Bob is as unashamed of his scamming habits as well as his addiction. He talks freely about both. “Listen, kid,” he tells me out of earshot of the others, “don’t trust anyone down here. No one. Never!” His eyes are intense now as we walk out of the tunnel. I expect he is setting me up for a touch, but in the months I knew him, Bob never asked me for money. Instead, he always acted protectively—he’d scold me for even coming into the tunnels alone—and then offer advice on how to behave during my journeys underground.
Like Bernard, Bob earns what little money he needs by “busting,” or returning discarded cans and bottles to redemption centers. For 600 empties, they can receive $30, or a nickel each. A major problem is finding groceries to redeem the trash, however. Despite the law requiring stores to take up to 250 empties from any one person, storekeepers often refuse in an effort to discourage the homeless from entering their premises. A few nonprofit redemption centers exist, notably “We Can” at 12th Avenue and 52nd Street, which was begun by Guy Polhemus when he overheard homeless at a soup kitchen complain about their difficulty. However, these centers tend to be inconvenient and very crowded, with long lines and long waits.
This has led to the rise of middlemen, also called two-for-oners although they should be one-for-twoers. They buy two empties for a nickel, half the price at regular redemption centers, but offer “no waiting, no sorting, no hassle,” as Bob says. Some middlemen have become full-blown entrepreneurs, like Chris Jeffers, a twenty-year-old who was sleeping in Riverside Park just two years earlier but now makes $70,000 a year. He rents an empty theater at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street and keeps it open around the clock for the homeless to bring their cans and bottles; it pays half the price, but it’s convenient. Jeffers, who says he took some college courses in finance in Tampa, Florida, resells the empties to “We Can” for the full redemption price, earning thousands of dollars a day.
Most of the collectors go through the trash at night when they are less visible to the public. Many are addicts of one kind or another, Jeffers says, and often want to redeem their cans after hours to feed their night needs. “I know some people will say I’m exploiting those with alcohol and drug problems,” Jeffers admitted to a New York Times reporter. “But tell me, how is what I’m doing any different from what commodity traders do when they buy crops at low prices from farmers in distress?”
Scavenging, panhandling, and scams provide some income for the homeless, but surviving underground is a full-time job. “Living here takes a lot of planning,” Bob says as he contemplates the fire outside his bunker. “You have to prepare yourself in the summer for the winter, get your stuff washed and collect food.” His bunker is one of the most elaborate. Last year, he says, he spent $200 to insulate his underground room, put in wall-to-wall carpeting, a queen-size mattress, a kerosene lamp, a table, and two chairs.
He takes his privacy seriously. “People like to inject chaos into their lives,” he says. “I don’t need that; that’s why I live here. In all the time I’ve been down here, I’ve never had company in my room. When I go into my room, don’t bother me,” he warns. “Don’t call me, and don’t come in,” he warns emphatically. “Bernard’s the only one allowed in my room.”
Bob has bad days when the weather is sour. He becomes irritable, edgy, and depressed because, he says, he can’t get out to gather cans or do volunteer work at soup kitchens. “I hate doing nothing; I always have to be doing something,” he explains, but ever since he left his wife and daughter—his wife always nagged him, he says, which is why he set off in his car one day for the grocery store and ended up in New York—he has never considered keeping a steady job.
“I like the way my life is now. I’m independent and do what I want. It’s not that I’m lazy or don’t want to work. I walk all the way around the city most days to collect cans. This is the life I want. I don’t take government handouts because I don’t pay taxes.” Sometimes Bob will be gone for weeks, but Bernard keeps his bunker safe from scavengers and Bob has always returned. He lives by what he calls the Homeless Credo: “Do what you have to do today. Tomorrow will come. And if it doesn’t, you won’t have to deal with it.”
Don
SOME OF THE HOMELESS IN BERNARD’S TUNNEL ARE LESS ATTACHED to the community, like Don, a large, clean-cut, smiling black man in his early thirties. He left his wife and children to go underground and straighten out his life, he says. He misses his family, but he promised his mother he would not return until he was free of drugs. He maintains ties with his mother, and even takes Bernard to Thanksgiving dinner at her house in Brooklyn. Although he has gone through detoxification centers several times, he is back on drugs.
He works regularly and hard. He wakes around 5:30 A.M. to get to a construction job at 7 A.M., and on weekends he usually has an odd job painting. He says he sends most of his money to his family. He is more frightened of underground life than most tunnel dwellers.
“The most dangerous animal on earth is man,” he says often. “I like to think about things when it doesn’t interfere with my safety, which isn’t often. Thinking too much is dangerous, because it gets in the way of the basic instinct of survival. You think too much, you find yourself caring too much about other people, or you feel sorry for yourself, and both are dangerous. When you live down here, you have always got to be on the edge. If you think too much, you are dead. No matter how well you think you know someone, you never do. And down here, you don’t want to.”
Reactions to danger can be unpredictable. Faced with a man with a knife, Don fell to his knees and begged not to be hurt, even though the knife-wielder was four inches shorter and much skinnier than Don. When confronted by a taller man who pulled a gun, Don just threw up his hands in exasperation and walked away. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he laughs now. “I just didn’t care. I was sick of that shit and decided to walk away and forget it and if I got shot, well, I would be walking and not just waiting for it.”
One morning at around 7:30, I arrive at Bernard’s camp to find him pacing angrily. Don is in the hospital with an overdose. Bernard found him the night before, sprawled across the tracks, unable to be roused. Trains are running through the tunnels again and Amtrak is looking for excuses to evict the homeless from the tunnels, Bernard says. He wasn’t going to let Don be that excuse, so he called the Amtrak police to take Don to a hospital.
“If you’re going to get bugged out, do it on top,” Bernard repeats to himself as he paces, convincing himself that he acted correctly. Bob stays strictly in his bunker when doing drugs underground. Don was irresponsible with drugs in general, Bernard says, working himself up. He often failed to bring wood for the fire despite repeated warnings. “He knows the rules: no drugging down here. They didn’t build this camp; they don’t deserve this. Fuck them. I built it. They think I own this tunnel. I do. I built it.”
Bernard pokes at the fire, quiet now. He will evict Don, with force if necessary. “He gets a week to get his shit out of here,” says Bernard. He leans back in his recliner and wonders if he can really force Don out because Don is also large and strong. “It’s been a long time since I had my ass kicked. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it,” he smiles broadly.