue because it attracts a lot of people," Peaks confided.
