So, I could be telling you of the weekend my brother was visiting us in Chicago, or the 3-week long double summer course I took afterwards, in which I was basically reading Latin and Greek prose from 6 am to 11 pm (actually, I think that pretty much sums it up), or the crazy LA weekend DH and I had in the midst of these three weeks - highlights include me arriving at a decision about what dress to wear to the wedding we were invited to (the reason for us going there in the first place), Crabtree and Evelyn mini shampoos carried off from Hilton, and spotting dolphins (!!) or some small whales just off the shore at Malibu - but I won't. I will instead use this platform, as has become customary, to expound on my moral worthlessness. Enjoy.
OK, so I was telling you about this mapping project I got involved in, right? Basically, it's a small group of students trying to offer a perspective about the neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago, different from the official one propounded by the university, in which everything outside strict and limited boundaries is considered dangerous, and, what a coincidence, is almost universally populated by Blacks. The boundaries between the university community and its facilities and the impoverished surrounding communities are, of course, real, to a large and discouraging extent. By the way, I have just finished reading the amazing memoir of a now-Sociology professor at Columbia University, then a graduate student conducting fieldwork in a community housing project where the chaotic life of the ghettoed tenants is, in effect, run by crack gangs and other semi-official extortive administrators. Well, that was a depressing eye opener. The community it describes is actually geographically farther away from here than the immediate surrounding neighborhoods, and, I think, also more distant as far as their day-to-day reality goes. I was glad to learn more about it, but it did not leave me feeling like there is anything that could be possibly done to end such bitter, devastating poverty and exploitation. In any case, it gave me at least one possible answer to the question that has been interesting me, namely "where do the homeless people actually, well, live?" Now, I'm sure there are many different answers to that question, especially with regards to those who panhandle or sell Streetwise around Hyde Park. But I haven't really gotten around to actually finding out about them, not through my fleeting notion to volunteer at soup kitchens, nor through my involvement with the (very low-key, as far as activism goes) mapping project. There are flickering moments where this group gives me a sense of accomplishment and creativity in the broadest sense of the term, but several lame attempts to actually gain access to the lives of Streetwise vendors – which is what I'm trying to "map" – has left me sad and ashamed.
It started like this: there is one vendor on the street corner near where I do yoga. Before summer-schedule craziness, I used to go to yoga every week, and after a while made it a habit of buying an issue from this vendor. Then, I once complimented him on his new haircut (and felt like such a liberal!), from which point it was clear that we not only recognize and acknowledge one another, but are generally on friendly terms. At the same time, I found out Streetwise organization themselves offer a map of their (official) vendors' locations, including some close up accounts of those who chose the exposure. One of which, it turned out, was "my" Streetwise guy! Then I thought, well, maybe I could start talking him up a bit, learn where he lives, what distance he travels to come and sell these weekly magazines at this particular spot (information that is NOT given on his online profile). I was very nervous at the thought of actually striking up conversation, and one that could easily come across as a nosy interrogation at that. In my fantasy I got him some coffee at the adjacent Starbucks and we genuinely chatted for a while, with me hitting a soft Christian spot telling him I'm from Jerusalem, and him introducing me to all other Streetwise vendors around the neighborhood, officially licensed and otherwise.
OF COURSE that's not how it went. I started mumbling the minute I approached him with my sheepish, "do you have some time off…? [as in, when do you take a 5 minute break, NOT what day of the week are you not here, a distinction which he didn't catch or deliberate misread]… Could I ask you something…?" To make matters worse, my self consciousness about being a snotty white girl was vocalized detrimentally, with the almost first thing blurting itself out of my mouth was a "we're a group from the University of Chicago…" brrrraaaaggggh. Shit. Alienation anybody? Post-racist condescending anyone? Yeah, well. I sensed he felt particularly uncomfortable answering the question "where do you live", and though I tried to present our project as an attempt to incorporate different points of view about Chicago's South Side, I could not shake off the bitterness of the sheer awkwardness of my approach. To make matters worse, I hardly saw him since because my crazy schedule has steered my away from morning yoga lately.
End of Episode A.
Side Kick: Right at the entrance to the bakery across from our apartment stands a panhandling man. According to my Streetwise guy there's a SW vendor there too, whom I don't remember seeing and is not on the official SW map. And of course after I got the information that someone is selling SW there, I kept seeing this panhandling man every time I went to get bread. Now, this bourgeois neighborhood is one in which some homeless people seem to be taken care of quite well. Everybody has a guilt complex, naturally, especially the African Americans who "made it". The SW vendors themselves get more than an occasional dollar from passersby who aren't even interested in an issue (which are sold for $2). The guy in front of the bakery seems to get free food from them, and people habitually help him out before or after their pastry shopping. Now one day, he asked me for some change as I was walking in. My small change wallet was literally empty – because I collect quarters obsessively for laundry and try, no less obsessively, to exchange all the other type of change into quarters – but I remember there were corners of a letter and envelope sticking out of my very ladylike ridiculously huge clutch-purse-wallet. I don't remember the monetary details anymore but leaving the bakery I had two quarters in hand, which I gave the guy with a (arrgggghh, why?) "this is all the change I got, man". I distinctly remember being concerned whether he thought it implausible for a girl with a wallet bulging with papers to not have a swelling pocket of small change and crumpled one-dollar bills, as he was muttering "all the change you got, huh."
Episode B:
I finally came across the SW vendor that was notoriously on the official map but never seen near the Dunkin Donuts when I passed by – which is not as frequent as it used to be because I figured there's a different path to take, in order to evade the homeless guys congregating there on the sidewalk, like, it's uncomfortable, right, I naturally rather not know they exist, or at least not rub it my face, right? – and the one who got my yoga SW guy into the business in the first place. So I spot him half a block away – on a Saturday morning in which I was disappointed not to find my own SW guy at the usual Starbucks corner – and I glance at him and register there's the license badge around his neck, and here's my chance to get in touch with another SW vendor and perhaps be a human being, and another part of my brain just reverts into the usual fear and introversion, and like, what, now I'll have to buy an issue from two guys at the same week?! and I just storm past. And then he gestures with his magazines and calls out, and I stop and turn and get a copy after all. And the Black women who was standing there chatting with him says to me "I thought you were angry". And I try to joke and tell them how random people may tell me "why aren't you smiling?!" (true story. mostly relevant to Israeli cab drivers), and then I walk away and the woman walks with me and says "Don't ever do that again. He was watching you. If you have a dollar, just give him a dollar", and then she went on to tell me about herself a bit but that first sentence was basically the only full one I could in fact comprehend… and I walk into the store I was heading into, in front of which yet another SW lady stands, whom I know is not on the registered map and seems to me the craziest of the bunch, but I'm afraid to stare long enough to see whether she's actually wearing a badge or not, not to mention talking to her and asking about it and whether she's related to the man that used to stand there for months before, and I move around the produce shop dazed and confused and cannot remember a single thing I intended to buy, wondering if I should come back and apologize to him and try to collect my shattered bits of so-called wanting to make a difference self from the sidewalk.
