Sidewalk

Duneier and photographer Ovie Carter head six blocks away from Sixth Avenue to Jane Street, which is situated in Jane Jacobs’s old West Village neighborhood. They meet with Billy and Patti Romp—a white couple—and their three young children: Ellie, Henry, and Timmy. The Romps have been traveling from Vermont to New York during the holiday season for the past ten years to sell Christmas trees. The Romps have set up their wares along two city blocks in accordance with Local Law 17 of 1984, which allows individuals to sell trees during the month of December, so long as they have permission from the necessary authorities in charge of the premises—in this case, the West Village Committee. Duneier observes that the family’s customers feel comfortable in their presence. He notes that Billy’s jovial demeanor helps put shoppers at ease, such as his using the German word for Christmas tree (Tannenbaum) when speaking with a German customer. The children also assist with the business; Billy’s son, Henry, regularly sweeps up debris from the trees and even sells small branches to two elderly women who specifically request Henry’s services.

The Romps live in a camper van that has no restroom. When Duneier asks about any challenges posed by their living situation, Billy remarks on the kindness of his West Village neighbors, mentioning several who have offered the Romps the keys to their apartments so they could use private restrooms and avoid urinating on the streets: “You know, I’m a stranger here! And I had the typical cliché attitude toward New York…it turned out that it’s a nicer Village than the one I live in in Vermont” (296). Local restaurants like Tavern on Jane also let the Romps use their restaurant without fuss: “Oh yeah. They love us. They welcome us with open arms” (300).

Duneier notes that on the sidewalk, “certain similarities among people seem to be most crucial for bringing about helping behavior, for they lead strangers to a sense that the others involved in the interaction are decent, unthreatening people” (303).The most obvious difference between the Romps and the vendors on Sixth is race. There are also class differences, but Duneier diminishes the credibility of different treatment based on class through the example of Hakim, a well-educated black man who has not ever received an offer of apartment keys despite maintaining cordial relationships with white passerby. Duneier states that the way people react to black individuals on the street is important: “There is good social-science evidence that on the streets whites are more afraid of blacks than blacks are afraid of whites” (304). Duneier therefore speculates that a hypothetical black Romp family might fare very differently than the actual Romps, facing hurdles that the white Romps do not, such as asking where they purchased their Christmas trees and questioning their allowing their children to live in such conditions.

The chapter wraps up with the example of the Filipina vendor, Alice, and her black grandchildren as a close approximation to a hypothetical black Romp family. Alice has a daughter named Jeannie with a black man. Jeannie has two children: Marcisa and Monisia. Due to her daughter’s inability to afford childcare, Alice cares for her grandchildren while she sells books on the street. People make racialized assumptions, such as referring to her as the “Chinese lady,” or supposing that Alice is the children’s stepmother or babysitter (307). She spends a fair amount of money on gas fare to pick up her older granddaughter from school and provide both with fresh food that will not spoil during the day. Sometimes local benefactors—including a white man named Rick, who donates bags of change, or the Chinese owners of Go Sushi, who donate food—will help out. Other vendors change diapers or give the children dollar bills. But Alice is offered little in the way of community support; no resident has ever offered use of their apartments like how the West Village neighbors did for the Romps. In fact, she often faces public judgment, as indicated by an encounter with a woman—with her own small boy—who said Alice’s grandchildren should not be in the street. Afterwards, Alice told Duneier that “[t]hey think these kids from the street…or that we are addict parents. That is their opinion, because they don’t know my children” (310).