FIVE
PETTY STREET HUSTLES
Some rhyme, some throw shows, some sew clothes / some hobo at the junction in between cars / some enter in functions in between stars / some teach, some preach saying they seen God / some put their money up, against mean odds / flipping real estate, stocks and bonds / dreams of rolling El Dorado’s bumping El DeBarge / whatever the dreams, stay on ya deem the world is ours, it’s the hustle.
—Common, “The Hustle”
        In London Labour and London Poor,1 written in the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew describes the costermongers or street people who sell a variety of wares on sidewalks, street corners, alleyways, highways, and byways. “Highway” robbery denotes thievery on the roads away from the city center. “The costermongers moreover, diversify their labours by occasionally going on a country round, traveling on these excursions, in all directions, from thirty to ninety and even a hundred miles from the metropolis.”2 The reference to the costermongers is striking because even now it is impossible to walk around New York and not see “street people” selling things either as they walk along on foot or from a fixed location (i.e., street vendors).
These street folks are extremely inventive; they find a specialized niche in the busy metropolis in order to eke out a living. These are the unemployed poor folks, children of struggling families, crafty youth with little education, homeless men and women, mendicants with limited means of support. Like Mayhew’s London of the nineteenth century, the markets of New York City today are laced with street performers and entrepreneurs, artists, peddlers, sellers, buyers, pickpockets, and assorted hustlers. Common today are the bootleggers of bottled water, pirated DVDs, and loose counterfeit cigarettes, or “loosies.”
PITCHING DVDS
Often in the most deprived neighborhoods—where police tend to focus their attention on violent crimes and controlled substances—petty hustles tend to thrive. Along the busy sidewalks of Fulton Street in Brooklyn, Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, Fordham Plaza in the Bronx, or 125th Street in Manhattan, hustlers make their sales and exploit the heavy foot traffic. I (Trevor Milton) lived off of one of these hustler highways in Brooklyn and would be greeted with hundreds of offers per day; once, a hustler even penetrated into the comfort of my home.
One Sunday morning, after having a shower and breakfast, I heard a knock on my basement apartment’s window. Slowly drawing aside the shades, I peeked and saw a familiar face. Flashing a big toothy smile—eyes squinting underneath his Yankees baseball cap—was Otis, a local street hustler I’ve known for many years. Otis was older—likely in his mid-fifties—but he dressed young: large sagging jeans on top of black Nikes, XXL plain white t-shirt to cover his waistline, hanging from his 140-pound frame like a curtain.
Before I could greet him, he jumped into salesman mode. “What’s up, fam!” I don’t think Otis knew my first name, so he instead chose to call me “family.” I’m coming through to see if you need any movies.” Glancing down at a satchel hanging from his hip, he continued, “I got that Troy. I got that Spiderman 2. I got some copies of I, Robot.”
Laughing to myself, I made my way to my front door. “Hold on. I’m coming out.”
When I got outside, he smiled and offered a “pound” with one hand. He held several pirated DVDs in his other hand, spread out like a fan, wrapped in cheap cellophane plastic with photocopied covers inside. He clasped his hand in mine and pulled me into a partial hug. “Wassup, fam? You my man, so I figured I’d come here first.”
Still holding my hand, Otis raised his other arm to show me the movie titles. I could sense his desperation. His eyelids were swollen as if he had been up all night. Otis generally had a worn-out look to him. His hands were dry and chafed, fingers curved from advanced arthritis, cheeks sunk from malnourishment. He walked with a limp after being hit by a car years back, but he never sought proper medical attention. Otis always spoke about living with his mother, but I never saw where he lived; in fact, he could have been homeless. On this particular morning, Otis looked exhausted. I put my hand on his shoulder and freed my right hand to look through the DVDs. “Let me see what you got.”
Otis continued his speech. “These are top quality. No heads in the shots. I got these ones, some kid’s movies … ” He lowered his voice. “And I got some adult films, know what I’m saying? If you’re looking for that!”
I laughed. “No, I’m good!” I picked out a few videos. As a customer of pirated DVDs, you know what you’re getting into: most of them are poor quality, cheap, and sometimes they won’t play in your player, but in most cases they are, at a minimum, watchable. “Otis, I got to be honest with you. I was trying to watch one of your movies last week, and it wouldn’t even play. Some of the movies have tall dudes with Afros in the way … I’ll be honest, I’m hesitant.”
Otis’s smile disappeared as he let out a sigh. He glanced at a couple of passing cars on the street behind him before continuing, “Look, man. I know some of these movies is messed up. But I got some good-quality movies too.”
“Well, let me get the good ones. I’ll pay.”
He glanced at the street again. “You know what?” He started walking away and motioned for me to follow him, “I’m gonna take you to the source. I mean, you’re cool. They shouldn’t beef with me at all.”
