MANHATTAN. Despite financial market slowdowns and brokerage house bailouts, the Armory Show was in town, bringing high-end galleries from around the world to set up booths inside Pier 94 along the Hudson River, hoping to exceed its $85 million worth of sales from last year.

Several other art fairs, including Pulse, Bridge and Volta, also hoped to make sales this weekend. But at Scope New York, there was one piece for which no money was exchanged: Carrissa Carman’s A.T.T. Vegetable Oil Taxi.

She offered rides in her yellow Mercedes Benz, which runs on veggie grease, in exchange for gifts.

“I made barters, turned barters down, transported people for luxury, stories, received rings, books, a steering wheel cover, brief friendships and company,” said Carman, 29, who ferried people around within 30 blocks of the fair’s tent set up at Lincoln Center.

Carman’s performance was an outgrowth of a 10-week trip she recently finished with Joanna Lake, 26, where they drove their “sustainable” Benz to visit state fairs and farms across the U.S. to research perceptions of and responses to sustainable farming methods. Her taxi fit Scope’s green initiative to incorporate alternative transportation.

Two Dutch men in tuxes, leaving Scope’s VIP event Thursday night, were her first passengers. “They swayed their VIP passes and said they no longer needed them,” Carman recalled. “At the time, I didn’t think it was valuable to me, but I ended up handing them to friends.”

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