Recently the New York Post announced with a blatant headline Cops bust Iron-Man, Spider-Man and Elmo in
Times Square. So who are these
creatures, what are they doing in Times Square, and why are they being
arrested? Elmo, as seen in
 |
| Elmo, on the left, waits to get a hug from Dr. Jill Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama. |
Times Square,
is a shaggy red monster with black dots of eyes and an orange nose, inspired by
a Muppet in the children’s TV show Sesame Street. Iron Man is an armor-clad figure, his face
completely encased in a helmet, inspired by a comic-book superhero of that name
who fights crime. The third arrestee,
Spider Man, stands tall in a torso-hugging red and blue garb adorned with what
looks like a spider web, his head completely masked, a sinister figure likewise
based on a popular comic-book superhero.
So what is this trio of performers – for
such they are – doing in the Crossroads of the World? Charming children, posing with them for
photos, and urging – or sometimes pressuring – their parents to fork over
tips. Tourists flock to Times Square,
and so do these fee-for-service entrepreneurs, hoping to scratch out a living
by playing to the hordes of out-of-towners.
 |
| Iron Man greyloch |
And why are these impersonators of
characters beloved of children being arrested for disorderly conduct? Because some of the Elmos, Iron Men, and
Spider Men – and Mickey and Minnie Mouses (or should I say “Mice”?), Cookie
Monsters, Spongebob Squarepantses, Batmen, Supermen, and Statues of Liberty –
turn aggressive and even abusive if the tourists don’t pay; one Elmo even
emitted obscenities and anti-Semitic tirades before being hustled away, to the
relief of other, more genteel Elmos. Exasperated
by these developments, New York’s Finest have started passing out fliers
advising tourists that the tips are strictly optional, and are now following
up by arresting the comic-book and Muppet
copycats for blocking or harassing pedestrians.
 |
| Spider Man greyloch |
And who inhabit these sweaty
costumes? Mostly recent Hispanic
immigrants, males 40 and under, who in this novel way are trying to make ends
meet. Which raises a First Amendment
issue, and has prompted some of the impersonators and their allies to start organizing
and taking photos and videos of the cops in action. New Yorkers haven’t heard the last of this;
editorials, arguments pro and con, and proposed legislation are sure to follow.
The shaggy red Elmos and other characters
insist that they aren’t panhandlers, and perhaps they aren’t, since they offer
a kind of service – photograph me with your smiling kids and you’ll treasure
the photo for years to come – rather than just begging for money. A similar defense is offered by the squeegee
men, young blacks armed with sudsy buckets and squeegees who, unasked, wash the
windshields of cars stopped for a red light in midtown or waiting to enter a tunnel and then request, or at
least hope for, a tip, which the drivers, somewhat intimidated, usually
provide. In their own defense, the
squeegee men say they are simply trying to make ends meet and prefer this to
selling drugs. They were numerous in
the early 1990s, when the city’s unemployment rate was high, until Mayor Giuliani,
a strong law-and-order advocate, cracked down on them, and they became numerous
again by 2011, when the city’s poverty rate was the highest in 27 years. They are still active now, and one who says
he nets about $60 a day explains: “I need to pay rent, and this is the best way
to do it.” The New York Post calls them terrorists, but not everyone -- myself included -- agrees.
 |
| A squeegee man at work, servicing cars waiting to enter the Holland Tunnel. |
In this city there is a long tradition of
panhandlers asking for money, and others who avoid panhandling by offering or
imposing a service in hopes of the same.
In the 1830s doddering Revolutionary War veterans advertised their
long-distant service in hopes of a handout from patriotic passers-by, although,
when challenged, some of them proved amazingly fit by leaping to their feet and
taking off. And in the mid-1860s
Broadway was clogged with Civil War veterans in faded blue uniforms, some of
them one-legged, who sold pencils and other small items in hopes of a modest
remuneration. Continuing the tradition
in New York and other big cities in the Depression-era 1930s were the World War
I veterans selling apples on the street for a nickel.
For a firsthand impression of
mid-nineteenth-century New York and its beggars, we have What I Saw in New York, or a Bird’s Eye View of City Life, by Joel
H. Ross, a visitor from upstate New york, published in 1851. He records as the first object he saw to
annoy him a colored female beggar, the only black woman he saw begging. (In point of fact, black people in New York
City in those days almost never begged.)
He saw her sitting at the corner of Broadway and Houston Street day
after day, through wind and hail, snow and rain, never speaking, her hand open
on her lap to receive alms, with an tattered brown cloak drawn round her so she
looked like an old hen brooding chickens.