As we made our way onto Fulton Street, he zigzagged through street vendors, shoppers, and other summertime foot traffic. Handshakes were liberal as Otis passed neighborhood residents, and though I had known him for years, I did not realize he was such a valued public character. In Sidewalk, the sociologist Mitch Duneier portrays a group of men who make their living working off of the streets of New York City. He renders their lives human by bringing the “subjects” into the heart of the book and making at least one of them (Hakim Hasan, who appears elsewhere in this volume) coauthor of the book’s afterword.
Duneier writes:
[Jane] Jacobs had modeled her idea of public character after the local shopkeepers with whom she and her Greenwich Village neighbors would leave their spare keys. These figures could be counted on to let her know if her children were getting out of hand on the street, or to call the police if a strange-looking person was hanging around for too long…. What Jacobs means is that the social context of the sidewalk is patterned in a particular way because of the presence of the public character; his or her actions have the effect of making street life safer, stabler, and more predictable. As she goes on to explain, this occurs because the public character has “eyes upon the street.”3
Although it may seem contradictory to think of a hustler as a public character who makes street life safer, Otis is a public character, and a kind of “anti-alms” man in the sense that he provides goods for the poor by reducing the prices on goods they cannot normally afford. The streets and sidewalks of Fulton Street buzz with informal street vendors like Otis: teenagers lay out bedsheets to sell pirated CDs, middle-aged Caribbean men sell incense and oils from propped-up tables, and older gentlemen buy cigarettes for $4.50 a pack at the local bodega and sell “loosies” for fifty cents each. It’s difficult to avoid the continual open-air salesmanship.
Four blocks and roughly twenty handshakes later, Otis stopped in front of an unassuming health-food store owned by a Trinidadian couple. Familiar with the store because they sold organic vegetables and freshly squeezed juices, I joked with Otis about buying raw cashews and plantain chips.
Otis waved his hand dismissively, “Come on, man.” Once inside, the young owner emerged from between two racks of handbags and baseball caps displayed outside the store. He approached with a big smile and a handshake.
After exchanging pleasantries, I told him I was there with Otis. Otis continued his hurried speech, “Hey man, can I take him upstairs? I need to re-up.”
The owner glanced at me. “Sure, man. He’s good people.”
The owner walked behind the register and unlocked the upstairs door. Before he opened it, he asked Otis, “Hey. You looking for that?”
Otis stopped and stroked his chin. “Ye … Yeah. Yes, I am. Can you spot me though? When I come back with the cash you can take it out of that.”
“No problem.” The owner reached under the register and placed two dime bags of marijuana into a small paper bag and handed it to Otis. He opened the upstairs door, then quickly smiled as another customer wandered into the store.
Otis and I walked upstairs into a two-bedroom apartment. Several people were walking around, counting money and sorting through 8.5 × 11 sheets of photo paper. The living room, devoid of furniture, held a few men seated on the floor stuffing plastic sleeves with pirated DVDs and photocopies of movie covers. The right wall was lined with five desktop computers ferociously burning away new copies. In the middle of the floor, in front of the window, lay dozens of unorganized, knee-high stacks of ready-to-sell DVDs. Against the left wall sat a lone man at a card table counting money and talking on his cell phone. When he had hung up, Otis approached him. “Hey, fam.”
The man offered a handshake. “Wassup, O?”
“Yeah, I’m looking to get some HQs today.”
The man pointed to the piles on the floor. “Yeah, man. Go and pick out what you want.” He then turned his attention back to counting money.
“No, I mean screeners.”
The man looked up from the table. “Screeners?”
Otis pointed back to me. “Yeah, I got my man here. He doesn’t want cams. He wants the high-quality burns.”
In the pirated DVD world, there are two types of product sold on the street: “cams” (movies filmed in a mostly empty movie theater with a handheld camera) and “screeners” (high-quality promotional copies of movies yet to be released on DVD). Cams can be made by anyone with a movie ticket and a digital camera; many are mass produced by secondhand filmers in countries such as Croatia and China. Screeners are illegally copied by movie-studio employees and production assistants; they are rarer and more expensive.
The man at the table put his money into a box. “And who is this?”
Otis stuttered for a moment. “This is my neighbor, uh … uh …”
I chimed in, “Trevor.”
The man smiled and shook my hand. “Trevor? That’s my cousin’s name. Yes, sir. I’m Idris.” He opened a large cardboard box next to the table and pulled out handful of neatly packaged DVDs. “Here’s your screeners, man. But they go for eight dollars a piece.”
Otis was quick to say, “I thought it was ten?”
Idris glanced up. “Yeah, you sell them for ten, but he’s buying them from me.” Idris laughed. “That’s right, this is the real deal … well, a copy of the real deal.”
I pointed to piles of DVDs on the floor. “And those?”
“Those are cams. Its low quality, but you’re not paying twelve or thirteen dollars to watch it downtown next to a screaming baby, ya know?” His laughter caused Otis to laugh, but suddenly his tone turned serious. “I’ll throw in two for free if you buy two screeners.”
I began reaching for my wallet. “That sounds fair.” I picked two movies from his hand and then walked over to browse the piles on the floor. As I looked, the ethnographer in me began to emerge. “So how many can you burn in one day?”
