STREET LIES

"STREET LIES"

The black man Carl sits in a populated doorway along the route to Wrigley Field, plying the young white drinking-age college kids and yuppie fanatics with a dollar bill, clenched between his eternally decaying teeth. It's easy to imagine the dollar bill laced with a disease like anthrax and him defying death like a circus sword-swallower. On other occasions he props his beaten carcass up against the corner intersection of an alley and the main street, with its overhead train tracks sheltering his parched skin from the smoky sun. Even in the shadows he remains highly visible, continuing to entice strollers off of the beaten path into unlikely and forbidden encounters with dereliction. During the baseball off-season his favorite station is across from the local health food store, sprawled out at the foot of passengers all to wearily (warily?) boarding buses bound for home. But Carl has no home. He is, in fact, one of the continuously homeless. He has made himself into one who has truly forsaken his need for a home, to exist as a signal and a warning to the rest of us.

But don't get him confused with the new political definition that encompasses those who so blatantly post themselves at the entrances and exits of every bank and supermarket throughout Chicago, and undoubtedly every major city on the continent; those ubiquitous and meddlesome peddlers of Streetwise, the newspaper and so-called humanitarian advocate and voice of the Homeless. Actors, all! How gullible can we get? Just follow one of these “homeless” through their daily routine and two things become rather obvious: most have rooms and places to stay, bedding down in government subsidized tenements and often better… and most of them are high on everything from the derelict's wine to your children's marijuana and ecstasy, and quite often they don't even bother to hide it. They were living this life style before Streetwise came along, and it's all made it even easier to do so.

Now I know there are exceptions to the rule - including my own. I have spent days and evenings with local locos that bedded down in pup tents through the winter on the Chicago River, selling Streetwise at random when they needed a drink or new sleeping bag. They were certainly the exception to the rule. And I know another Street wise soul who has bedded down every night with a different female college co-ed or the bartender of one of the bars he (unofficially) is the doorman for. According to the statistics, he indeed is among the homeless. But on any given night, he's living in a better home than the majority of Americans. But I'm talking about another phenomenon here. Oh yeah… I think there is a true - and therefore used as a token - case of homelessness that pops of every once in a while and duly exploited by the newspaper to procure more funds from which the owners might pay their own rent.

Shame on our aldermen-women and mayor for giving legitimacy to these bogus bums and beggars in lieu of providing a real solution at dealing with the problem. Rather than provide adequate representation, housing and rehabilitation, the city has cleverly left them there to die in their obvious addictions, cheering them on with a certificate and a permit to beg, borrow and steal their alcohol in public. Think about it… this is a sub-division of the same autocracy that's sending billions of dollars worth of food and medicine to Afghanistan in the name of humanitarian aid (while they bomb their modest hovels into disrupted dust) but won't give 25-cents to feed the dispossessed refugees in its own midst.

Streetwise newspaper happens to be an advancing conglomerate that is not only getting rich on the backs of the homeless, it's milking its own constituency for all its worth. These often impoverished derelicts which the paper so willingly champions, are asked to pay 25-cents per paper, up front, in order to sell it. It's no doubt a method to “build their self esteem,” but I've seen vendors stop at my door at the crack of dawn, asking me for $2 to knock off the alcoholic shakes on their way downtown to purchase the papers - oh yeah, and another $3 to purchase a dozen papers. If that weren't enough - and incidentally it is enough to publish the tabloid - the devisers of the newspaper further pad their own pockets by selling many advertisements and accepting huge donations from other corporations that essentially go into their own pockets. Add to that the tens of thousands of five and ten dollar bills donations from caring individuals who think their money is going to the solve the problem of homelessness and the money begins to pile up. What a sham to and for everyone concerned. The city has unwittingly devised a method of overlooking the problem, while at the same time putting forth the illusion of correcting it. In the meantime, Streetwise Inc. develops a healthy portfolio for itself. And alas, the poor derelicts on the corner can keep on drinking and slipping ever deeper into an oblivion that they don't even foresee anymore.

