The black minivan pulls into a shaded spot in West Park on the North Side, as it always does two hours before a Pirates game, with the windows down and the 3WS oldies station blaring.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette T.C. Congdon, right, longtime vendor at Mellon Arena and the stadiums, expresses satisfaction after tasting a grape-cherry-lemon ice drink made for him by another longtime vendor, Gus Kalaris, left, in West Park on the North Side. Click photo for larger image.

Tommy "T.C." Congdon, 50, pops out of the van to begin his elaborate pregame dressing-and-stretching ritual. Across West Ohio Street, Gus Kalaris, 72, who has been selling shaved-ice treats from an orange cart in the park "since your dad was a lad," is fascinated.

These two men are, for my money (which I hand them in small bills throughout the summer), the finest vendors in Pittsburgh. The fact that they cross paths more than 80 times each summer should not go unrecorded. It's as if Macy befriended Gimbel.

OK, so that's an exaggeration. Each of these guys has served tens of thousands of Pittsburghers, one or two or three at a time, but they aren't direct competitors. Congdon has been walking up, down and through Mellon Arena and the stadiums, selling everything from cotton candy to beer, for two decades. Kalaris has been selling about three times as long, but all in the same spot. Their styles are so far apart I had to stop and think that they were in the same trade.

Kalaris is soft-spoken, easy with a smile, forever sharing old photos and stories with old friends, all of it Pittsburgh lore, all of it stuff he saw firsthand.

Congdon, whom thousands of thirsty Pirates and Steelers and Penguins fans know only as "T.C.," is a shaved-head dervish. Imagine if Robin Williams were a sports nut raised in McKees Rocks, and you'd be close, though you'd have to raise the energy level.

So their daily conclave can seem incongruous, even in a park where incongruities are as common as that not-so-young couple that has been vying for the city's tongue-wrestling-on-a-picnic-table title for several evenings now.

About T.C.'s pregame ritual: He emerged from the van around 10 a.m. Thursday, preparing for the Pirates' 12:35 p.m. start. He showed me an orange mango Energy Shot drink filled with B vitamins and caffeine that he'd put over the ice Kalaris provides. It's one of the many supplements or health drinks he consumes daily.

As we talk, he strips off the Paul Spadafora T-shirt he's wearing for another T and begins rubbing himself down with balms and liniments and shooting Vicks up his nose for his sinuses. Then he goes back in his van and removes his running shorts for the spandex long johns he wears for support even on the hottest days of summer. Then, after putting on is stadium vendor's uniform, he goes down on the sidewalk for stretches that put him on the short list for the most limber 5-foot-7, 170-pound 50-year-old on Earth.

Not everyone gets what he's doing. The other night, Kalaris said, a cop pulled up to ask if that man stretched out on the sidewalk had suffered a stroke.

Congdon speaks in a stream of consciousness that has more twists than the Monongahela, and my note-taking couldn't keep up with him. It's like trying to read James Joyce, though. The parts I understood I really enjoyed.

As we talked, a police officer stopped at Kalaris' cart for the special, a grape-cherry-and-lemon ice ball. T.C. yelled to him, "You got that nice Eddie Money haircut! Two tickets to Paradise!"

He might be the only guy in town who could get away with that. When T.C. asked him for a ride to the ballpark, the cop told him to hop in.

Kalaris hasn't seen a Pirates game since 1949. He's too busy selling ice balls, but he has caught T.C.'s act at Steelers games and Mellon Arena. I asked him if he had any liniments or oils or anything that keep him going after scraping ice for hours.

Not exactly.

"When my arm gets sore,'' Kalaris said, "I rub a couple of twenties on it and the pain goes away.''