Walkin’ the Walk and Talkin’ the Talk:A Summary of SidewalkAn Ethnography by Mitchell Duneier
... were inviting and appealing to the homeless. Restaurants were discouraged from donating food, and gates, wire fencing, and other barriers were installed in “dead areas” (132) where people would sleep, panhandle or migrate. Within two years of the program’s implementation, “the problem [had] gone away.” (132). Many people were already living on Sixth Avenue well before Penn Station executed its “homeless program”. Years earlier, in 1982, the city of New York passed Local Law 33 which permitted vendors to sell written material on the street without a license. Although the law was interpreted as a political strategy to secure votes (135), it subsequently allowed the streets of Greenwich Village to become “a habitat where vendors, scavengers, and panhandlers could organize themselves for survival” (136). The New York City Police Department was responsible for Law 33’s enforcement, and its police officers subsequently informed many of the illegal street vendors and craftsmen of their right to sell printed material. Although the homeless vendors were not initially interested in selling books and magazines, they did so to appear legitimate while continuing to make and sell their jewellery and other crafts. However, they quickly discovered how lucrative written-matter vending could be. Through a combination of imitation, word of mouth, or learning from the police, many panhandlers and other unlicensed street vendors slowly and steadily switched to selling printed Left: Ron, a magazine vendor who works closely with Marvin, another vendor. Right: Ishmael, a vendor who used to live in Penn Station. materials. Newcomers to Sixth Avenue were often employed by the more seasoned vendors, and/or were taught what to sell and where they could find it. Few vendors truly comprehended this law, which permitted them to sell written matter; they understood only that some law existed. What they recognised, however, was that Sixth Avenue provided them with all the necessary elements (e.g. high density neighbourhood, inexpensive food, places to sleep, high-quality trash, sympathetic residents who donated books and magazines) to maintain their existence. This historical summary shows how the government tried to eliminate the problem of unhoused people by simply creating more laws, how the unhoused people were forced to find new ways of living, and the social support that the vendors provided one another with when establishing this new habitat. The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker OR The Book Vendors, the Magazine Vendors and the Men Without Accounts Duneier identifies Hakim as a public character, someone “whose presence probably makes the sidewalk safer and more vital for pedestrians” (43). Hakim, who completed a B.A. from Rutgers University, has been selling books on Sixth Avenue since 1991, after he was dismissed (for dubious reasons) from his job as a proofreader for a law firm. Hakim acts as an informal mentor to young, black men who come by his table to talk or look at books. He provides them with guidance and encouragement, and in certain cases, financial support. As the sidewalk provides Hakim with meaningful work, so Hakim fulfills an important nurturing role that is part of the informal social relations that exist on the sidewalk. Duneier notes that all of the magazine vendors on Sixth Avenue, except one, are or have been addicted to drugs. “Though none of the men were destined for the informal economy, broader economic and social factors probably did limit their chances in the formal economy. About a third speak of ending up on the streets when they could not find work in manufacturing or new computer technologies and took to using drugs and alcohol” (52). Marvin and Ron are magazine vendors working on Sixth Avenue. Marvin, who used to be addicted to cocaine, fulfills the role of a ‘sponsor’ or ‘mentor’ for Ron, in that he gives Ron support and guidance to motivate him to try to live a better life. Jamaane, an oils and incense vendor on Sixth Avenue, once fulfilled the role of mentor for Marvin, and is currently a mentor for Grady, another magazine vendor. Duneier comments on the “rehabilitative forces of sidewalk life in the self-respect these men maintained as they sold their scavenged materials, and in the interactions with customers that I observed” (63), and also in their relationships with one another. Glasser and Bridgman also note this rehabilitative nature of life on the street in their book Braving the Street. They review a study by Wolch and Rowe (1992), which introduces the concept of a homeless network that provides a “buffer from the dangers of the street” (Glasser and Bridgman 70). “These social ties greatly affected the people’s self-esteem, and according to Wolch and Rowe, ultimately helped people take steps to leave the streets” (Glasser and Bridgman 72). Other men besides the book and magazine vendors have created roles for themselves which are “part of a larger system of informal social organization and social control, which makes the sidewalk safer by providing an outlet for men to earn money to support drug habits by means other than stealing or themselves selling drugs” (Duneier 85). Duneier refers to these men as “the men without accounts”, and their roles (as defined by Duneier) are outlined in the chart below: The Men Without Accounts ROLE RESPONSIBILITY PAY Place holder Hold a spot of public sidewalk overnight for a vendor $20-50/spot Table watcher Watch a vendors second or third table; watch a vendor’s table if he has to leave the table Share of the profits from books/magazines sold Mover Moving vendor’s goods in and out of storage spaces $5 and up Storage Provider Provide storage for vendor’s goods $5-10/night The transcripts of interviews and conversations in Duneier’s book give evidence to the pride and sense of identity that the men who engage in these roles achieve, and the case is made that these men are an important part of the sidewalk economy and social structure. “Not only do men serve as mentors for one another; they also fulfill economic roles that make it possible for them to support their habits and meet their everyday needs without robbing or hurting anyone” (110). Informal Social Control Stops Here Duneier tries to show that what makes life on the sidewalk of Sixth Avenue viable is an informal system of social controls. However, he finds that some men still engage in acts, however small they may seem, considered indecent by the general public. He explores why men continue to engage in such acts, such as sleeping on the ground or urinating in public. “If the informal system is so powerful, how and why do some men persist in these acts?” (159). Duneier was perplexed by the fact that vendors who were making as much as sixty dollars a day chose to sleep on the street when they could certainly afford to pay ten dollars a night for a hotel room. While one could speculate that these men were spending their income on drugs, Duneier found that the reasons were more complex. Ellen Baxter and Kim Hopper’s detailed ethnographic study on the habits of the homeless in New York found that “many of the people living on the streets were not deranged, but