| UNDERCITY.ORG |
A guerilla
historian in Gotham
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Intro - On Business - On New York - On Sleeping On The Subway |
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On Sleeping On The Streets, and Cardboard Boxes Me: Do you stay at shelters or sleep on the streets? Billy: Sleep out. I used to stay at a shelter for a while then I got tired of it. Don’t like curfews. Shelters is all right, it was just me. Most people don’t like shelters. Me: Why don’t people like shelters? Billy: Well I don’t like ‘em because I’m a night owl. I like to be out at night. Shelters, you’ve got them curfew-type things, you got to be in at certain times. Me: So what do you do on your nights out? Billy: Same thing. [He motioned around himself, taking in the blanket, the cardboard sign, the people passing by.] It’s all I do. Every day. Me: Since you don’t stay at shelters, where do you sleep? Billy: On the streets. Me: Where do you sleep when you stay on the streets? Billy: Sometimes I stay on sidewalks. Not too much though. I had a guy try to kill me one time on the sidewalk. He beat me while I was sleeping—actually beating me while I was sleeping! All head shots. He was trying to kill me but he didn’t do a good job at it. Then when I woke up—it took him a while to wake me up because I was in a deep sleep, and once I woke up good I was still half-asleep, that’s how tired I was—then, when I started to get up, he breaked away. He was a nut. That’s what he was. A nut. We got a lot of nuts around this city. Me: Can you stay on the sidewalk even when it’s cold out? Even during winter? I set up campsites on the sidewalk lots of time. Even if it’s cold, you don’t got to be cold, if you have a box. You just got to know how to do it. You just go in a box-- you get you a really big box, you get you some blankets and stuff-- and you seal it off, and no cold can get in. No matter how cold it is, you just don’t be cold. [He grinned up at me.] It sounds crazy, but—you just don’t be cold inside. You can take all your clothes off and still be warm. Motherfuckers think you be freezing to death, but you don’t! Me: How do you get a box? Billy: That’s not easy to get. No, one of them boxes ain’t easy to get at all. But you don’t really have to have a box, you can have a tarp instead. You can even take a bunch of garbage bags and tape them together and it’s the same thing. Tape them together, and then you have you a lot of newspapers inside to insulate. It’s all about insulating. Then no matter how cold it is, you don’t be cold. I even slept in waterfronts sometimes. You know how waterfronts is, don’t you? With the wind coming off, it’s cold. But the wind can’t get in if you got it sealed, and when the wind can’t get in, you can’t get cold. Me: What do you do when it rains? Billy: I usually go in one of these construction tunnels. Of course, some of them leak so bad you might as well be in the rain. [I didn’t know what he was talking about and asked him if he mean like a subway station under construction or something. No, he explained, he was talking about there areas where a wooden canopy is set up over the sidewalk when a building is under construction.] Me: Do people make you move or can you stay camped all night? Billy: Sometimes you can just stay there all night. Depends on where you set up. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. Me: How do you know if it’s a good spot? Billy: You just have to test it. Set up and see what happens. They don’t take the box or bother you too much, but the police’ll wake you up…. Me: So what’s the worst thing about being on the streets? Billy: There’s a whole bunch of shit. Always worried about people stealing from you. [There had been streams of people passing by the whole time we’d been talking, but with my back to the sidewalk I hadn’t been paying attention. Now somebody came past me—a plump middle-aged woman, with a kindly face—and dropped two dollars in his hat. "I don’t have to tell you off," she said, seemingly little embarrassed. Billy grinned and nodded at her-- "God bless you, ma’am." She had her husband—also plump and middle-aged—snap a picture of her standing near Billy before they both disappeared again into the stream of people.] Some people don’t tell me off, they just give me a dollar. Sometimes they buy my sign too. Some guy gave me twenty bucks for my sign the other night! Yeah, some people collect sign… [He paused reflectively.] I don’t understand that, though, because you can just MAKE a sign like that, but I guess it’s something about wanting YOUR sign. One guy collects signs from every state he goes in. He collects any signs that people have. You have some strange dudes in the world. That’s why I like the big city, because you meet all types of people. You never know what’s going to happen next. You don’t know who you’re going to meet next. It’s full of surprises. [I started to ask if the surprises were all good surprises, or if bad things happened too, but he was still talking:] …That’s why I like the big city so much. With a lot people, you just don’t know what’s going to be next. Me: Do you have any bad things happen to you on the street? Billy: Well, I just got through having pneumonia. I just got out of the hospital-- they gave me antibiotics to knock it out. Me: Do you think about going to shelters when you’re sick? Billy: Yeah, they’ll take care of you if you’re in there. Some shelters it’s day to day, bu some you have to be there a long time. Of course when you leave they fill you out, medicine, social security, everything you need. Me: So tell me, are there good soup kitchens in this city? Billy: They got a lot of places to eat at, a lot of good places to eat at. Sometimes I like to get my own food, you know, because I like to eat certain things…[He held up his Popeye’s box] Like I got Popeye’s, two pieces of Popeye’s chicken here cost me five dollars. And a little thing of rice-- I got halfway full on that. Yeah, that rice, and two pieces of chicken kind of knocked me out…and a biscuit… I can do better than that though, I can go down to Port Authority and get a whole full meal for five dollars….. I mean rice, meat, beans, a plate-full, a BIG plate—just five dollars, you can be FULL. And sometimes I shop at the 99-cent store, and get stacks of bologna or stacks of meat… loaves of bread, or some peanut butter and jelly and loaves of bread. When I eat, I don’t play around. Me: Tell me what you think about living on the street. Billy: All it is, man, is just survival. It’s just survival. You got to be a real survivor. The streets make you strong or they make you weak, but that’s all it is – just survival. Me: When was the last time you had a permanent home? Billy: It’s been quite a while… In Arkansas, maybe, I’m not homeless in Arkansas, I got kinfolk there. Plus it’s easy to get jobs down there. Easier to get jobs down there than in the city. Either way I wouldn’t be homeless. I could go back. It’d just be a matter of finding my family again. They hard to find, they move every year…. I ain’t seen them in over twenty some years… they still probably in Little Rock somewhere, I just don’t know where. I’d have to track them down. That might not be easy at all. I would find some of them, though, because I got quite a few kin. |
