RUSH

This is a documentary made for an AP Language course in high school. All of the footage is original except for the photographs of famous skateboarders Tony Hawk, Lance mountain, Eric Koston, Bucky Lasek, Marc Johnson, and Guy Mariano (sources below). Skateboarding is often criminalized here in Colombia due to the common stereotypes that tend to surround skateboarders and the sport in general, this documentary intends to disprove these stereotypes and show skating as we know it.

Lance Mountain → picture by Brandon Wong (http://radballs.com/tag/lance-mountain/)

Eric Koston → picture by Chris McDonald (http://skateboarding.transworld.net/1000078110/ugc/ugc-images/eric-koston/)

Tony Hawk → original picture was posted by himself on his instagram account. I found it here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250097/Put-helmet-moron--Tony-Hawk-takes-daughter-skateboarding-helmet-responds-social-media-backlash.html

Bucky Lasek → picture by Steve Cave (http://skateboard.about.com/od/dewactionsportstournews/ig/Dew-Action-Sports-Tour-06/Bucky-Lasek-Skateboarding.htm)

Marc Johnson → Source of the picture is unknown but I found the image here: http://www.taringa.net/posts/deportes/3661587/Marc-Johnson-skater.html

Guy Mariano → picture by Muller (http://skateboarding.transworld.net/1000171338/photos/wednesday-wallpaper-guy-mariano/)

Rick Mccrank → photographer is unkown but I found the picture on the oficial Bones Bearings Blog (http://bonesbearings.com/team/rick-mccrank/)

A Breakdown in POV

As I immerse myself into the life of the sidewalk I have come to realize that this entire book is basically one giant POV shot. What Duneier is doing with Sidewalk is more than a sociological study. It’s an attempt for us disconnected whites to really understand what a POV shot consists of when the subject is a street vendor in New York City. Out of all the POV shots that have been constantly described in the final pages of Part 3 of the book, I’m going to discuss the two that shocked me most. The first case shows the POVs of street vendors or panhandlers that really need to use the restroom. The second shows the POVs of book vendors in the streets that yell out compliments at every woman that goes by.

Case 1à

POV # 1: a close up of Mudrick ‘s hand holding a cup and putting it on a low tree branch. The cup is his bathroom, the tree is where he stores it. Mudrick says he is not welcome in any restaurants, and there are no public bathrooms. To top that off, the police will arrest you for “pissing in the street” (page 174).

POV # 2: Ron looks around nervously to check that no one is seeing him as he pees exactly in between two cars. He’s being careful that nothing hits the cars or the sides of buildings because, though he doesn’t understand it, he knows people don’t like it. He has some restaurants that allow him to come inside to use the bathroom, but today he’s dirty and he’s been drinking and it would be disrespectful to walk in a restaurant like that. “When a person is dirty or stinkin’  he don’t want to go to a bathroom with decent people in there! You just don’t feel good about yourself” (page 177).

POV # 3: Raj, the guy from the Newsstand in the corner runs to a restaurant trying to find a bathroom as quickly as he can. When he finds no one to take care of the stand for him, he is forced o go in a cup. Unlike Mudrick, Raj still has a sense of privacy in this situation because he can do it inside the cubic Newsstand. He still feels embarrassed by this though, his shame isn’t impacted by the people around him but what he thinks he should do as a member of a supposedly civilized society.

POV # 4: A white man finds the poor black vendor peeing on the street. He finds it repulsive.

My interest in these points of view stems much further than how fascinating they are, I am more intrigued by the way they vary. Ron actually pees on the street sometimes as a sign of respect for other people. The white man, without knowing this, immediately thinks him uncivilized and likely to cause harm. Really? The guy just really had to pee. It is the interactions of all these points of view that makes up sidewalk life, and out of all of them, the most ignorant one is that of the educated white person who just knows this is not a right or a good thing.

Case 2à

POV # 1: Mudrick yells compliments at every woman who passes by. His explanation is that this all meant to be flattering for the women. “I say sweet things to a woman. Make her feel good. Like. You look nice. You look very nice. I’d like to be with you someday if I can. Try to make you happy” (page 193).

POV # 2à Framed in the shot is a woman’s upper body. Her face looks doubtful, her eyes are nervously checking back and fourth to see if the man that was harassing her just a few seconds ago is following her. Little does she know that this harassing guy she was trying to avoid just wanted her to feel good for the rest of the day.

Once again my interest in this type of activity lies in how the same situation can vary through different eyes. Why is it that Mudrick feels so kind and the woman feels so uncomfortable?

In the book, Duneier gives many theories as to why this is such a common phenomenon (the change of POVs amongst people of the same group I mean). Despite all the fancy names and long analyses. I’m just going to say that I don’t agree with the POV of white people as shown in both scenarios, mainly because we are criminalizing these vendors without any proof. When did the white population give itself the right to judge other populations based on so-called race?

Imagine what the world could be if we bothered to always ask ourselves why people are doing what they’re doing. Do we honestly think so low of street vendors that the idea that they enjoy relieving themselves in public seems logical in our heads?

