Somehow, Joe Ades got people’s attention as the crowds swirled by at the Union Square Greenmarket, on their way to eyeing and buying the produce. He was the white-haired man with the British accent, the expensive European suits and shirts  the man selling the $5 peeler. For carrots. Or potatoes.

“He talked constantly,” said Clover Vail, an artist.

“He was very excited about carrots,” said Sara Mason, a merchandise assistant at Barnes & Noble.

“He made it look really fun,” said Julie Worden, who dances with the Mark Morris Dance Company.

“The voice  you couldn’t help but notice it,” said Gordon Crandall, a mathematician who teaches at La Guardia Community College.

His was a particular kind of street theater in a city that delights in in-your-face characters who are, and are not, what they seem. For he was the sidewalk pitchman with the Upper East Side apartment. The sidewalk pitchman who was a regular at expensive East Side restaurants, where no one believed his answer to the “So what do you do?” question: “I sell potato peelers on the street.” Mr. Ades (pronounced AH-dess) died on Sunday at 75, said his daughter, Ruth Ades Laurent of Manhattan. She said he never talked about how many peelers he sold in a year, or how many carrots he had sliced up during demonstrations. She said he stashed his inventory in what had been the maid’s room of the apartment.