I look back on the many lonely years that I was homeless, flitting from one abandoned building to another, from damp musty basements to vacant lots and automobiles… whenever I was ever so bold to stand on a street corner and ask for help I was immediately arrested for public intoxication. Now the City awards the display of public drunkenness with a badge of honor. A badge that says “Hello, I am Streetwise.” And we are assholes. Oh, don't get the picture wrong - they're still arresting the down and out in 2001; you just don't see it underneath the exterior camouflage the city has constructed. Remember, this is the day of Political Correctness: where we as a mass care more about protecting an eagle's egg than we do a human embryo; where a dolphin is given more love than our abandoned children; a day when the homeless are put on pedestals as picturesque as the Stolie vodka ads. But the hidden danger of this new credibility given to the homeless is that it overlooks the obvious fact that it is the same old class defined population control and genocide that's been going on all along. And guess who's exposed to the elements, and the alcohol. Who's dying this death? The mayor? The owner of the newspaper? The Streetwise vendor?

But we're not talking about Carl here. No… none of this rant has anything to do with him. Carl has only taken one drink in the entire 15 years I've known him. He doesn't smoke, or use other drugs. He was formerly in the National Guard. He has a mother in California who he loves and has visited, incredibly without bathing or missing a night out in the open air. Rather, Carl has dedicated his life as a true advocate for the homeless, existing in a highly visible state and without fault, demonstrating the possibility of a life without dependence on or exploitation of others.

Carl? Oh… you might know him as Charles… he's fond of giving that name out to the many passerby's as a kind of litmus test. I see the obvious humor behind Carl's wisdom when I listen to the fools who see my photos of Carl and immediately boast, “Oh… I know Charles.” With that in mind, I knew the man for at least three years before I ever approached him with my camera. Not that it would've shied him off - he's often the most photographable of subjects too be sure. Every tourist in town stops to point the Kodak at Carl's pilgrimage, like they were gazing down into the Grand Canyon. But I wanted to establish a relationship from which our pictures could grow. Come to think of it, Carl - or Charles - may have the last laugh on all of us, myself included. It's been so long ago since we met (15 years) I've really forgotten which of the two names is his given one. It's been so long, by now it is a mute point.

Looking like a cross between an enlightened Rasta guru and the boogie man beneath our bed, Carl commands the space around him. He doesn't intimidate, he doesn't whine, he doesn't ask for anyone's help. People just see him there and offer it, tossing dollar bills into an open cap that sits at his feet on the sidewalk. Often he is seated on huge mounds of newspapers and debris stuffed into assorted plastic bags that he most certainly carries around for the comforts the huge plush pillows offer his tired and traveled carcass as he reclines on one arm against the wind and the weather. Once I saw him walking without the baggage, and he told me that the piles and piles of newspapers he collected, which he referred to as his “writings,” were tossed out into the street by a bus driver that kept his fare and forced him from the bus because of the combined distrust of the other passengers.

Once while I kneeled at the make-shift shrine at his feet, photographing him, the two of us an odd mixture of hopeless humanity on a cluttered sidewalk, a woman of the yuppie persuasion accosted me with her superior voice: “It's people like you who exploit these poor people!” Now of course, she didn't offer him a peso, or a spoken word… her posturing was directed at me, her gaze carefully avoiding his, as her friends from the fancy health food store listened from their safe perch across the street: “I hope you are paying him to make his photograph!”

Upon hearing this, Carl casually reached into one of the multitude of plastic bags at his feet and pulled out a fresh new $5 bill and handed it to me… “For your daughter, Trinity” he spoke, prompting me to reply to the woman, “No… but I certainly accept donations from him towards my work!” The woman was truly horrified, and ran from us in disbelief. Carl was aware of the struggle I had, home-schooling my daughter and living against the system as I did. I was in greater need of finances than he, and he was well aware of my needs.

When the pompous condo-dweller finally rejoined her friends across the street where they waited in front of Sherwyn's Health Food Store she was careful to be seen dropping a dollar in the hands of the Streetwise vendor that blocked the entrance to the store. Amazingly she missed or ignored completely the double grin on the faces of Carl and myself, as we returned to our mutual worship of the ultimate wisdom and brotherhood that offers itself up at all intersections, even the cluttered street corner of Broadway, Clark and Diversey: the brotherhood that the ancient God established when he declared himself to be The God - not just of one supposedly superior lineage or race of people - but ultimately the God of Ishmael and Abraham, two brothers whose only true accomplishment will be the day they finally sit down whenever and wherever they find themselves, to sup and to worship with one another.

BURKHART STUDIOS

2845 N. HALSTED STREET CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60657 773 348-8536