“Hundreds.”
“Wow. You must make out pretty well in a week.”
“Indeed, man.”
I picked two more films from the piles on the floor and paid the negotiated price. I thanked Idris for his time, then Otis motioned to the piles on the floor. “Idris, can I re-up?”
“Re-up? You haven’t even finished selling the movies I gave you yesterday.”
Otis rubbed the back of his neck. “I know, man. I’ll have that for you tonight.”
Idris pointed at him. “Yeah, you do that. And you still owe me from Thursday. I’ll give you a fresh stack when you bring that back.”
Otis and I walked back to Fulton Street before going in different directions. “You need anything else?” he asked.
I shook my head. In my head I was calculating that he only made a dollar profit per DVD. Otis had dabbled in the drug world in years past, but he had chosen to settle on this hustle. I understood his urgency and the speed at which he moved. He had to keep pushing this if he was to stay afloat.
He offered me one more handshake and a pat on the back. “Alright, fam. I got to stay on the grind.” He then disappeared into the crowd, and as soon as he did another man appeared in front of me half-whispering, “I got loosies. You looking for loosies?”
Pirated goods go well beyond movies. Loosies are single cigarettes sold from packs that sometimes are believed to be counterfeit. New York City’s penal code does not allow for the sale of untaxed cigarettes. Pirating also goes well beyond the streets of New York. The same cam-recorded movies are sold in triplicate on the busy streets of China, counterfeit cars in India, fake perfumes and colognes in the markets of West Africa, and cell phones with “unlocked” sim cards and video games in bazaars in Colombia.
This business of copying yields millions of dollars every year. Pirating and stealing technology and trade secrets is something all countries have done for centuries. America stole manufacturing technology from the British, and the British stole tea-manufacturing techniques from India. The Koreans stole computer technology from Microsoft, and recently Chinese techies were arrested for hacking into American defense systems, and on and on. This is the way that businesses get ahead in the informal world while simultaneously fueling the formal economy. Even though many legit businesses push governments to punish counterfeiting, legitimate sales would lag without it.
THE STREET HUSTLE
New residents and tourists alike must be mindful of the endless hustles when walking down any busy street in the city because salespeople are everywhere, selling everything from clothing and books to illicit drugs and libations. Seasoned New York residents often have phrases like “sorry I don’t have any money” or “no thank you, I’m not interested” ready to fire from the hip.
Hustling can provide a steady stream of capital because the New York City market is saturated with potential buyers. A satisfied customer might just walk home with a bootleg movie, batch of incense, or a stack of calling cards thanks to a quick transaction conducted on the street during the commute between work and home. Some hustlers are abrasive, like the men who sit outside train stations and violently shake cups full of change. I guess this is a matter of opinion, but some people may not see shaking a cup as abrasive; verbally abusing people who refuse to give money is much more so. But this is a matter of perception; it depends on who is shaking the cup, whether they are white or black, young or old, standing or sitting, grimacing menacingly or smiling. All these factors play into how the public sees or interprets aggressive behavior.
What many label as “beggars” are in fact members of the mendicant class in the city and are actually hustlers, sometimes selling nothing but pity to gain a dollar. Others are more creative, like the teenagers who buy candy wholesale and sell it for profit on the subway in order to “raise money for basketball uniforms.” Seasoned New Yorkers know there are no uniforms to be purchased, but they might play along because these are struggling teenagers—and also for the convenience of buying candy on the train. Some kid hustlers don’t mask their real intentions; one sixteen-year-old selling candy on my evening commute announced: “M&Ms and Peanut M&Ms. One dollar. I’m not raising money for school. I’m not trying to buy a uniform. I could be robbing you right now, but instead I’m selling candy. You’ve got to respect that.” Many passengers appreciated the sobering honesty; others seemed to find the remark distasteful. A few nodded in agreement and purchased candy.
Even though these hustles are a part of the social fabric of the city, they are illegal. Yet because police are more concerned with hard crimes, petty hustlers tend to be tolerated by law enforcement. Someone might sell cheap toys (with flashing pink and blue lights, loud bells and whistles dangling from their bodies) right in front of a police officer, and the act will likely be overlooked even though it violates New York’s unlicensed vendor laws.4 Most of these unlicensed vendors buy cheap goods from wholesale toy stores near Thirty-Third Street and Madison Avenue and then descend into the subway system to make sales; most of the time, cops turn a blind eye.
Much like remoras (fish that cling to sharks and feed off of their parasites, thus helping the shark)—or freegans, who dumpster dive outside of posh restaurants and supermarkets (and make sure good food does not go to waste)—illegal street vendors may seem like a nuisance from a distance, but in actuality they serve an intrinsic function in the city’s ecosystem. They allow for greater consumer convenience: moving and purchasing cheap goods without breaking one’s stride. They are fully aware of the petty needs of the average New Yorker, and they appear along commuter pathways and well-worn tourist and weekend walking routes to accommodate vice, habit, and curiosity alike. Maybe you’ve never tried a shawarma, but walk enough sidewalks, and the option will appear; maybe you’ve decided to quit smoking, but a local man selling loosies in front of a bodega has decided otherwise; if it starts raining during your daily commute, someone will reliably be there to sell you a five-dollar umbrella as you exit your train stop.