Why, in a city with so much else to see, he became fixed on this woman
is hard to say, but fixed he was. The
more he saw her, he says, the more he became convinced she wasn’t worthy of
alms. The more he observed her, the more
he disliked her face and the more he was annoyed. Accustomed to seeing everyone earn their own
bread and butter, he became impatient with her silent exhibition, which he
viewed as an imposition, a disgrace to herself and the city, all the more so
since she struck him as being strong and healthy. In time he made the acquaintance of an honest
and intelligent black man who, when questioned about her, urged him not to give
her anything, since she was as bad as Satan himself. So when the good doctor saw a lady about to
give the woman some money, he informed her that the woman was not worthy of
charity; the lady then thanked him for the warning, and the doctor warned the
beggar to decamp, failing which he would have her arrested. She did then abandon her post, and several
days later he saw her come out of a house to empty a pail of suds in the
gutter; he at once recognized her, and she perhaps him: end of story.
Dr. Ross also reported other beggars: a
blind man who could really see with one eye, and a weeping boy who claimed his
mother was sick, but who, when the doctor offered to go see her, ran away. For the doctor, it seems that there was in
the city no such thing as genuine poverty, only fake beggars out to fleece the
gullible public. He assures the reader
that some of the shabby, dirty, greasy-looking women ragpickers seen gathering
rags and bones from the gutters would be out before night in their silks, and
that they had money at interest in banks.
As for bone boilers, dog killers, horse skinners, hot corn vendors, and
street singers – or at least a good many of them – “their place is a good way out of town.” It is no surprise, then, that he advises
rural folk to keep to their countrified ways and not move to the city in hopes
of wealth and fame, for city life is not all it’s cracked up to be.
If I have lingered over Dr. Ross’s
impressions of poverty in the city, it’s because I see in him an arch example
of the honest, upright small-town and rural conservative, in this case an
upstate New Yorker, who is baffled by the city’s complexities and ambiguities, and
marshals against them his own middle-class prejudices and lack of comprehension. Beggars are fakers, and there are ragpickers who
are out on the town nightly in their silks (the equivalent of today's alleged "welfare queens"). He visits the Five Points, the city’s worst slum, and sees firsthand how
its miserable inhabitants live, but attributes their poverty to crime and
indolence. Always, the fault lies with
the poor, and never with the society they live in. Rabid conservatives have always struck me as tight
and prickly, and liberals as loose and gooey; Dr. Ross is tight and
prickly. (For an earlier take on this
subject see post #18, Upstate vs. Downstate: The Great Dichotomy, July 20,
2012, accessible via Archives 2012.)
 |
| Alberto Gottardo |
These attitudes are alive and well today,
and not just among the conservatives of the far right. In many American cities laws are being
enacted to criminalize homelessness.
Often it is against the law to sleep, camp, eat, sit, or beg in public
places, with criminal penalties for violating these laws, sometimes with
charges for room and board while jailed, failing to pay which results in
further time in jail. (Debtors' prisons are back.) Some communities
even have laws against feeding the homeless, which puts the authorities at odds
with the churches. So distasteful to the
snug and prosperous is the sight of poverty, that they intend to banish it
altogether from their well-scrubbed communities, which results in the crudest
shantytowns located at a safe remove. Unless,
of course, the county takes action, too.
 |
| Ed Yourdon |
According to a 2006 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, the twenty meanest U.S. cities, starting with the meanest of all, are as follows:
1.
Sarasota, FL
2.
Lawrence, KS
3.
Little Rock, AR
4.
Atlanta, GA
5.
Las Vegas, NV
6.
Dallas, TX
7.
Houston, TX
8.
San Juan, PR
9.
Santa Monica, CA
10.
Flagstaff, AZ
11.
San Francisco, CA
12.
Chicago, IL
13.
San Antonio, TX
14.
New York, NY
15.
Austin, TX
16.
Anchorage, AK
17.
Phoenix, AZ
18.
Los Angeles, CA
19.
St. Louis, MO
20.
Pittsburgh, PA
This list is hardly complete. From what I have learned recently, any number of
other cities could be added to it. So it
goes in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
 |
| Sarasota, Florida. Cleaner than New York, and not a homeless in sight. Ebyabe |
 |
| A Kindness Meter in Ottawa. OttawaAC |
I must confess that I have always been
tight with a buck. Reinforcing this
tendency was a comment long ago by a radio commentator who said that he had
once followed a panhandler through the city streets for an hour, counting how
many handouts he reaped. He reaped forty,
and assuming half were a dime and half a quarter, the panhandler made $7.00 an
hour, which in those days was better than what many people earned by honest
toil. His conclusion: don’t give. This was my rule for the longest time until,
in the last year or two, for some mysterious reason I softened and began giving
a quarter to almost any beggar who looked like he or she really needed it. A quarter isn’t much, but I also greeted them
in a friendly way, thus acknowledging their humanity, which may be just as
important. But I don’t judge others for
their charity or lack of it; these are personal decisions, and some people
prefer to give through organized charities rather than directly and haphazardly
on the street.
