Reddit reviews Sidewalk

Not everyone who lacks a house wants one. That was an interesting take away from when I read this really good book in college.

Doesn't have much to do with graffiti/street art, but your comment on the broken window theory reminded me of this. That theory was not a very grounded one in either economics or any of the social sciences, and is considered by more than a few anthropologists as more damaging then helpful.

You might find this book interesting; it's about homeless people making a living by selling books or magazines on the street.

It's simply not true that career beggars all make that much money. Some of the academic work on this argues that the guys that do that are few and far between. That may be true from time to time, but more often than not, it's a guy with a drug/booze problem who gets just enough to eat/get high every day.


Then again, I have also been in the I'll-buy-you-a-sandwich situation and have been turned down.

Some chose to be on the street, some don't. Don't generalize one way or another.

Read this one in grad school, might have some relevant topics.
https://www.amazon.com/Sidewalk-Mitchell-Duneier/dp/0374527253

Not sure how modern you're looking for, but "How the Other Half Lives" is a well known book about the slums of the late 1800s.

I'm sorry, I must disagree. He continually glossed over their depravity, making them seem like they were great people, almost to the point of veneration, up until they beat him up at the end. He went in with a notion of what he wanted to find, found it, and wrote about it. Not only that, but he was drunk/high almost the entire time he was writing it, so I highly doubt the validity of anything he says. I've read a lot of great literature and bad literature in my day, and that falls under bad lit.

If you want a good, properly done, unbiased, and well written ethnographic work that draws you into the lives of people in a shitty place in life, read Brothel or Sidewalk. If you want to read a piece of yellow gonzo journalism, pick up Hell's Angels.

My major critique is not so much that that he was biased (which he was), but that he wrote in a very fragmented style that wasn't lucid. You can write in such a style and be a great author (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut), however, he constantly sturggled to draw his fragments together. He hopped about sequentially without rhyme or reason, leaving stories half told and interjecting quotes between fragments that had nothing to do with the story. While some of his works might be great, I do not by any means consider Hell's Angels to be a great piece or journalism, literature, fiction, fantasy, or writing.