Petty hustlers are the creators and maintainers of “place” on urban streets. Their choice of physical space used often determines the desired and undesired places of commerce. The distinction between “space” and “place” are debated sociological concepts. In the geographers John Agnew and David Livingston’s Handbook of Geographic Knowledge, space is defined “largely as a dimension within which matter is located or a grid within which substantive items are contained.”5 This is a very literal scientific definition that can be applied to particular city sidewalks, corners, stairwells, train platforms, etc.
Place, on the other hand, is composed of the geographic units created through human interaction and crystallized through memory and reputation. Agnew claims that “place is a meta-concept that allows for particular stories [to be] associated with specific places…. Place is therefore nostalgic, regressive, or even reactionary.” Place is where prescribed activities are found; space is just where the activities happen to be held. For example, a famous restaurant is a place. If it changes its address, its space changes but its place does not. As the saying goes, “there’s no place like home.”
It is the duty of petty hustlers to make a home on the city streets, whether that’s a card table on a sidewalk or a predetermined route up and down certain city blocks. Every time I stepped out of the train station onto Fulton Avenue, for example, I was aware that I was stepping into a “kitchen” where Otis and a few other known hustlers were cooking up schemes. Cigarette vendors occupy certain landings on the subway steps. Drug dealers hold down entire bodegas. For their customers, their whereabouts needed to be predictable.
THE BOTTLED-WATER HUSTLE
One type of street hustle that requires a large degree of predictability—for both vendor and customer—is the sale of bottled water. On a hot summer day, sellers of bottles of water can be spotted all over the city, from Concourse Avenue in the Bronx, to 125th Street in Manhattan, to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s onramps. Along the ten-mile stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, water vendors can be found at almost every third traffic light. When cars stop at a red light, young men use the average two minutes of stoppage to walk between cars, holding dripping bottles into the air, to make a quick sale to thirsty drivers. One day while driving along Atlantic, I (Trevor Milton) decided spontaneously to investigate this trend as one young man approached my car. “Water, one dollar.”
I held up my hand to confirm a purchase. I handed him five dollars, and he had four ready to give back to me along with a twelve-ounce bottle. Before we finished the purchase, I shot him a quick question. “Hey, how many bottles can you sell in one hour?”
He glanced up at the traffic light, making sure it was still red. “I don’t know, probably twenty or so.”
“How about I offer you twenty bucks for thirty minutes of your time?”
“What do you mean? To talk?”
“Yup.”
“Twenty?”
“Yup.”
“Done.” He walked over to a nearby fence and put a few bottles back inside a large cooler, then jogged over to my car, which I had parked at the curb. He shook my hand through the passenger-side window. “My name’s Lee, like Bruce Lee.” A handsome young man with a freshly trimmed mustache and goatee, Lee wore a white t-shirt, shorts, white socks, and shower shoes; a large straw hat shaded his face from the sun.
As I told him the premise of the book I was writing, I noticed police cars patrolling up and down Atlantic Avenue. “What happens if a police officer pulls up right now?”
Lee smirked. “Nothing. You know it’s crazy, I started selling water when I was twelve years old. When I was younger they used to bother me. A couple of times I actually had to run. But I don’t know. This year, they just don’t bother people anymore.”
“I imagine anything that’s not taxed is illegal.”
“No, but you see, water cost more now, before they used to just charge you for the case. Now they charge you for the case and charge you five cents for each bottle. So for a case of twenty-four, that’s an extra $1.20. For a case of thirty, that’s an extra $1.70.”
I stepped out of my car and leaned on a shaded spot on the adjacent fence, attempting to escape the oppressive heat. I pointed to his cooler. “How much do you pay per case? For a pack of twenty-four?”
“Like seven dollars. But I try to go for the pack of thirty-five … When I have a car available to me, I try to go find the sales. I can get a pack of thirty-five for like eight … That’s a twenty-three dollar profit for every case I sell.”
“And where do you go?”
Lee shifted his attention to the avenue. “Bay Parkway and Fifty-Ninth Street. Coney Island. Sometimes BJs.”
I tried to take a sip from the bottle I had just purchased, but it was frozen solid. I could only get a drop or two. “How do you cool down the water?”
“Basically, when you are doing this over time, you um, you gain experience on what to do. Before when I first started I would buy multiple bags of ice and put them in the cooler. But then I started to notice it was like six to seven dollars for a case, so that’s only a seventeen- to eighteen-dollar profit, so then I’d keep buying bags of ice, and that would take away from my profits. So I started to buy the water days before and leave it in my freezer. And then I would bring them out frozen solid, and they would melt in the sun as I sold them … People like them better that way, anyway.”
“I see a lot of sellers out here today. Is it competitive?”
