Witt Street Singer

A Tale of Sex, Money and Power in a Changing Brooklyn
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9850248-9-5
Verlag: Changing Lives Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 260 Seiten

A gonzo telling of Brooklyn's $5 billion Atlantic Yards project by the award-winning journalist who played a pivotal role in bringing the NBA's Brooklyn Nets to the borough.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Witt, Stephen

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2 Some people work inside all day Ain’t nothing wrong with that I just roam the citywide Collecting coins in my hat I’m just a panhandler Just a panhandler Guess I’ll panhandle till the day I die I work for a living Strumming and a singing Please throw me your dollars and dimes Grand Central Station’s cruddy yellow light and grimy marble walls greeted me off the subway escalator like a favorite harmonica. I slung my guitar bag over my shoulder, and pulled the folding hand truck strapped with my music gear past two military men strapped with large side arms to the newsstand near the Graybar Tunnel that lets out on Lexington Avenue. After sidestepping a clerk slicing open bundles of newspapers with a razor knife, I grabbed the third paper from the top off the middle rack. Then I approached the familiar and fine-looking Indian woman working the register. “So how has your day been, my musician friend?” she asked as I handed her a dollar. “It’s still early, but thank you for asking,” I replied. “And thank you for answering,” she said matter-of-factly. We both laughed easily as I took the change. Then I tucked the paper under my arm and wheeled back past the sentries and through the wide, low arch leading down a ramp to the dimly lit food court. The air smelled of noxious train fumes, industrial-strength disinfectants and garbage. I cut through the shellacked hardwood benches and large chairs in the center waiting area, and bought a coffee at the stand across from Track 104. Then, java in hand, I went over to one of the two dining areas where the light is marginally better. Many of the tables were unoccupied, and I chose one against the far wall. After unloading my music gear next to the chair across the table, I sat down, pulled the tab back on my coffee container and opened the paper to the sports section. The New York Knicks, who were already on a four-game skid, had lost again—this time on a buzzer beater. Basketball has always been my favorite sport and the Knicks were the Manhattan team, but they certainly weren’t the Yankees. They remind me more of baseball’s Cubs in my native Chicago. Perennial losers. But still the Knicks were the only show in town so I kept up with them. After reading sports, I turned to the front section where the main news of the day was the worsening economy. Pundits were calling it The Great Recession, what with unemployment up past nine percent. And that number only included people filing for unemployment. Not the many people like me who live in the margins. I glanced up from the paper and marveled at how Grand Central Station had become very upscale with high-end kiosks and retail shops since I came back to the city. Everything now seemed so orderly. At nearby tables early birds like me were enjoying downtime, sipping coffee while buried in the morning paper or on a smart phone or tablet. Some were lost in programmed headphone music, or reading a book. The more ambitious poured over spreadsheets on laptops, or checked off work to-do lists written on yellow writing pads. I wondered now if Grand Central Station could ever revert back to the Wild West days of the 1980s. The waiting room, back then, was upstairs next to the grand concourse and overrun with crackheads and homeless people. Some of them were really good singers. One of the most beloved was Lucille, a small, deformed woman, whose large hands protruded from her armpits like nubs for arms. She worked alone in the subway and around Grand Central. Her singing voice was so pitch perfect and emotionally rich that it would stop commuters in their tracks. Her version of Amazing Grace moved me to tears more than once. She was that good. At seven-thirty, I drained the last of my coffee, folded up the paper and rolled my gear back to the coffee stand where I bought a second cup and a small bottle of water. Then I made my way to the MUNY spot, about fifty feet further, where I set up beside a marble pillar facing Tracks 105 and 106. MUNY is short for Music Under New York. It’s the official transit sanctioned program allowing select auditioned subway musicians’ permitted spots to play. I’m a proud charter member of the program, having played on national television when the MTA first unrolled it in the 1980s. Not that I’ve ever believed in government controlling art in public spaces, but the