Sadly, we’re humans. This means that we will most likely not ask ourselves why people are doing what they’re doing. We will not take lurking valuables into consideration. We will be a bad example.

Exacerbated (verb): made a bad situation or negative feeling worse

Relative Pride in the Street Life

As I begin reading Part 3 of Sidewalk I have come to two important realizations: first, the homeless people are still too proud to admit that they’re homeless and second, Mitchell Duneier is still too proud to think we trust his subjects in the study. If you’re wondering why this is being written at 2 in the morning, it’s because I just watched four hours of slam poetry on YouTube and I’m too proud to get a low grade on my blog posts. Pride as it turns out, is in everyone.

I had noticed this pride issue earlier in the book when the panhandlers of Sixth Avenue said they would never reduce themselves to looking through trash for a living. The scavengers who looked through trash for a living said they would never reduce themselves to begging. In the more recent chapters I noticed an emphasis on this pride, as the sidewalk dwellers don’t think of themselves as homeless people.

As this book continues there is an emphasis on how the choice to live on the streets comes about. “To understand the act of sleeping on the sidewalks, rather than assuming a person is making a trade-off between drugs and a room, it is always useful to consider a person’s overall logic…” (page 162). This brings powerful insight into the sidewalk world and human judgment. Why are people from the higher classes so proud that they immediately think someone on the street has no money, no education or intelligence, no other option, and is inevitable on drugs? If we could pay attention for a bit longer, we’d maybe see them as they see themselves: “street entrepreneurs” (page 172).

The pride in Duneier however, was shown in a single sentence: “”In one month he saved one thousand dollars for the winter and for a trip to see his mother in Florida. (I counted the money)” (page 164). Why did he have to add that he counted the money? Did he think that we wouldn’t believe if the amount based on just Grady’s testimony? Probably. The most devastating part of it all is that most people reading the book would have done exactly as Duneier expected, they wouldn’t believe the amount without upper-class/white testimony.

Pride as it turns out, is racist and classist.

Binge (noun): a short period devoted to indulging in an activity in excess. 

N-A-T-H-A-N-I-E-L and the Sidewalk

The Soloist tells the story of an African American prodigy named Nathaniel Ayers who lives in the streets of L.A, haunted with mental illness Nathaniel moved out to escape the pressures of Julliard and perfection. N-A-T-H-A-N-I-E-L he says whenever he introduces himself, as if he needed a remainder of who he is. Sidewalk has reached a point where Duneier has begun to discuss the “’dangerous, violent, and aggressive’ image of African-American men on the streets of New York City” (page 120). As I watched the aforementioned movie over thanksgiving break, I couldn’t help but wonder if there are many Nathaniels out there, geniuses undercover, kept on the streets because of their fears, pasts, and even mental sickness. The parallels between the vendors Duneier talks about in Sidewalk and Nathaniel in The Soloist are too big not to notice, even though the stories occurred in opposite sides of the United States and the characters have completely different trials and issues.

In The Soloist, Nathaniel Ayers is pushed towards life on the streets because of mental illness. In Sidewalk the vendors are pushed to this same situation by drug problems, lack of education, and time in prison. In both of the stories the characters grew up in violent areas, prone to crime and racial segregation. The vendors because of their minority status in a middle class town meant mostly for whites and Nathaniel because of the prominent majority of white students in Julliards. In Nathaniel’s case, this obvious difference between him and his schoolmates triggers schizophrenia, in the vendor’s case segregation triggers the “Fuck it mentality” that was discussed in previous chapters.

“More than half of the men who have lived on the street come from homes that conventional readers would call respectable” (page 122), similarly, Nathaniel’s mom owned a hair salon and his sister has a job and a house when Robert Downy Jr.’s character manages to contact her. Either way, they ended up on the sidewalk. Why? Nathaniel claims he likes to hear Los Angeles because there is nothing inside. Many of the vendors Duneier describes in Sidewalk chose to live on the street because they saw it coming anyway. Granted, Nathaniel lives in a completely different context due to his mental health (or lack thereof), but the similarities remain there. Furthermore, the two stories prove a point Duneier makes when he describes the situation of African American males in the sidewalk: “individual factors also have an influence” (page 122) on who ends up living on the streets.

The most striking similarity between The Soloist and Sidewalk is not the African Americans but the white men telling the story. For starters they both have designated names the black men assign to them: Mitch for Mitchel

l Duneier and Mr. Lopez for Steve Lopez (Robert Downy Jr.). Even though both white men treat the African Americans with respect and come to know them as people more than simple studies (or in Mr. Lopez’s case: columns), the relationship began with work in mind, not understanding. Will “Mitch” become as attached to the vendors of the Village as Mr. Lopez ended up with Mr. Ayers? (If you watch the movie you will understand why the switch from Nathaniel to Mr. Ayers has direct relationship to the moment of attachment, when understanding finally comes). Will Duneier help his characters as much as Mr. Lopez helped Mr. Ayers?

I guess that information shall come in Part 3.