“Truth be told, this is a real competitive type of thing because I used to sell right here.” He pointed to one part of the avenue. “Like this little strip right here … And I started like three weeks ago—last week. What’s today? Saturday, they changed the light pattern. Now there’s not traffic there, so it’s hard for me to sell.”
Vendors like Lee are heavily dependent on the timing of the traffic lights. Predictability allows them to walk in the middle of the avenue for as long as possible in order to make as many sales as they can before the light turns green. They are also dependent upon which lights clump cars up and which ones tend to produce empty lanes.
He pointed at the adjacent traffic light. “You see how there’s traffic here? It’s easier to sell with more cars. You see that corner there. There don’t be too many cars. There be like one or two maybe; before, this thing would be packed with cars.” He pointed to a street that empties onto Atlantic Avenue. “Now look. It’s only one car at the red light. Or like two cars. And it’s hard to sell. And when you’re selling water, you need a lot of different people to see you. It’s like advertising; you need a lot of different types of cars to see you. And people used to always try to go there. I used to let people know, this is my spot. You can’t sell here. But now that they changed the light pattern, it’s hard to sell. I used to sell like … I try to sell like 160 waters a day, so that way my profit is like a hundred and change. But since that happened, it’s difficult. Now I can only sell like eighty to ninety waters a day.”
Questioning further about the competitive nature of the business, I asked, “So no one else wants your spot?”
He puffed his chest up a little. “Nobody wants it now. I used to have to keep telling people to ‘Move! Move! Move!’ ” He pointed across the avenue. “And the people that moved, went over there, which is a good spot. But since they changed the light pattern, it’s better. And this spot is good too. Now I try to sell whenever I can, if they don’t be here.”
Betty Lou Valentine writes in her 1978 book Hustling and Other Hard Work about the conditions that make it possible for young men like Lee to hustle and what it means to have a job. Valentine did her study in a poor working-class community, and she illustrated how the twin forces of economics and politics play a major role in creating poverty in ghetto communities. Her intimate narrative allows for a fascinating look and a deep understanding of how the community residents cope with poverty and social and racial discrimination.6 For Lee, poverty and the deprived opportunity structure pushed him not to rely on a volatile postindustrial job market but rather create something of his own.
Young men and women like Lee can be found selling water along the streets and highways of the city, near the expressways heading out to JFK Airport or along the bridges and tunnels, waiting for drivers to slow in order to make the sale. The big question is why they are not working in construction or in the many service jobs throughout New York. Where are the jobs that would keep them employed year round and able to make a decent living? Why would they stand outside in the oppressive heat and sell water? Why are they hustling to make money?
These are the questions that get at the heart of hustling and the hard work it takes to maintain and survive in the city for poor residents, teens, adults, and children. Along with the hard work, there is potential for danger. Even something as innocent as water vending can drag individuals into territorial disputes: an oversubscribed traffic light means less money for all.
I asked Lee about these disputes. “How competitive does it get with people trying to hold down certain areas?”
Lee leaned into the fence and smirked. “It’s competitive because you don’t want no one to come and take your spot. Because when it does, it just slows things down for you.” He pointed to a shaded area under the raised Long Island Rail Road tracks in the middle of the avenue. “You see right there, that’s my little cousin right there. He sells for me.”
I spotted a small boy standing at the side of the road, holding four bottles of water. “Damn, he looks like he’s ten! How old is he?”
“He’s ten.” We both laughed for a moment before Lee continued. “He actually sells for me. I don’t know why he’s standing there, I told him to go down some.”
Considering the various amounts of hustles in action in this part of Brooklyn, I further questioned the potential for conflict. “How crazy does it get? Give me a story. Have you ever showed up and somebody was already there?”
