SIDEWALK
By Mitchell Duneier
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,383 pages, $27
If you’ve ever been in New York City, you may have noticed the ubiquitous vendors and panhandlers, staples of street life in the city that never sleeps. To many they are as unremarkable a fixture as a fire hydrant, lamppost or parking meter. To others they are bearers of a small hustle or bargain. But few realize what a significant role they play in providing stability, resources and even safety to the neighborhoods they inhabit.
This is the important but unexpected message sociologist Mitchell Duneier brings with “Sidewalk,” an insightful and compelling six-year study of life in the ecosystems of New York’s streets.
“Sidewalk” focuses on a group of magazine and book vendors, and panhandlers, on 6th Avenue in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, a bustling, trendy and predominantly white neighborhood. Duneier delves into the intricate relationships between these men and women and the city’s passersby, their customers, business owners and the police.
Duneier tells his stories primarily through the experiences of a half-dozen people: Hakim, Ron, Marvin, Mudrick, Ishmael and Alice. Except for Alice, who is a Filipina, all are black men. Most have been homeless at times, or, as the author says, “unhoused”a term created by Duneier, who says the word “homeless” has come to mean “bum.” These people are far from bums, Duneier says:
“On these sidewalks, the vendors, scavengers, and panhandlers have developed economic roles, complex work, and mentors who have given them encouragement to try to live better’ lives. This is the story of the largely invisible social structure of the sidewalk. For many of my readers, and certainly for myself, these redeeming aspects of the sidewalk have come as a surprise.”
The readability of “Sidewalk” highlights the author’s skill as a sociologist. It was not easy for Duneier, who is white, to gain the confidences of a world-weary and cautious group of black men. We learn of their personal lives, struggles with drugs, poverty and racism, and their flaws.
Hakim, a book vendor who is the most educated of the group and has a home, dropped out of corporate work because of racism. Extremely well-read, he can engage in endless hours of conversations with customers from all socio-economic backgrounds. Ron has a serious crack problem that occasionally lands him in trouble with his fellow vendors and the law, but Duneier also captures the tender, caring relationship he has with his elderly aunt.
Mudrick, who sleeps on the street and in subways, lives for his young granddaughter Dyneisha; much of the money he makes as a magazine vendor goes to buy her gifts. When he visits her at his daughter’s home, he sleeps on the floor instead of a mattress, because he is so used to hard surfaces.
At various times, the vendors serve as their own mutual-support systems. They watch each other’s tables, they help each other financially. And most importantly, they provide emotional support. Duneier also investigates how the vendors get their merchandise, mostly books and magazines. Sometimes local residents donate their old magazines, or the vendors scavenge dumpsters for thrown-out publications. The vendors develop a good sense of what sells. Book vendors, like Alice and Hakim, also get their goods from other sources, including small suppliers and employees of prestigious publishing houses who take books from their companies and sell them to the vendors at a great discount.
Duneier also tries to understand why some of his subjects engage in what he refers to as “interactional vandalism”–behavior that appears menacing or annoying, like urinating in public or engaging in unwanted conversations with passersby. These and other activities have created generally unfavorable reactions among the public and officials toward those who make a living on the sidewalk, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s campaigns of aggressive police enforcement of minor street regulations. Duneier sees serious errors in this approach:
“At first glance, it strikes us that the visible practices of the street create an atmosphere for crime. Accordingly, much public policy today begins with the assumption that it is possible to know without systematic study which kinds of people make life safer and which kinds by their mere presence lead to serious crime. But it cannot correctly be assumed that certain kinds of human beings constitute (such a threat), especially without an understanding of how these people live their lives. Nor can it be assumed that the role of the public character need be filled by conventional people.”
Some police officers recognize this. Duneier captures the fragile but functional relationships some officers have with the vendors. At the same time he documents how arbitrary, capricious and mean-spirited an angry or annoyed officer can be as he orders the vendors off the street, has their goods confiscated, or runs them in for a night or two.
Duneier also observes how inconsistent the surrounding community can be in its reactions to vendors. Some local businesses show kindness and generosity by, for example, giving away food or supplies. But in one of the most powerful sections of the book, Duneier underscores how racism can be the overriding factor that affects behavior toward the vendors. “Sidewalk” compares the neighborhood’s reaction to a white vending family, the Romps, to its reaction to Alice, who sometimes babysits her two young granddaughters at her vendor’s table while her daughter is working.
For 10 years during the holiday season, the Romps, a Vermont family who home-school their three children, have come to the same corner on 6th Avenue to sell Christmas trees. They are allowed to park a small camper on the street they occupy. They are embraced by store owners, who give them food and easy access to restrooms, and by neighbors, who provide gifts for the children. In one case, highly uncharacteristic of New York, one person even gave them the key to an empty apartment.
As for Alice, occasionally someone will offer money or food to the children, but most of the generosity comes from fellow vendors, who take the girls to McDonald’s, entertain them, or buy them toys and ice cream. Sometimes there is even open hostility as the girls sit at the table with their grandmother. ” `These children should not be in the street,’ ” barks one passerby.
Some may feel the same way about the vendors themselves, although Duneier’s research may help advance public understanding of their situation and the social and economic factors that helped create their plight. For his part, Duneier concludes, “There will always be people who, faced with dispiriting social conditions, give up. The people we see working on Sixth Avenue are persevering. They are trying not to give up hope. We should honor that in them.”
Overall, Duneier has presented a sensitive chronicle of the lives of people who have been ignored at best, reviled at worst. Along with Ovie Carter (a Tribune staff photographer), whose informed, even intimate pictures are distributed throughout the book, the two men capture the pathos, struggle, joy, honor and dignity of the men and women of “the sidewalk.”
And equally important, Duneier shares with the rest of us the reassuring realization that even in the subculture of the streets, no Manhattanite is an island.
