Jakarta Street Vendors Cosplay as Officials to Anime Characters: Survival Strategies and Symbolic Resistance

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Street vendors (PKL) can be found at nearly every corner of Jakarta city, offering a variety of products. Most of them compete to sell food and drinks to passers-by. The intense competition forces the majority of PKL to make extra efforts in selling to attract buyers. One unusual approach is dressing up or cosplaying as officials or anime characters while vending. Budi admits to choosing to resemble anime characters because he has idolised One Piece since the age of 10. Therefore, he enjoys collecting costumes of those anime characters and wearing them while selling jelly in front of a school. Every day, Budi’s appearance has its own theme, whether as Zoro or Luffy. When met by Kompas.com, he was cosplaying as Zoro with a green wig, three sword-shaped earrings on his left ear, a white T-shirt featuring One Piece, a green belt with black stripes, black jeans with three replica swords tucked on the right side, and red shoes. His unusual daily appearance successfully draws the attention of many people, even going viral on social media after being recorded by one of his customers. A bakso vendor in Cilincing, North Jakarta, named Sugiyo alias Baron (45), also chooses to appear in an unusual way while selling. “Because I’m used to it, selling food means being neat, clean, and polite to buyers. That’s what makes it pleasant, and if it’s not quite right, I always apologise,” he said when interviewed at the location on Wednesday. Sociologist from Jakarta State University (UNJ) Rakhmat Hidayat assesses that dressing in unusual ways while selling is one of the strategies for UMKM to survive amid tight competition.