Lee rubbed his head as if to stimulate memory. “It doesn’t happen too much, but like … Okay, last week? I didn’t sell … I sell Monday through Friday, and sometimes Saturday and Sunday. And if I sell on Saturday and Sunday, it’s late in the day. I had a bad hangover on Saturday. So when you have a hangover, you don’t feel like doing anything. So I didn’t end up selling any water. And I ended up chilling with a girl that night.” A big grin covered his face. “So, pardon my language, but I busted a nut off, and I was just relaxing, you know?” His grin disappeared. “So I go back out here on Monday, and I see some new guys out on my spot. So I come and I sat down and I’m like, ‘Yo, don’t y’all belong over there on that side?’ So he looks at me and says, ‘Well, I’m selling here now.’ So I said, ‘Naw, this is my spot. I’m out here every day.’ ” Lee clasped his hands together. “I mean, I’m not a gangster or nothing, I don’t cause any trouble. But I’m a whole different person when it comes to my money. So now you’re just trying to ‘outman me’ or ‘outmuscle me’ trying to take over my spot. And he said, ‘This doesn’t have your name on it.’ So I said, ‘You know, I feel you, but I’ve been living over here my whole life. And I’ve been selling right here.’ So he said, ‘Alright, let me go talk to my boss.’ So he goes and talks to his boss and comes back and says, ‘Oh, my boss told me not to move.’ So I said, ‘Where your boss at?’ And he says, ‘That guy over there.’ So I went over to him and said, ‘Look, I didn’t come at your partner all disrespectful or anything. But like I said I sell out here. And this is my spot.’ And he was like, ‘Well, we didn’t see you on no Saturday or Sunday.’ And I was like, ‘So, I’m out here Monday through Friday. I was hungover. I’m pretty sure y’all have seen me out here before.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah yeah. But that’s a good spot.’ And I was like, ‘Look, man. Are you going to give me my spot or what?’ And he was like, ‘A’ight. A’ight. A’ight.’ ”
Unlike many territorial disputes around the sale of illicit drugs, this particular incident ended without violence, but Lee stressed there was continued tension. “So he moved, and then the next day he’s in the spot again. So I come back and I’m like, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ And he said, ‘My boss said we can work this spot together.’ I’m like, ‘What part don’t you understand? There is no together. You go on your side, I go on my side. That’s it.’ So I had to go talk to him again, and he was like, ‘Oh, you came out here late today, man.’ I said, ‘This is not a race. I’m not racing you to get to my place. This is my spot. This is my area where I sell. This is my premises.’ He said, ‘This is not a race, man. Understand? You came out here late.’ I said, ‘You’re not my alarm clock, sir. So, I appreciate it if I can have my spot.’ And he said, ‘Alright.’ ”
Although many water vendors on Atlantic Avenue appeared to be disorganized and disunited, there are informal agreements and spontaneous treaties that lay the boundaries for each seller’s vending space. Each seller is essentially able to create his own “place.” Lee’s was a small space—a half-block in each direction from the traffic light nearest to his apartment door—but it’s his. Customers come to that traffic light seeking his water.
I wondered if it was more lucrative to work alone. “You make it sound like a lot of folks work in teams.”
“A lot of people I do know work in teams. But me I’d rather work by myself. But like I said, I have my little cousin selling.”
Because of the discomfort of being out under the sun, and the long hours, I questioned his choice of profession. “So, why water?”
Lee’s face lit up. “Well, I’m actually a dance teacher. I used to go to Brooklyn College.” Like many hustlers, Lee considered his water sales to be a side hustle. “Yeah, I’m twenty-three years old. Although I look young, I used to go to Brooklyn College. I was there for like three and a half years. And I’m not going to lie to you. When I was there I was BS’ing around.”
I said, “Probably too many girls.”
“Yeah, that too. So, I was BS’ing around, and I got kicked out. So I had to go to Kingsborough [Community College]. I’ve been going to Kingsborough for one semester. But I’m a dance teacher, and the studio is closed during the summertime. But I feel like it’s something I’m good at.”
Lee had his entire life ahead of him, which allowed him to dream and look at the water business as something temporary. “You have to have patience, and you’ve just got to know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And plus, people see me out here every day, so some people buy just because it’s me. And I’ve been living around here my whole life, so people buy because it’s me.”
I thought out loud about this idea of trust. There are plenty of those who might try to sell unregulated and unsafe items, but the thought of brand-name water likely comforted many consumers. “I imagine, as long as this thing has the seal on it, water is water. So I imagine that people must trust that … ”
Lee interjected, “You should be able to tell when you open it whether the seal is broken or cracked. And truth be told, if a person could find that many empty bottles and fill them up with water, and get paid, then they deserve it.”
I mentioned how the past two summers had not been as hot as summers earlier in the decade, and I wondered if this affected his business. Lee agreed. “Well, last summer and the summer before that, I didn’t sell water. Basically, I used to roll dice. Gambling.” I perked up, curious about another potential hustler’s topic. “I actually just stopped playing dice last week. Like I said, I started selling water again like two weeks ago. I had lost about $573, which is about a week’s worth of money. And I had worked hard for it. And I had lost that money rolling dice.”
This second side hustle piqued my curiosity. How lucrative could dollar bottles of water be? How much could Lee really walk away with in a week? Some say the average drug dealer can make up to five thousand dollars a week. I knew of a car thief that could make ten thousand per week. But water?
Lee explained the pros of his business. “I used to make like a hundred and change off of water per day. But I could make more than that if I had more freezer space and if that light pattern would go back to the way that it was. Now I could probably make like eighty or seventy.”
“So let’s say in a week you make about five hundred dollars?”
Lee smiled and nodded. “And I work about five hours, six hours a day.”
I decided to ask about both hustles. “Let’s say you want to inflate that money a little by rolling some dice. If you got a hot hand, what are you making in a night?”
Lee paced around on the sidewalk. “See that is something you can’t really … you can’t put a … you can’t really predict. I can’t give you an estimate. I can’t give you an estimate because it depends on how much the person has on them.”
Lee liked to engage in a common street dice game called Cilo, which we described in chapter 2. I asked about the risks of the game. “My understanding of rolling dice is that you don’t want your hand to be too hot anyway.”
“Well, actually you do.”
“Oh, yeah? My understanding is that jealous ones … will envy that.”
