As I was leaving the subway this week, I saw a man going to work. I knew he was because I know where, and when, he works. He is a neighborhood fixture, and perhaps you have seen him: tall, gaunt, somewhat wan, he hands out flyers for women’s fashions, typically on Seventh Avenue in the 30’s. I assume they are for women’s fashions, as he has never profferred me any. Or perhaps he is particularly skilled at his job, targeting only those he deems likely prospects. He is mostly easily noted because of his height (a good six inches above the crowd) and his rather solemn visage.
He made me think of another neighborhood fixture from further back in my life here, and about what constitutes a landmark. Landmark is not the misnomer it might be, since even as people provide as much character as the fixed elements of an urban landscape, we often interact with them in the exact same way we do the lifeless, inert forms: observation and comment from afar, careful avoidance of the dangerous parts, and usually with far more ignorance than we realize about something we consider very familiar simply because we gaze upon it with regularity.
And so I remembered the person I always thought as the Can You Spare Something Woman. If my memory serves, in the early nineties, she used to patrol the intersection of St. Mark’s and Second Avenue. She was very slight, with straight dingy brown hair, and the layered clothing of a homeless person, having to deal with rapid and drastic climate change and outdoor living. Even so, she seemed thin more than anything, with overcoat, wraith-like. I can recall nothing of her face, often covered by hair, or the particular way she seemed to hunch inside her coat, and, of course, from turning quickly, but only slightly away, to avoid her gaze and project that her appeal was unnoticed, an appeal that was invariably: ‘Can you spare something?’ It was repeated for every passerby, a measured mantra that could be heard dozen times before the change of a traffic signal.
I might say she was there always, but I was not. But she was there every time I remember being there from my first summer here in the early nineties, and then again when I returned to the neighborhood several years after that. I did see her once on University, same clothes, same petition. Returning to the office that I remarked to a friend about seeing here out of her element, though the friend could recall nothing of the woman, even as they had stood on that same corner with me. But a co-worker overheard our exchange and mentioned, with similar wonderment, about having seen her ‘all the way up on 34th street.’
It occurred to me then that this woman, was, perversely, a celebrity. Given her typical locus, the density of New York and it’s role as a leading media center, the nexus of St. Mark’s as a tourist location but still the boulevard of hip affectation, meant that likely an extraordinary number of people, tourists, average citizenry, as well as the largish community of people who aspire to, or have, some minor celebrity, all recognized her. Projecting out from there, and considering how much of human life is lived in relative anonymity, it was plausible to conclude that she could easily be one of the most famous people who had ever lived (if fame could be counted as simply recognition by the largest number of people, regardless of insitutional sanctification in the form of media). This invisible, dehumanized junkie (that’s what I always assumed) was more famous than I, or anyone I would ever know, could become.
When I moved back several years after that, she was gone. I have not seen her in over a half decade. Her absence is like that of a lost favorite locale, overtaken by development. Given her relatively dire circumstances, my conclusions about her condition are stark. And I recall my derisive comment to office mates who once complained about mice that wandered out after hours: ‘Pretend it’s a homeless person and ignore them.’ Unlike the more romantic figures that get chronicled in the Times occassionally, her coming and passing will not be noted, and likely the outline of her story would not make anymore a compelling read than the rest of us. But she was famous once. At least to me.
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Can you spare something?
As I was leaving the subway this week, I saw a man going to work. I knew he was because I know where, and when, he works. He is a neighborhood fixture, and perhaps you have seen him: tall, gaunt, somewhat wan, he hands out flyers for women’s fashions, typically on Seventh Avenue in the 30’s. I assume they are for women’s fashions, as he has never profferred me any. Or perhaps he is particularly skilled at his job, targeting only those he deems likely prospects. He is mostly easily noted because of his height (a good six inches above the crowd) and his rather solemn visage.
He made me think of another neighborhood fixture from further back in my life here, and about what constitutes a landmark. Landmark is not the misnomer it might be, since even as people provide as much character as the fixed elements of an urban landscape, we often interact with them in the exact same way we do the lifeless, inert forms: observation and comment from afar, careful avoidance of the dangerous parts, and usually with far more ignorance than we realize about something we consider very familiar simply because we gaze upon it with regularity.
And so I remembered the person I always thought as the Can You Spare Something Woman. If my memory serves, in the early nineties, she used to patrol the intersection of St. Mark’s and Second Avenue. She was very slight, with straight dingy brown hair, and the layered clothing of a homeless person, having to deal with rapid and drastic climate change and outdoor living. Even so, she seemed thin more than anything, with overcoat, wraith-like. I can recall nothing of her face, often covered by hair, or the particular way she seemed to hunch inside her coat, and, of course, from turning quickly, but only slightly away, to avoid her gaze and project that her appeal was unnoticed, an appeal that was invariably: ‘Can you spare something?’ It was repeated for every passerby, a measured mantra that could be heard dozen times before the change of a traffic signal.
I might say she was there always, but I was not. But she was there every time I remember being there from my first summer here in the early nineties, and then again when I returned to the neighborhood several years after that. I did see her once on University, same clothes, same petition. Returning to the office that I remarked to a friend about seeing here out of her element, though the friend could recall nothing of the woman, even as they had stood on that same corner with me. But a co-worker overheard our exchange and mentioned, with similar wonderment, about having seen her ‘all the way up on 34th street.’
It occurred to me then that this woman, was, perversely, a celebrity. Given her typical locus, the density of New York and it’s role as a leading media center, the nexus of St. Mark’s as a tourist location but still the boulevard of hip affectation, meant that likely an extraordinary number of people, tourists, average citizenry, as well as the largish community of people who aspire to, or have, some minor celebrity, all recognized her. Projecting out from there, and considering how much of human life is lived in relative anonymity, it was plausible to conclude that she could easily be one of the most famous people who had ever lived (if fame could be counted as simply recognition by the largest number of people, regardless of insitutional sanctification in the form of media). This invisible, dehumanized junkie (that’s what I always assumed) was more famous than I, or anyone I would ever know, could become.
When I moved back several years after that, she was gone. I have not seen her in over a half decade. Her absence is like that of a lost favorite locale, overtaken by development. Given her relatively dire circumstances, my conclusions about her condition are stark. And I recall my derisive comment to office mates who once complained about mice that wandered out after hours: ‘Pretend it’s a homeless person and ignore them.’ Unlike the more romantic figures that get chronicled in the Times occassionally, her coming and passing will not be noted, and likely the outline of her story would not make anymore a compelling read than the rest of us. But she was famous once. At least to me.