Sidewalk

Carmen Lam
Sidewalk

The book “Sidewalk” by Mitchell Duneier a white Jewish man that earned his Ph.D and also a sociology professor goes into the streets of New York City and try to interact with the African American street vendors personally, instead of just relying on interviews. Entering the streets of Sixth avenue, Greenwich avenue, west eighth street, and waverly place where you can find some of the street vendors. Most of the interactions between the pedestrians and the street vendor’s show signs of social solidarity, because not many pedestrians would try to engage a conversation or get to know the street vendors compared to interacting with an employee in a franchise store.
The main theme of this book is discussing about the topics on race and social status. There are many common stereotypes that I have heard about people living on the sidewalks. Most people will automatically form stereotypes like a person living on the streets is a rapist, drug users, mentally crazy, etc. This book reveals why street vendors are on the streets and what brought them onto the streets.
Most of the street vendors were from jail, drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless, etc. By starting their business as a street vendor they are earning a decent living and importantly staying away from drugs and jail time. It is interesting to see that street vendors are willing to help each other out, because the purpose of being on the streets is trying to make a living and staying out of trouble. Most of the street vendors live on the sidewalks, subways, or any nearby blocks. According to Duneier, the blocks are a place and which various survival elements can be networked together making a particularly good subsistence habitat for the street entrepreneur (162).
There are two basic reasons that street vendor choose to sleep on the sidewalks. First, anyone will sleep on the streets as a function of the complementarity of the habitat elements such as food, shelter, and an opportunity to make a living by coming together in one place. Second, anyone person may sleep on the streets because his friends are there watching tables, makes the habitat a place where he feels safe and comfortable. Street vendors uses the sidewalks as a shelter, making a living , etc. Pedestrian should not automatically assume that people living on the streets are drug dealers or drug users.
The connections that I can draw from this book to the topics we have discussed in class is about Jane Jacobs on how to be a “public character” and the idea that more people on the streets makes the street more safer, because more eyes are on the streets.“ Jacobs argument, that public characters who in her analysis are respectable figures generate a sense of predictability by acting as eyes and this generate social order by creating a set of cultural meanings and expectations that “someone cares” (158)”.
This book was very interesting in my opinion, because instead stating the obvious that the street vendors are on the streets to make a living. But to think and look at street vendors having the ability to start a drug free life and trying to survive by purchasing old products to resell instead of taking the illegal path as either taking drugs or selling drugs. From reading this book I learned that most street vendor experienced a difficult lifetime and importantly to see that they did not lose their dignity and still try to either pursue their dreams or just live day by day happily.