Lee rubbed his hands together. “Alright, let me tell you, see. If I don’t know the person, I’m not playing dice with them. I only play dice with people I feel comfortable with. If this guy is a gangster, and I take all his money and he’s going to try and do something to me, I’m not playing him in dice.” I nodded my head in agreement as he continued. “Yeah, because I’m crazy over my money, so I can’t imagine how a gangster is over his money.”
“So what was a good night? Give me an example. Where you decided this is good enough, I’m going to walk away now.”
Lee flashed a charming grin. “I’m a greedy person. The way I work is, either I’m going to take all your money, or you’re going to take all my money.”
“So it’s all or nothing?”
“Yeah, well, the most I ever won in one night was five hundred dollars. But there’s times—this is three years ago—this one kid took $2,300 from me.”
“And you had that on you?”
“No, I went back and forth. No, he took it in two days. So, truth be told, he took $2,300 from me. And this was when I was at Brooklyn College. Now, I didn’t go to school and I didn’t go to sleep until I got my money back. I couldn’t. That was too much money to lose. And basically, I won back from him $1,900 in that one night. But I don’t count that as money that I won.”
“That’s still a four-hundred-dollar loss.”
“No, no. Well, that too. But it was my money. If you want to be technical, then I won $1,900 in one night, but that was my money to begin with. Actually, I did win five and some change one time.”
I asked further about water vending and inquired what he plans to do with the money.
Lee got more serious. “I’m saving up for school.”
“Yeah?”
“You know, I buy the monthly metro cards and cell phone. And I’m usually a fashionable guy, but I’m saving up now. You know, I don’t get no haircuts or nothing. I woof out. Then when school time comes back, that’s when I get on my … handsome … handsomeness. You know, I go get some new clothes and sneakers. I got friends who steal clothes, and I buy the clothes off of them.”
There were a myriad of street activities he appeared to be involved in. “Yet another hustle, of course.”
“Of course!”
I began to wonder if the payout from these hustles could actually sustain a person’s living expenses. “I’m wondering if there’s anyone who pays rent off of dice.”
“Truth be told, when I first started, I thought I would be able to. It wasn’t too much but I was making minimum seven hundred a week. Just minimum, off of dice. So I thought I was going to be able to live off of dice for the rest of my life.” Lee took a hand towel from the top of his cooler, removed his hat, then wiped his face. “You know, just live decently. I mean seven hundred a week is decent for someone not doing anything. And I had a whole bunch of extra free time on my hands. Then that went all down the drain, because all of that was beginner’s luck.”
Lee shook his head and put his straw hat back on. “I’ve played dice at six in the morning, ten o’clock at night. Three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Do you feel like you could pay your rent off of what you do now?”
Lee placed the hand towel around his neck. “Water? If … you know what’s crazy? If New York was hot like this year round, then I could sell water all year.”
“So summer, water. Fall and winter, you dance. Or you teach dance classes?”
Among all this discussion of water, dice, and dance classes, Lee unveiled yet another hustle. “But I’m actually looking into selling nutcrackers. Do you know what a nutcracker is?”
I was confused. “Are you talking about the dolls?”
“Its liquor. Its liquor and juice. You put them in these bottles and put the seal on them and sell them for like five dollars each one. You know, because a lot of people buy them.” Lee explained that the requirement for a nutcracker is to buy any sort of alcoholic spirit, then mix it with a custom-made juice or iced tea. “I specialize in the Long Island ice tea type of thing. I get a bottle of lemons, I cut them up, I get the ice tea mix, and then I get a bunch of light liquor. I don’t mess with dark liquor.”
I began to think about the comforts of the legitimate job world: predictable paychecks, job security, incremental raises, fodder for one’s resume—and in some instances health insurance—and I wondered aloud why he would choose this path. “So why not just some regular summer job?”
Lee slouched against the fence again. “I have this thing, I don’t like to be told what to do. I have a problem. A problem with restriction and … authority.” He wiped the sweat off of his face again and glanced up and down Atlantic Avenue. “Me, I’m not lazy, but if I want to lay down for another hour, I’m going to lay down for another hour. I’ve actually never had a regular job before. The only regular job I’ve had was a summer job in like 2005 … 2006. And then I did the part-time [2010] census [survey]. You know the census? I did that, but it was only for a couple of months. And then me and my cousin … Are you familiar with Coney Island?”
“Yes.”
“Back in October they had that fight fest. To scare people on Halloween. And me and my cousin was dancing zombies. And three times a night we would perform, dressed as zombies.”
I laughed. “Oh, because you can dance. That makes sense.”
“Like, I’ve actually just never had a regular, regular job. It always had something to do with … you know, Census, you worked whenever you wanted to work.”
HUSTLER GENERATION
Lee liked to work without restrictions, a seemingly impossible combination. He is a product of his generation: not lacking in work ethic but lacking the motivation to stick with anything long term. Many “millennials” (those born between 1985 and 2005) live in a world of fast information, with an expectation for continuous, instant gratification. Quite a few youth look at all money making—whether legitimate or illegitimate—as hustles that can be turned on and off at a moment’s notice.
