 |
| As a street kid known as "Chase" chugs a beer, Raina gets "tattooed" with a marker wielded by her husband, Drake. (Photo by Michael DeMocker) |
Posted on 09/02/2003 7:37:59 AM PDT by Incorrigible
|
For Gutterpunks, New Orleans Is Almost Shangri-LaBY NIKKI USHER
|
NEW ORLEANS -- Drake, 20, is clad in a fishnet long-sleeve shirt. A piece of metal pierces his chin. Homeless, he has only recently arrived in New Orleans with his pregnant wife, Raina, 18. She's tiny and delicate, with little more than a blue paisley handkerchief draped across her breasts and still-taut stomach.
A few of the vagrants hanging out in the French Quarter's Jackson Square on this summer evening have built an ink gun for tattooing, but lacking money to load it with ink, they settle for drawing on themselves with a black marker, tracing outlines for a needle to follow later on. Drake draws on Raina.
Within five days of their arrival from Tennessee, the couple have learned the two most important rules of gutterpunk life in the Big Easy: Hustling for spare change in front of cops will get you thrown in jail; and the longer you stay in New Orleans, the more difficult it gets to leave.
"New Orleans just sucks you in," Drake said. "There's the jazz and the blues and the architecture. And it's cheap and warm."
It's a view that has spread. A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed New Orleans a destination of choice for footloose youths from across the country.
Gutterpunks, wastrels, street kids, homeless youth -- by any name they're a vivid presence in and around Jackson Square. And, for all the city's devotion to tourism, these visitors are not exactly a delight to civic leaders and police.
But six months into a reinvigorated effort to crack down on homeless youth in the French Quarter, the vagabonds remain.
###
Ferret, 25, who has a moon with three stripes tattooed on his face -- a sign of high status in the tribe of American Gypsies, he contends -- understands the ins and outs of the New Orleans lifestyle he has chosen.
Just free from four months in jail for public intoxication, Ferret is the self-proclaimed king of the gutterpunks.
His royal raiment is standard issue: faded T-shirt, studded belt, combat boots. His hair is brown, setting him apart from a population in which green, purple and blue are the most common hair colors.
His street name refers to the quickness of his hands, an asset he once turned to his advantage in the business of petty theft. But after five or six years in New Orleans, Ferret said he no longer needs to steal, because he has become so adept at scrounging for food and shelter.
"If it weren't for the cops, being homeless in New Orleans would be Shangri-La," he said.
On a nearby bench, his friend Damien Leisti, 22, sets aside a book to offer corroboration. "New Orleans is the best city in America to be homeless," he said. "It doesn't get cold, there's free food and the only thing that sucks is the cops."
The crackdown on the homeless has been spearheaded by Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson. Most of the gutterpunks encountered in a recent visit to the Quarter associate her with what they see as harassment by police and a resulting decline in the vitality of Jackson Square, particularly now that the street performers and tarot card readers have been reined in.
"What Jackie doesn't realize is that the economy relies on tourists who come here for the readers and performers and like the way the square is, street kids and all," Leisti said.
Referring to Clarkson with an expletive, Ferret scolded her for her for removing the benches in front of St. Louis Cathedral, once a popular place to sleep, and replacing them with benches that include armrests that make it impossible for a punk to lie prone.
"She thought if she got rid of them we wouldn't have a place to hang out," Ferret said, adjusting the ratty brown bandanna around his neck. "But then she had to bring them back so the tourists could sit."
Having delivered himself of that insight, Ferret proceeded to cat-call a female tourist wearing short cutoffs, eliciting a terrified stare from his target.
"Ferret will just go up and kiss the tourists," said Lucifer, a 23-year-old from Wisconsin with a leashed coyote-husky mutt at her side.
Lucifer is not the only gutterpunk with a dog in tow. The rumor on the streets was that police were less likely to arrest those with pets because of the burden of finding a place to house the animals, said Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo.
But this ploy no longer works, Defillo said, because six months ago the police built two kennels to hold pets until they can be turned over to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Some gutterpunks believe the city feels compelled to respond to the May 15 Rolling Stone article because New Orleans does not want to be flooded with even more homeless youth.
"It got real bad, too, after the Rolling Stone thing. A bunch of us in the article got arrested," Leisti said.
###
The French Quarter has long been a landing spot for rebellious youth. To similar expressions of dismay from traditionalists, hippies and flower children showed up in the 1960s in tie-dye and sandals, with guitars in hand.
The gutterpunks say they share a similar pacifist, anti-materialist credo, notwithstanding their fearsome body piercings, studded or spiked collars and combat boots.
Trying to determine how many gutterpunks there are in New Orleans is difficult because of their itinerant lifestyle and tendency to live in abandoned buildings. Though their street presence remains eye-catching, Edward Bonin, who runs a multiservice agency for homeless youths called the Adolescent Drop-In Center, estimates the city's gutterpunk population is not as large as it was a decade ago. Agency records show that 850 people stopped by the Drop-in Center last year, but the records are likely incomplete, Bonin cautioned.
Clarkson said her efforts are necessary to clean up the Quarter. She said the situation of the homeless in Jackson Square was "absolutely devastating."
"People were just coming in droves, sleeping in the Quarter on the benches, sleeping on the streets, on doorsteps on houses. People on their way to work were accosted and begged, if not robbed," she said. "We started a huge crackdown."
