Sidewalk

This chapter lays out how Sixth Avenue has become a home, or “sustaining habitat,” to these sidewalk merchants. To provide context, Duneier starts with the renowned academic of urban life: Jane Jacobs. In Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she asks what can bring together strangers on a sidewalk in such a way that they feel comfortable interacting with one another. She answers that if a city has enough uses, then there will be a variety of people, or “eyes,” on the street to keep to keep the public safe. Jacobs’s book has become “the bible” of urban sociology, despite mixed evidence supporting her ideas (115). Take Sixth Avenue, for example. Many of the eyes—including characters in this book—are strangers to the residents of Greenwich Village. Their differences from the residents—their lower-income status, their sidewalk jobs, their skin color—also makes it less likely that these eyes will be seen as figures who can keep the streets safe. Despite segregation, the Village has become a hub for members of minority groups from other neighborhoods. This is a marked change from earlier decades, when the area was mostly home to white, middle-class residents. In Jane Jacobs’s time, residents felt safe because they shared a similar background with strangers on the street. That is no longer the case.

The majority of the book and magazine vendors, panhandlers and scavengers on Sixth Avenue are African-African, reflecting the significant percentage of unhoused black men in New York. The presence of these men on the streets reinforces racist stereotypes of African-American men as being aggressive or dangerous, which Duneier argues “makes it much more difficult for them than for men of other races or even black women to navigate through the social support system” (121). Structural forces such as drug policies and minimal job opportunities also shape these men’s lives. A third of the unhoused men that Duneier interviews have been in prison for possession and/or distribution of drugs like crack cocaine. As they were on the streets, these men were more likely to be charged for a drug crime than middle-class individuals using in private settings. Furthermore, harsher federal sentencing for possession of crack—used mostly by poor, minority communities—compared to powder cocaine has led to predominantly black individuals being incarcerated for use of crack cocaine. The federal government spends an average of $100,000 incarcerating each individual charged with crimes related to crack, and then releases them onto the streets when their time in prison expires. Lacking family ties or support from the government to find employment, drug treatment or housing, many of these individuals have few resources available to seek formal work in the economy and wind up on the sidewalks.

Nonetheless, Duneier acknowledges that it is unclear the extent to which sociopolitical forces versus individual factors make a difference. He cites the example of Ron, whose Jamaican aunt, Naomi, has $180,000 saved up from her years working as a domestic servant. Marvin’s parents had been married for more than fifty years. Regardless, after exiting prison or succumbing to drugs, many of these men take unskilled day-labor jobs, which can allow them to work on the days on which they are sober. But these jobs have been on a decline for years, and immigrants often fill the ones that are available.

The men who have come to Sixth Avenue have found a place where they can “organize themselves for survival” (123). Many of these men also share a common history: fifteen years ago, they slept several blocks north of Sixth Avenue, in the area near Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station (Penn Station for short). Penn Station serves as something like a public mall with shops and cheap restaurants. It offers amenities like heating and air conditioning, which are crucial for unhoused men to avoid the extreme temperatures on the streets of New York. Lavatories are available where the men can wash themselves and engage in intercourse. They receive donations of food from restaurants in the station and cash from passing train travelers and commuters. Although the local Amtrak police ask them to leave, they do not engage in systemic crackdowns to push them out. From time to time, they even seem to “accept that the unhoused men were legitimate users of the space” (125).

However, in the mid-1980s, the population of unhoused men doubled, growing to the point where commuters and restaurant owners saw their presence in the station as disruptive. As Duneier summarizes:

Penn Station had become an eyesore […] and there was a movement to clear it of men like Mudrick, Randy, Ishmael, and Joe, who were looked upon as worse than useless—detrimental to the Port Authority’s desire for cleanliness and order (126).

The men are no longer permitted to sleep there. Afterwards, Randy goes to prison for selling crack and Ishmael and Mudrick rob individuals to afford food and drugs. Ishmael, Mudrick and Joe go to prison and are later released.

Meanwhile, a pro-bono team of lawyers files a lawsuit against the Amtrak authorities in a case called Streetwatch v. National Railroad Passenger Association. They argue that the authorities are arbitrarily kicking out and arresting individuals without providing proof that these people are not commuters. AUS district court judge agrees, and orders Amtrak to cease this type of policing. But the ruling does not prevent Amtrak from revamping Penn Station in such a way that law enforcement can still eject unhoused men. Instead of focusing on the men’s appearance, they target behaviors like panhandling and sleeping on the floor, effectively barring unhoused men from living there. Richard Rubel, director of Amtrak’s “homeless outreach” program—Duneier uses quotation marks to indicate that he believes this is not quite an accurate description—also obtains the cooperation of restaurant owners so that they will no longer donate food to the men. Design changes are also made to remove corners or niches where panhandlers might linger. Rubel says that men residing in Penn Station “is not an acceptable living alternative” and that people should be given proper indoor shelter, rather than ad hoc places like train stations to sleep (131).

