I hadn’t seen this in forever. A beggar on the subway, like it was 1996 and Rudy G hadn’t yet banished the squeegee men to wherever it is that squeeguee men go. “I’m 36 and I’m homeless,” she said on the uptown 6 train at 5:58.
She was white, with mousy brown hair. She wore a red overcoat, gray chinos and running shoes. She had a backpack over both shoulders. She held out a dirty cardboard soup cup.
“I’m a widow and I have children,” she continued. “Please help.”
One lady offered a dollar, another gave change. To both she said, “Bless you.”
Two black women looked on, shared a joke and smiled. They had Caribbean-nanny accents, but I couldn’t make out the words because I had my iPod on.
She got out at 34th.
Take the train to Queens. There are two or three homeless men who take the F or V train and a number of men who sing/play instruments for money, and one man who sells batteries. I’ve become so callous to it on a crowded subway with either my ipod going or reading that I don’t notice unless the men are right next to me and shaking their cups/shouting out their sales pitches. It saddens me that I’ve become this way but it is part of the thick coat that many of us New Yorkers grow. I do remember the days when Penn Station, back in the eighties, was crowded with homeless men and women and the subways were travelling homes to others. Rudy G. pushed folks out of Manhattan and into the outter burroughs and suburbs. Is that possible or is it just my imagination? In any case it didn’t solve the problem of finding them homes. It just pushed them onto someone elses doorstep. Maybe that was his idea in the first place.
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