three two-hour MUNY gigs I get a week comes in handy. And on this Friday, it was a great spot for the morning rush, free of police hassle from eight to ten. I quickly set up, first hanging my MUNY banner on the hooks located on a pillar behind me. It read: Jason Spirit—Acoustic Blues and Folk Music. Then I unloaded my milk crate, which doubles as my tip box, set up my music gear and did a quick sound check. My guitar and harmonica music, now amplified, filled Grand Central Station and its haunting, reverberating sounds immediately reminded of why I love my work. For all its rank, stank and funky smells Grand Central Station, and indeed, the entire subway system is my personal cathedral. The place I find my redemption. Satisfied with the sound, I blew a quick scale on the harmonica strapped in its holder around my neck and began strumming Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.” As I played, commuters began getting off their trains crowding the food court and scurrying past me as if I was invisible. Most made beelines for the coffee stand or off to the exits for work, but a few nodded towards me and slowed their pace as they walked past. A homeless man dressed in frayed jeans and a dirty blue T-Shirt with a Big Apple logo on it stopped dead in his tracks twenty feet to my right. Then he turned his head up, scratched his matted hair and beard with dirty fingers, and listened as the song floated through the food court. “Come on, New York,” I said into the microphone after I finished the song without a tip. “I know we can do better than that.” At this, a heavy-set station worker driving a yellow cart filled with clear plastic bags of garbage drove past me and stopped, putting the vehicle in park. He got out, walked up to me and dropped two greenbacks in the tip box. Although we’d never spoken formally, the man’s a regular patron. “Thanks, Pops,” I said into the mic, nodding towards him, and then addressing those who pretended not to be listening as he walked back to his cart, “That’s my pops. A lot of people might think because he’s black and I’m white that he’s not my pops. But he’s my pops alright. Right, Pops?” Pops smiled and nodded before walking back to the cart and going about his business. A commuter sitting in one of the wooden chairs to my left got up from reading his morning paper and tossed a dollar in my crate as he passed on his way to work. “Thank you,” I said into the mic, making sure I acknowledged him with eye contact as I started my next tune. And so it went until a little after ten, when stragglers were all that remained of the morning rush. I stopped playing and quickly tallied up the money. It came to thirty-one dollars and change. A good start, but now wasn’t the time to spend it. I quickly packed up my gear, chugged down the last of my now cold coffee and jumped on the train to the 59th Street station. Here, I walked down the 6 train platform to the Q, R and N platform, where as luck would have it, one of my favorite spots was open. Now platform playing is the jewel of independent musicians. Different rules apply than at MUNY spots. For one, you aren’t legally allowed to use amplification and secondly, the beat cops can be real pricks. The platforms are narrow and it’s always dangerous playing with your back to the subway tracks. That’s why this spot is my favorite because it’s with my back to the silver escalator in the middle of the platform. About ten feet in front of me is a stairway leading from the uptown trains, and it gets a lot of the kind of traffic I like. Wealthier people from the Upper East Side, retail workers from Bloomingdales and nearby similar-type shops, and people from a school for the blind with seeing-eye dogs or canes all comes this way and they often tip me. So I put the hand cart with electronic gear behind me against the silver escalator, threw my guitar bag out in front of me, tuned up and blew the entire melody of Roger Mil-ler’s classic “King of the Road” on harmonica before singing it through several times, and adding more harp breaks. The song paid off right away. Three greenbacks and several handfuls of loose change were tossed in my case before the first R Train came and went. And that’s where I stayed for the next five and a half hours—mixing standards, originals and self-deprecating jokes. The money was coming steadily and I knew I was nearing my daily goal of a hundred dollars. But then from the corner of my eye I saw trouble coming; two cops were descending the stairs from the 6-train platform, and. one had sergeant stripes. The other was a beat cop — tall and with a beer gut. “You know why we’re stopping you, don’t you?” asked the sergeant. He was smaller than me but had a bodybuilder shape with a round shaved head and wide face. “Actually officer,” I replied as politely as I could. “It’s my understanding...