This is the second generation of youngsters who have been pushed into a postindustrial economy without any vocational compass, yet this is the first generation that completely expects to make it on their own. Fed on tales of fifteen-year-olds inventing multimillion-dollar phone apps or rugged rap gangsters designing expensive fashion lines, many expect that one day wealth will just pop into their lives (as opposed to building it in a slow, steady ascension).
The sociologists Williams and Kornblum wrote in Growing Up Poor—published at the onset of this generation:
By 1990 the teenage and young adult cohort entering the labor force will be somewhat smaller—by perhaps three million—and the currently intense competition for entry level jobs may be somewhat diminished. But this is wishful projection, since this is based on no information about possible changes in the demand for young workers as opposed to the obvious supply. In any case, it is cold comfort for today’s teenagers, who are experiencing unprecedented rates of unemployment, to know that their successors in the labor force may fare better than they. For this cohort, there is no salvation to be found in long-term changes in population size or age distribution.7
What Williams and Kornblum did not anticipate was the state’s response to youthful unemployment, which was less focused on funding job programs or making jobs available through manufacturing and other means but rather involved the criminalization of poor youth, especially youth of color, who are now overrepresented in U.S. prisons. This encourages youth to become even more involved in the informal economy. As Milton wrote in “Class Status and the Construction of Black Masculinity,” young black males still try to “fit themselves into the working class norms of old. The means of doing so [is] up for interpretation, and therefore could lead to illegal methods of obtaining wealth. The end goal is to gain wealth and display that wealth in order to garner respect and intrigue women.”8
In the late 1970s, before the depression in manufacturing industries idled millions of additional adult workers, the “youth unemployment problem” was a subject of concerted federal policy and research initiatives. Plans to expand subsidized youth employment and training programs called for up to $5 billion a year for a wide range of approaches aimed at helping young people make a smoother transition from school to work.
Since the 1990s, these initiatives have been all but eliminated, and working-age youth have been left to invent miraculously their own careers. Not even a degree from a top-tier university guarantees job placement. Whether or not they are aware of the causes of the current job market, many millennials have accepted this and as a result have adopted a “fly high or crash hard” mentality toward income earning and an all-or-nothing, YOLO (you only live once) attitude toward life.
This has led to an abundance of young hustlers like Lee in New York City. The anthropologist Elliot Liebow wrote about this in Tally’s Corner. This study of black street-corner men in Washington, D.C., written in an engaging novelistic style, is mainly about American culture, poverty, family relations, and friendship in a neighborhood where unemployment for the poor is endemic. The book in all of its essence transcends race, geography, and time and is widely considered a classic.
Liebow wrote:
But the street corner man lives in a sea of want. He does not, as a rule, have a surplus of resources, either economic or psychological. Gratification of hunger and the desire for simple creature comforts cannot be long deferred. Neither can one’s flagging self-esteem. Living on the edge of both economic and psychological subsistence, the street corner man is obliged to expend all his resources on maintaining himself from moment to moment.9
The work ethic expressed by youth on the street corner is in evidence here, as is the desire to better themselves at opportunities in which they can be their own bosses. As the author Betty Lou Valentine put it, “hustling is hard work.”
Unsure of his future, Lee had many irons in the fire, hoping that one of them would pay off, waiting for one of them to send him skyward. “I’m actually into film. I create skits. I put them on YouTube. One skit I did, two summers ago when it was a hundred degrees outside, I recorded my friend. He had put on a snorkel jacket with sweatpants and Timberlands. And he just walked outside while it was a hundred degrees. I recorded random reactions to people while he did that. Complete strangers. So I cut it up, because I know how to edit it. With concepts and everything.”
Lee is also an amateur filmmaker, but his production equipment was limited. “I don’t have the MacBook and the Final Cut. If I had that, then the stuff that I’m using would be … Because everything I use is regular. Basic camera, basic regular editing program. And people tell me, ‘Your stuff is really good. Especially because you don’t have any effects or nothing.’ If I had the effects and stuff, then—” He smiled as he looked at the sky. “Aw man.”
Being a Generation Xer, I suggested the path of old, maybe an outdated and unrealistic option: “You should get back into college. Use their stuff.”
“I am. I was supposed to go to the Art Institute, but they want thirty thousand a year. At first I was going to get the loan, because truth be told, if I get into school then I’m going to do something with my life. Because I know film. Sometimes I just know things, camera angles and everything. But my father told me that I should go back to Kingsborough for one more semester, and ‘while you’re in there you can apply for a bunch of scholarships,’ so by the time next semester comes ‘you can have some scholarships instead of taking out four loans.’ ”
I had exceeded my promised thirty minutes, so I ended the interview. I thanked him for his time, and he thanked me for the opportunity to share his story. I climbed back into my air-conditioned car, and he resumed his current hustle in the blazing heat. Between red lights, Lee would dream of ways to fly.