Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals

5. The Street

5 The Street Street hustling is mundane.1 Ufe on the street for an adult hustler is cold: there are few material or hedonistic rewards; sexual partners are often difficult to find; status and prestige rewards are absent; there is little sense of personal power, except when feeling particularly narcissistic from too much cheap wine; and there is a constant risk of being beaten or stabbed by drunk or angry hustlers.2 Popcorn, Wolf Man, Paris, and the other informants didn't choose to sell drugs and engage in other low-level street crimes because they didn't want a career3 as a high school teacher, insurance salesman , attorney, or manager of a Starbuck's coffee shop.* Nor did these informants forsake the thrill of driving a Formula One racing car or playing football in front of 60,000 screaming fans at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium4 for the excitement of standing on a street comer peddling rock cocaine in Seattle's cold wintery drizzle. These hustlers' economic lives are a series of defaults, not career choices.s They stand on sidewalks as helpless children do, waiting for the criminal justice or social welfare system to care for them.6 When that doesn't happen, they satisfy their needs in the easiest, most familiar ways. They steal from sleeping drunks and passersby, shoplift at local stores, sell small quantities of heroin and rock cocaine , panhandle, and even steal cash and drugs from each other. Their life trajectory was set in motion decades earlier in early childhood , and they can't stop it now. *No informants worked at legitimate jobs, not even for a day, during the years of this research. 184 Copyrighted Material The Street 185 Social Networks and Hustling The success of an adult hustler's adaptation depends on weak social ties distributed over a wide geographic area. After years of teenage hustling, doing time in jails and prisons, and staying in missions and shelters, a hustler has amassed an array of acquaintances. Hustlers' street networks are diffusely distributed and extend between cities throughout the Northwest (Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia) and even into major cities in the greater West, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, and Phoenix, among others. Street social life in these networks is guided by a simple question: What can he or she do for me now? The result is subsets of instrumental networks. Two or three men, for instance, get together to shoplift and sell stolen property or panhandle enough money to buy a bottle of Wild Irish Rose, a highalcohol -content wine. But once the wine has been drunk and the goods sold, hustlers go their own way. Reciprocity between street hustlers fresh out of prison and those who've been outside a while is strong. These men have an understanding based on common need. If an established hustler refuses aid to a former inmate just "back on the set/' he can be sure his lack of cooperation will be reciprocated. To become established again in Seattle, a hustler must face the scene at First and Pike. On a typical day there, the street scene changes as the day grows old. By late morning, there is action on each of the four comers, and it spreads for two blocks north and south and three blocks east. Street folks and tourists mix well in daylight hours. Tourists don't bother the drug runners and addicts, ex-convicts, street hustlers, and the others lurking around. And street folks usually don't bother tourists, except to hustle a quarter. Tourism is a valuable industry in Seattle, a protected industry, and, to be sure, "one-time" (the police) are close by. Drug sellers don't bother each other unless a stranger gets pushy and tries to expand his territory by nudging into someone else's corner . Expansion is OK if the "businessmen" know each other. "There's lots of comers, plenty of customers, and nobody wants trouble, that kind of trouble from one-time. When runners be out there, they be clocking. When you're slinging packets, you got to Copyrighted Material 186 The Street work against the clock. It's only a matter of time before one-time rolls by and you're out of business for a while," said Popcorn. In downtown Seattle, or anywhere else, drug dealers don't kill each other over territory, said Popcorn. Anyway...