But how did some of these men—and others—arrive at Sixth Avenue? To answer this question, Duneier turns his attention to New York attorney Edward C. Wallace. In 1981, Wallace became the youngest member on the New York City Council. An individual named Arthur Eisenberg from the New York Civil Liberties Union tells him about the poet David Ferguson. Ferguson had been arrested in Greenwich Village for trying to sell copies of a literary magazine that he produced. Sympathetic to Ferguson’s cause, Wallace puts forth an amendment to allow people to sell written matter like periodicals, books and magazines. In a move that will pave the way for the book and magazine vendors to exist on Sixth Avenue, the Civil Liberties Union also lobbies for vendors to be able to sell from tables.

As a result, a provision to that effect is included in the final bill—known as Local Law 33—that then-Mayor Edward Koch signs into law into 1982. And it is the police who bring word of Local Law 33 to vendors in Greenwich Village. Unhoused merchant Alfred Robinson, who previously sold jewelry, says the police told him that “The only thing that’s gonna be legal out here to sell is books. So I suggest you get yourself some books” (137). Al adapts by adding some magazines to his pile, and Marvin does the same. They find that the written matter sells well, so they stick with it. Later, Mudrick and others come out of prison to Sixth Avenue to participate in the sidewalk economy, which spreads through word-of-mouth to current vendors like Ishmael, who are trying to rebuild their life after prison. He speaks of “starting to respect myself as a human being by trying to live right” (139). Ishmael begins working for Ron while gleaning tips from Marvin. He eventually starts vending at his own table. These men teach other tips not only on how to sell specific items but also on what the law entails. Some men confuse the Local Law with the US Constitution, believing they have a constitutional right on the basis of freedom of expression to sell on Sixth Avenue. As Ron says, “They can’t stop us from selling written materials, the same way they can’t stop the newspaper” (141).

But what specifically about Sixth Avenue makes this stretch of city blocks conducive to vending? Duneier notes a number of factors that Sixth Avenue shares in common with Penn Station:

[D]ensity of people, convergence of transportation lines carrying many persons from various parts of the city, people willing to make donations, cheap or free food, place to sleep, and what Richard Rubel of Amtrak calls ‘niches’ (144).

But there is also a social element that makes this a booming vending spot: the sympathetic attitudes of Greenwich Village residents that lead them to donate food, magazines and money. Lastly, the sheer number of high-quality magazines in the trash of upper-middle-class aids the magazine vendors, who root through the recyclable items before the sanitation trucks arrive.

Duneier accompanies Marvin on an early-morning trip. Marvin uses a map from the Yellow Pages to determine when recycling materials will be picked up in the area. He uses box cutters to cut through the bundles that hold the magazines on the street. Duneier talks about the care that scavengers take to avoid upsetting residents. He learns that Marvin has good relationships with building superintendents, who help scavengers by placing magazines in a separate bundle from bottles and cans. Marvin displays a fairly-complex screening process for magazines. For example, he finds copies of Artforum magazine—something in demand among upper-middle-class customers—but decides to leave them because they are two months old and will be less likely to sell.

At the end of the chapter, Duneier takes a big-picture approach and states that his method of ethnography, which entails studying the “social worlds of individuals in small groups at one point in their lives,” is insufficient to encompass the sociopolitical trends that have shaped the sidewalks and the people who work there (154). These historical forces include immense poverty; segregation; failing drug policies; and the lack of governmental assistance to help mental-ill and formerly-incarcerated people transition back into jobs, homes, and wider society. Most crucially, local factors indirectly working together have brought about this sidewalk ecosystem. These include: pro-environment sentiments that lead to residents recycling magazine in bundles; scavengers learning from one another and specializing in different types of written matter; the passage of Local Law 33 through Edward C. Wallace’s efforts to defend the civil liberties of a street poet; and the cunning of local vendors to make use of the new laws and current sidewalk space. Local Law 33 becomes a tool that enables the workers on Sixth Avenue to survive, and Duneier charts the pushback to this law in subsequent chapters.