The Forgotten Class Of The Fading City
So, your shift at your minimum wage nine to five has just ended and you’re thinking that instead of spending hours on the train or blowing your little bit of money on a taxi, you’ll just walk home. Great! An opportunity, at last, to truly know the city in which you’ve begun to make your life. Let us see who welcomes you.
To get home, you’ll have to cross the river that divides the successful from the dregs. You’ll have to look at their hobo bags and dirt-streaked clothing and acknowledge to yourself that should the machine break down and you missed out on even one paycheck, you’d be right there next to them. But why think of that?
Look them over. It matters nothing, they will not find it rude. They are used to the staring eyes of others and recognize that while every glance brings judgment and scrutiny, it also brings the chance for a quarter, or a wadded up dollar bill. The dollar bill could be straightened out, could buy a coffee. It is worth it.
They are a varied lot, but there is some sense of continuity among them. One can tell they come from the same tribe. One of them wears blue shorts that bear the logo of the 1984 Olympic Games, and a disproportionately large number of them are old men in girls sweatshirts. Black dust from burnt garbage stains them all.
Here’s another interesting sight: the old man who sits slumped against the wall. Try to see beyond the wall. Just a few feet behind his sweaty back, people are still hanging on, are still getting it done, are still doing business, are still selling their antique engagement rings and cell phones. The game is still going on for them.
In spite of it all, she smiles as she steps to the edge of the sidewalk and throws up her hand in the bell sleeve and hails a taxi to take her off to the ‘better’ parts of the sprawl, away from the awkward reminders of how close she herself is to the edge, the gulf, the chasm which yawns open under the great city.
And this is how it is the world over, from one city to the next. The division between those who are getting along and those who have lost their foothold is a fine one, but it is a step from which most will never recover once they fall down it. Will you live under the shackles of wage slavery a day longer? It is time to consider alternatives.
The snoring lady
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