Pages

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A Gauntlet Of Miseries

Guest submission.

Gorgeous weather on Sunday! Crowds are returning to the streets, so lots of our fellow photographers were out there. The great weather also turned out the street performers and the transit prowlers. Where the people go, the showmen, the hucksters and the troubled follow.

On a stretch of the Red Line, just north of where the underground moves above ground, a young woman or girl, maybe in her late teens, all of 5-feet tall and no more than 80 pounds soaking wet, began her pitch by explaining that she'd found a shelter near a Blue Line stop that charges $18.00 a night: "I have five-dollars-and-eighty-seven cents, so far. Can anyone help me with the rest?" She wanted us to know that she counts pennies.