Adventures of Urban Life

Katherine Pimentel
New Yorkers are used to seeing panhandlers and sidewalk vendors all over the city. It is something they are accustomed to and just think of it as part of city life. Most peoples perceptions of these people who are primarily men is that they are homeless and use the money they make for drugs. They are the lowest of the social ladder in New York City, and deemed as the “undesirables” of the neighborhood. Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk offers an in depth analysis of the individuals who work on the city streets, more specifically those on Greenwich and Avenue of the Americas. In order to do his research for his book, Mitchell took on an ethnographic approach. He submersed himself in side walk life and interviewed the men who sell books on the side walk as well as the people who come in contact with them on a regular basis.
The first character whom Duneier introduces us to is Hakim. Hakim is a middle aged black man who sells books on the sidewalk. He has customers from all walks of life that enjoy talking to him about books and others who seek his knowledge and experience as a source of guidance in their own lives. Hakim is an interesting figure because he comes from the corporate world, however, because of his race he did not feel he belonged there and chose to do something that would connect him with more people like him. He saw that selling “black books” on the street was a means to reach to other blacks. Hakim is knowledgeable of all of the books he sells and the classics that people normally look for, unlike many of the other men he has his own place to live and is not on any type of drug. “People like me are the eyes and ears of the street, he explained, echoing Jane Jacobs again. Yes I could take those flowers and sell them for a few hundred dollars. But that deliveryman sees me here every day. I’m as dependable as any store owner”(17). Hakim sees himself as a public figure like the one Jacobs speaks about. People like him who are out all day help keep the streets safe because they help out when help is needed and take action if something is not right. Those who share the sidewalk on a daily basis form relationships with these public figures, thus creating a sense of community even though they are all technically strangers.
Duneier notes that there are so many men working on the streets as vendors because the prisons have failed to help ex-convicts transition into society in the proper way. They are thus unable to find decent jobs and can not find ways to provide shelter for themselves. What these men do should be somewhat plausible instead of deviant because they have to find ways to survive on their own instead of hurting others to get the things they need. “You got to be versatile when you in the streets. You got to find a way to make money without putting a pistol in your hand or going around busting somebody up the head, or snatching some woman’s pocketbook”(qtd by Leo, 84). The conversation with Leo shows that there is still a level of dignity and respect that they men have despite the fact that they are homeless. They still like to know that they earned their own money and that they are not harming anyone in the process, to these men life on the streets is all about survival.
Some of the major themes discussed in class that appear in the book is the idea of Jane Jacobs public figure, because these men are after all out side at all times and come into contact with the public weather they want to or not. There is also the idea of the undesirable and how they use public space. The police and many of the people who live in the Village would like to see the homeless men go away, but at the end of the day they are in a public space and can make use of that space to accommodate their needs. Another point that Jacobs made that I noticed in the book was the idea of a good neighborhood being useful,people should have a purpose or a need to be out in the streets. the men on sixth avenue work, sleep, eat and socialize on these streets, the ultimate example of "using" the neighborhood.