were in fact making rational decisions about where to sleep based on their own safety [because] conditions in the shelters were violent” (Glasser and Bridgman 14). Duneier found that there were four reasons why a man might sleep on the street. Firstly, the men on Sixth Avenue often stay in the same spot to avoid forgoing a profitable vending space. They are maintaining a resource, one that allows them to make money by selling magazines or books. Secondly, sleeping outside allows them to save money for desperate times. Duneier found that Grady, by economising, was able to buy a plane ticket to Florida to visit his mother, and still had enough money left over to stay in a hotel during the coldest winter nights. A third reason that the men live on the streets is to support their crack habit. Moreover, many of these ‘crack addicts’ are paranoid of being in an enclosed space. Finally, many men have become accustomed to sleeping on a hard surface. And even when given the opportunity to sleep in a bed, they will prefer to sleep on the floor. As Mudrick explained, “once you’re homeless, you’re always homeless” (166). “If you see the spot that Ishmael got, he want to be there all the time, twenty-four hours,” Ron told me. “He don’t want to leave the spot and have it taken by somebody else when they get here in the morning. So he figure he just stay there.” (162) Another act of indecency (as viewed by mainstream society) performed by these men is to urinate in public. In this instance, the informal social controls of the sidewalk do not fully apply because every person needs somewhere to urinate. Residents of Greenwich Village do not understand why the men of Sixth Avenue urinate against buildings or on the street when there are washrooms located in Washington Square Park. However, on a visit to these public washrooms, Duneier observes that the toilet rims are without seats and are covered in filth, with no dividers between the urinals. Ellen Baxter and Kim Hopper, in a study of the same washrooms, discuss how a judge ruled in favour of the homeless to provide better hygiene and safety in public facilities (Glasser and Bridgman 14). Without acceptable public facilities, the homeless are forced to urinate in the street or attempt, often unsuccessfully, to use the washrooms of the businesses and merchants on Sixth Avenue. Duneier interviewed both Mudrick and Ron about their urination practices. Mudrick explained that he often urinates in a Starbucks cup. Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, made it illegal to urinate on the street. By using the cup in a political act against Giuliani, Mudrick could no longer be arrested for urinating on the street. Ron explained that because it is too messy to urinate in a cup, he would go into restaurants and talk his way into using the washrooms. The only time that Ron would refrain from using a merchant’s washroom and thus urinate on the street is when he felt he was too smelly to be in a washroom with “decent” people. This demonstrates Ron’s own sense of social control. Duneier explains that Ron is “quite concerned with feelings of his fellow citizens; so concerned in fact that he refuses to enter restaurants when he believes his body odor will be offensive to paying customers who are well groomed and dressed for work” (177). On one August day, John Stewart walked over to Hakim’s table and said: “These people in McDonald’s have a bad attitude. I came in to use the bathroom and they locked the door. I’ve been going to McDonald’s for twenty-five years. All the money I spent there!” (179) The men who are working and living on the street eventually become socialized to doing what they think is best for their situation. The city’s solution to arrest homeless people like Mudrick will not stop them from having to urinate in the future. As Duneier explains, “Informal mentoring and controls simply cannot contain all acts that go against common notions of decency, nor could we expect government to establish a policy that would do any better. The contribution of the informal system of social control inherent in sidewalk life is to encourage men to live ‘better’ lives within the framework of their own and society’s weaknesses” (172). Another habit in which some of the men on Sixth Avenue partake, which is not easily regulated by informal social control, is to engage female passers-by in unwilling conversation. Mudrick exploits, to a certain extent, his status as a male when he “hassles” women on the street. Yet what is deemed as rude behaviour or even as “harassment” is a subjective concept on which the actor and the victim may disagree. In an attempt to ascertain how women feel when people such as Mudrick call out to them on the street, Duneier obtains the various standpoints of both Mudrick and many of these women. According to the professional Conversation Analysis (CA), there are specific cues and conventional signals that people use to implicitly indicate meanings and intentions (Duneier 196). For example, when a woman receives a welcome compliment, she will often respond positively; conversely, when the compliment is unwelcome, she may feel uncomfortable and thus not respond. Mudrick, however, ignores these common signals and cues of a conversation “gone bad”, and perseveres in complimenting women who walk by, making them feel hassled or even harassed. A woman walks by without acknowledging him, and Mudrick tells me that she must be a lesbian. He claims that the women he addresses never feel harassed, because he gives them respect, and he can tell from their smiles that they like the attention. (193) Duneier reflects further on the men, like Mudrick, who insist on engaging in this behaviour, to determine what influences them to pursue these exchanges of dialogue which, according to conventional conversation norms, should be avoided. It is apparent that these exchanges provide the men with a small sense of control. They are in control of the situation and perhaps, for once, are not the victims. These situations allow the men to retain and administer the little amount of control and power they have left. This in turn permits and strengthens the existence of unwanted small talk and the discomfort women feel, thus reinforcing the stereotype of “dangerous” street people, particularly men. Stereotyping is a daily reality for the people living and working on Sixth Avenue. Hakim and Alice are black book vendors and, due to their dual status as racial minorities and as street vendors, are often treated with minimal respect and frequently blamed for selling stolen books at their tables. Duneier discovers that some of the materials on the book vendors’ tables do come from illegal sources, but this is not an uncommon occurrence in the book industry, even for the large bookstore chains. However, as small-time operators, the street vendors are more often on the receiving end of accusations of misconduct. They are stationed in the public view and the very fact that they are conducting business in the street (rather than in a licensed store) fits the stereotype of delinquency. Hakim, for instance, does not perceive his selling of stolen material as a deviant act. He simply buys his books from another person for resale. Through techniques of neutralization...