There are always interesting cases and
exceptions. I remember seeing a nun, or
a woman garbed like a nun, entering a busy bar one night to be quickly paid off by the bartender. Catholic friends have since assured me that
no bone fide Catholic nun would do such a thing. The most they can do is sit in a public
place, eyes down, with a receptacle for donations; they cannot approach or in
any way importune passersby. So beware
of pushy nuns; they are imposters.
 |
| The real McCoy. He won't panhandle you. Alexander S. Berger |
Some beggars hope to solicit handouts by
displaying amputated limbs, or diseased and twisted legs. Personally, I find this offensive though,
again, it’s not against the law. By way of contrast, a little old woman who years
ago appeared regularly in the evening on the sidewalk outside Carnegie Hall
registered the most pathetic and vulnerable look I have ever seen on a human
face; hard of heart were those who failed to give her money. Though she never spoke a word, she became a
legend well known to concertgoers. There
were rumors that a limousine picked her up at the end of her stint on the
sidewalk, but this too may be legend; I can’t confirm it. What is certain is that she was a pro of
pros, at the very top of her profession.
In quite another class is Robert McMahon,
a bearded Vietnam vet in combat fatigues, his left arm missing and his right
leg crippled, who panhandles motorists on Ocean Parkway in the Kensington
neighborhood of Brooklyn. His nickname “Rambo” is scrawled on the back
of his jacket, along with his years of service with the Marines and his two
tours of duty – 1972 and 1973 – that saw heavy action. His empty left sleeve is pinned to his
shoulder, and he drags his crippled leg behind him. When drivers stop for a red light, he hobbles over to them and
salutes, while holding a paper cup and a sign, “Vietnam vet.” He rarely fails to collect, but any driver
who spurns his appeal is assailed with a volley of oaths.
McMahon’s heroic image was abruptly
impaired in 2010, when a New York Post photographer,
discreetly watching him at the end of his day, saw the handicapped hero nimbly cross
the seven lanes of Ocean Parkway and, a few blocks later, pull his allegedly
amputated left arm out from under his jacket and use both hands to count his
cash. “I’ll put a bullet in the back of
your head!” he yelled at the photographer, when he realized he was being
photographed. He has been arrested 20
times for disorderly conduct and “fraudulent accosting,” and his Vietnam
service seems doubtful. Years ago he was
seen accosting motorists in a wheelchair with one leg tucked underneath him;
since then the missing leg has miraculously reappeared, but the arm has vanished
instead. I don’t always trust what I
read in the Post (and I read it rarely),
but this account, reinforced with photographs, seems credible. So maybe we could use another Dr. Ross
today. But come to think of it, the Post itself more than amply supplies this need.
A panhandler of a different stamp was
Eddie Wise, an enterprising black man from Harlem, the son of a four-times-convicted
cocaine dealer, who died recently. Eddie
preferred the term “hustler” to
“panhandler,” and hustle he did on his chosen turf in the Fordham section of
the Bronx, combining a distaste for regular employment, a gift for gab, and a
talent for spotting small moneymaking opportunities. On Webster Avenue he would courteously greet
black customers in a liquor store, “Excuse me, sir. No disrespect or harm. Can you help a brother on your way out?” But if the customer reached at once for his
wallet, Eddie would say, “No, no. I’ll
wait till you come out.” Wanting
dollars, not quarters, Eddie had learned that a customer leaving the store with
a liquor bottle was usually more generous.
On a good Friday night he could make $60 in three hours – far more than
he could make in a regular job. But it
all depended on his skill with words.
“If you don’t know how to talk, you can’t hustle.”
But Eddie did more than work the liquor
store clientele for money. On nearby East
189th Street between Webster and Park he helped people unload
purchases from handcarts and put them in their car, endeared himself to locals
with his cheerfulness and gossip (who’s back in jail, whose mother kicked him
out), and for a small fee held parking spaces for motorists, feeding the meters
until they returned from their shopping.
His hustling outfit included dark blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a
worn leather jacket, while his hair pulled back in seven braids gave him the
nickname “Braids.”
Eddie’s life took a sudden new turn when,
in 2004, exasperated by repeated arrests for panhandling, he consulted a Legal
Aid attorney and asked if he could sue New York’s Finest. As a result he became the lead plaintiff in a
2005 class action lawsuit accusing the New York Police Department of arresting
at least 140 panhandlers, most of them in the Bronx, under an anti-panhandling
law ruled unconstitutional in 1992. The
complaint had merit, so in 2006 the city agreed to pay him $100,001 if he would
drop out of the case, which for that princely sum he was glad to do. So a man who once ate out of garbage cans was
waiting for $100,001 coming in one big
fat check! News of his bonanza spread quickly through the neighborhood, where
acquaintances caked out to him, “The one hundred thousand dollar man!” and
passing motorists honked their horns.