Police deny that they are treating the Quarter and the gutterpunks any differently than in the past.
"We've always had lots of cops in the Quarter. No one is targeted because of who they are and how they dress," said Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Accardo.
But the gutterpunks remain convinced that the Police Department has been doing more sweeps of the area in the past few months.
"When I first came here a few years ago, the cops wouldn't bother you," said Leo Wright, 27, a former vagrant whose cramped French Quarter apartment is a temporary crash pad for what he said are "tons" of New Orleans gutterpunks.
"I don't know if it's Clarkson or the Rolling Stone article or what, but the cops will arrest you just for sitting around," he said.
Jonnie Henderson, 29, who goes by the street name "Frenchie," agreed. "I've seen tons of kids smacked around or picked up for holding a beer outside a bar or just laying around hassling tourists," Henderson said.
Joey Deroche, 22, said he saw a policeman arrest a "completely sober" street kid for being drunk in public, known in street lingo as "punk in drublic." "They pick you up for how you dress," he said. "The guy hadn't had a drink in two days."
###
The police are keeping gutterpunks on their toes. Bonin's Drop-In Center noticed a July upsurge in the number of kids visiting the facility as police intensified their search for "goth"-style vagrants suspected of killing an Atlanta convention industry subcontractor in a Warehouse District hotel hot tub.
"There are more kids here because it's a safe haven and they know they won't get arrested for loitering," Bonin said. "They can't just hang out on the streets anymore."
Bonin's assessment was echoed by Stacy Horncatch, director of Covenant House, a residential rehabilitation center for homeless youth.
"The cops have been more active in picking up the kids sitting on the street," she said. But for these occasional run-ins with the law, street life can quickly degenerate into an unbroken cycle of late nights in Jackson Square and days spent nursing hangovers.
Local social workers make an effort to pull punks out of their downward spiral. The Drop-In Center, sponsored by Tulane University and a coalition of state, city and nonprofit advocacy groups, offers free Internet access, a couch and a television, ample snacks and the opportunity for group counseling. There are lockers for the residents to store their belongings while they're on the street. Residents can take showers and do laundry for free. Downstairs is a free health clinic.
Though the kids may talk as if their lives are a continuous party, Bonin and Horncatch see a reality that often is bleak.
"You don't leave a happy, healthy home to become a drifter," Horncatch said. "A lot these kids come from homes with sexual trauma or violence and have experienced verbal or physical abuse."
And many of the homeless youth may have mental health problems, Horncatch said, ranging from depression to bipolar disorders to schizophrenia -- often coupled with drug abuse.
There are also street kids of a temporary variety, referred to as "oogles." They are part-time gutterpunks who left comfortable homes to sample street life for a weekend or a summer vacation.
"Go home while you still got one," yelled Frenchie as some youths passed by. "You can tell the ones that are oogles because they have on shiny shoes and new shirts and stuff," he said.
###
What the Drop-In Center doesn't provide is food. For that, gutterpunks have other sources.
On the edge of the Warehouse District there's a spot where anyone who needs a free meal can get one at 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, provided there's enough to go around. Each day, a different group of people, some organized and some just collections of friends, arrive to feed the homeless and disadvantaged.
But if street kids are hungry at other times, they must rely on survival skills. This is where New Orleans' tourists comes in handy. Vacationers from Middle America are more likely to give spare change to kids begging on street corners, Bonin said. And they leave half-filled cups of beer on Bourbon Street and uneaten beignets on open-air tables at Cafe du Monde, which street kids try to gobble up before waiters take the plates away.
Most nights are spent smoking cigarettes bummed from tourists or older drunks lounging in the square. They hunt for whatever drugs they can get their hands on to pass the time. Conversation consists of stories from the road, tales from jail and about the police, and schemes to find beer for that night. For late-night munchies, some street kids shoplift from a nearby supermarket, stuffing bags of chips into their cargo pants.
The endless supply of alcohol and festivities in New Orleans makes it difficult to escape the streets. Ferret, more sober than usual, reflected on his status. "I'm going to get out of here soon," he said. "Going to get a job. Going to leave New Orleans."
"No you aren't," chimed in a self-described gutterpunk called Skids. "Halloween's coming up. And then there's New Year's, Mardi Gras and Jazzfest. You're never leaving."
Sept. 1, 2003
(Nikki Usher is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. She can be contacted at nusher@timespicayune.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
I'm sorry Big Easy FReepers, but if I never go to New Orleans again, it'll be too soon.
However, for computer conferences, the convention center and hotels are cheap, especially in the summer. Thus, I'm sure I'll be going back for like my 12th time.
Here's a related thread about gutterpunks in California:
So9
As a Tennessean, I can only say, "Thanks for leaving. Please don't come back."
In general, these are people who don't have the skills, education, or intelligence to compete and thrive in a capitalist society, so of course they're going to denigrate capitalism and promote a system in which they can fare better despite their shortcomings. It has little to do with being pacifist or anti-materialist.
Ah, liberals. The great enablers (with your tax money , of course). Hey, let's give the hoodlums a pitstop area and somewhere to store the stuff they steal while they are out robbing and begging!
As for the tourists "liking the square as it is, street kids and all", right...nothing quite adds to the ambiance of New Orleans like some green haired kid taking a dump in public.
Sounds like a good reason not to visit.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.