But an employee of the liquor store where he hustled predicted, “In
three months he’ll be broke.” Indeed,
years before he had received a hefty sum after his hand was crushed in an
accident at work, only to spend it all in a matter of months, mostly on
cocaine. But this time, he vowed, would
be different.
When the city’s check arrived, he
deposited it in a bank – for Eddie, a novel experience. He then withdrew $400, shoved the bills deep
in a front pocket, and to get safely home (home being his girlfriend’s
apartment) allowed himself the unwonted luxury of a ride in a cab. Over the next few days he bought clothes,
gave handouts to fellow panhandlers and his grown daughter and two-year-old
granddaughter, feasted on Chinese takeout at home while watching TV, and when
tempted to go out and get some cocaine, told himself, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Don’t do it.” But he missed the
camaraderie of the other car-parkers, and the opportunities to display his
skills as a hustler, so finally he went back to 189th Street, heard
the gossip of the street, got hustled for handouts by old friends and, finding
it wasn’t so much fun now, left. Over
the months that followed he stayed clean of cocaine, but since rumors abounded
that he had blown all his money on drugs, he had the perfect answer when anyone
on 189th Street asked him for money: “I ain’t got it, man. I’m broke.
I spent it all on crack.”
If Eddie’s story ended here, it would have
a happy ending. But when, in June 2013,
he died at age 51 in the dank, rat-infested East 158th Street
basement he shared with his wife, the medical examiner’s report said that he
died of a brain-stem hemorrhage caused by acute cocaine intoxication and
hypertensive cardiovascular disease. He
was penniless, having blown most of his money on crack. He left a wife, a three-year-old daughter,
and a newborn son, as well as one or more children by another woman. “He wanted a better life,” said his widow. “We had high hopes, but they never came
through.”
I have lingered on the story of Eddie Wise
because I find it moving, because his life was the opposite of mine, and
because Eddie was the quintessential New York street hustler. His story shows the hustler’s joy and
exuberance, his energy, his initiative, his love of street life, his living for
the moment, his independence, his vulnerability, and the ultimate loss and
heartbreak; not for him the bourgeois virtues of order, prudence, and
responsibility. For all his failings, Eddie
was a real New Yorker.
Source note: For information about Eddie Wise I am deeply
indebted to a 2007 New York Magazine article
about him by Jennifer Gonnerman.
A follow-up to post #43, Man/Boy Love:
The Great Taboo: Still the post with
the most views by far of all, it was published on January 20, 2013, and is
accessible through the blog archive. In
it I told how my longstanding pen-pal relationship (since 2000) with an inmate
named Joe in North Carolina led me to a consideration of man-boy relationships,
a subject I knew nothing about. Joe was
serving a 20-year term – the maximum possible under the plea-bargain agreement
– for multiple counts of indecent liberties with a child and crime against
nature. This resulted from a three-year
consensual relationship with a young teen-ager named Allen (a fictional
name). Joe’s story so moved and angered
me that I urged him to write his memoir.
This he did, with my help; it reads like a novel. In the post I said that the earliest he could
hope to be released was sometime in 2014.
It is now 2014 and Joe has been
released. He has even completed the
obligatory three-month parole and is now a free man, if one is ever free when
you have to register as a sex offender.
He has a full-time job and is adjusting well to freedom. His last e-mail informed me that he just
spent the weekend with Allen, now in his 30s, whom he hadn’t seen in 20 years
(with the exception of a court appearance where they glimpsed each other at a
distance but couldn’t talk). He says
they talked for hours, updating each other on the last 20 years, and apart from
that just cuddled and watched TV. Good
feelings, clearly, on both sides. So
much for the criminal justice system of North Carolina and its multiple counts of indecent
liberties with a child and crime against nature. The title of Joe’s memoir, by the way, is Crimes Against Nature. He has a lot to say on the subject, even
while telling a fascinating story. A
small press is now considering it (no big press would touch it); if that fails,
there are other options. Sooner or later
it will be published.
Coming soon: The smells of New York (whew!); but they
aren’t all bad, quite the contrary).
Then: brownstone and brownstones, the why and when of them, and inside,
the delights and horrors of the Victorian parlor. And then: Ralph Fasanella. Never heard of him? Well, he’s mentioned in last Friday’s Times, but I found him on my own.
©
2014 Clifford Browder
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