The Edge Becomes the Center

by DW Gibson

  We’ve got great relationships with this community. We’ve got a great relationship with the community board. Amazing relationships with the fifth precinct. If we have an issue here and have to call 911, they’re sensitive to the situation. They’re sensitive to who we’re serving here, but also they want to help the person.

  My first winter here we had probably 165 men sleeping in our chapel and it’s a small space for 165 men. The fire department came in and I was the only staff member on duty and they looked in the chapel and the captain turns around, he closes his eyes, and he says just make sure there’s a clear egress. He could have easily said you know this isn’t good, we’ve got to count the people and then three people have to leave. But they understand.

  We’ve got great relationships with the city agencies. We work with the mayor’s office on a regular basis, various projects. Our first big project was through the mayor’s office, they painted our roof white. It keeps the building cooler and helps us save on electrical costs—heating and cooling bills. All these relationships are what help us do what we do on a daily basis.

  Over the last couple of years the neighborhood’s been changing a lot. You know, initially, we weren’t quite sure how that was going to look. What’s it going to look like when we have a museum next door? What’s it going to look like when there’s a Whole Foods on the block? When they start building condos and we have a whole influx of community that don’t know the Mission, that don’t know the history. But what we realized quickly is that it’s an opportunity to share what we do here and an opportunity to share that we can’t do it alone.

  We’ve been able to place a number of our men at Whole Foods. There’s a local company that’s just recently started called Heart of Tea and they’ve employed two of our men full time and one of our men part time. I mean our guys are not always the easiest to employ because they’ve got job activity for a couple years and then there’s a five-year gap and then you’ve got job activity for six months, and then another gap. So it’s hard to explain that sometimes. But if the employer knows who we are, they know the staff, they know our programs, they’ve served our men, they’re more willing to take that chance because they understand.

  The museum next door, they’ve been supporters as well. They’ve allowed us to use some of their space for one of our events before. They’re currently working with some of our guys. There’s an artist who has a project next door and they’ve invited our guys in to work with them, learn about art, learn about photography, film, and then they’re also receiving a stipend.

  In the last five years I’ve seen a drastic change in the rise of homelessness in New York City. I think the latest statistics, and these are statistics put out by the mayor’s office, were over fifty-three thousand people in New York City are homeless. Of that fifty-three thousand around twenty to twenty-two thousand of those are children. And this number is a low number because they’re counting people that are easy to count: people in beds when they do a roll call. But they’re missing people who are in the subways; they’re missing people who are in the tunnels. I know men who come here every day, who live in the tunnels. They’re missing the people who are doubled up, tripled up, quadrupled up, fifteen people in a small apartment. They’re missing a lot of people who are couch surfing and almost invisible. New York City is so energetic and there’s so much going on it’s sometimes easy to forget about that guy who’s on the sidewalk. Or forget about the guy that’s in the park.

  For us the need has been growing. Since Hurricane Sandy we’ve seen a drastic rise in the number of people coming for food and shelter. And that’s put a little bit of a challenge on the Mission because this building wasn’t built to do what we do. So we’re sort of busting at the seams. It works but it puts a challenge on our staff and it puts a challenge on the building itself.

  Matt suggests I take a tour and gets up from the table. Just as he does there is a man behind him. He is wearing a blue jacket with shiny gold buttons, and he whispers something into Matt’s ear. Matt asks me for a minute and the two of them step away for five. Lunchtime is approaching and the dining hall is abuzz. A dozen or so volunteers from Kentucky bring out stacks of plates—almost all of them are in New York for the first time and they have come to serve.

  Matt returns and apologizes because he needs to attend to timely matters. He has brought along a coworker, Julian Padarath, to give me a tour of the building. Julian has a portly frame and smiles immediately. We shake hands. Matt apologizes again and disappears around a corner with a cluster of people trailing him—one of them is the man in the blue jacket, out of place with those shiny buttons.

  Julian leads me down to the basement and we enter a room filled with boxes and shelves and racks of clothes. It is Tuesday, which means that after lunch, approximately 150 men will take a shower and then come down to this room—“Blessingdales” to those who know it best—and pick out the clothes they need. If they have an interview they get a suit. In his three years at the Bowery, Julian has noticed a change in the clothing donations that come in:

  Now with all the artists and the gentrification and the museum, it’s like a trendy hip place to live. With the neighborhood getting better, the donations get better. We’re getting Armani suits and Versace—it’s crazy.

  Julian is in charge of requesting, receiving, and storing all in-kind donations—two thousand pounds of bread a day and beyond. Originally he worked in finance. In 2007, his company relocated to California, and Julian was asked to make the move but opted to stay in New York with his girlfriend. He was happy and in love and worked in finance, so jobs were not hard to come by. Then the financial system crashed and Julian couldn’t find a job; his savings ran out, his engagement ended, and, eventually, he needed a place to live. Friends suggested the Bowery.

  I worked fourteen years in corporate finance and I get more gratification since I’ve started working here. I work twelve, fifteen-hour days and I don’t care. I love it here.

  Originally from the Fiji Islands, Julian grew up on the Upper East Side, the son of a diplomat.

  I had a privileged childhood, I’d never even come down here. This was skid row.

  He shows me the chapel, the barber chair, the classrooms where men study for a GED. He shows me the conference room lined with pictures from the Bowery Mission’s 135-year history, including an image of President William H. Taft speaking to over 600 men and another of Willie Randolph serving a meal to likely as many—in fact, pictures of celebrities and politicians and big-time donors wrap all the way around the room. In the corner is the piano of Fanny Crosby, composer of over eight thousand hymns, who played at the Mission when it first moved into the building in 1910.

  We step into the food pantry where inventory is stacked on shelves extending to the ceiling. Julian’s favorite donation is lobsters and he estimates the Mission gets five hundred to one thousand pounds of live lobsters every month, mostly seized by the Department of Environmental Conservation for being served too small, or taken from illegal poachers.

  Julian makes sure I notice there are few sweets in the pantry.

  Matt’s real big on nutrition. We used to have Magnolia Bakery donate tons of three-dollar cupcakes, we’d get bags every day. Matt told me to cut it off. And I was like, “What do you mean?”

  He laughs.

  He’s all about nutrition. Because guys get too comfortable. When you think of a soup kitchen you think of slop. But we’re able to provide a well-balanced meal with meat and fresh vegetables.

  Julian’s eyes widen when he tells me about Thanksgiving, “our Super Bowl,” when tents are erected and the whole block is closed to traffic.

  On a regular day we serve nine hundred to one thousand meals, on Thanksgiving we’ll serve nine thousand, so we’ll cook for about four to five days before. We’ll go through about eight hundred turkeys, about four thousand pounds of potatoes and yams. In here it’s filled—you can’t even walk. It’s awesome.

  Julian takes me by the nurse’s o
ffice, the social worker’s office, the administrative offices. He shows me the quarters for the men who live at the Mission. Eighty beds spread out over three floors.

  They are bunk beds, well designed so that the top bunk exits to the right, while the bottom bed exits to the left and each man has one sliver of privacy.

  The guys who live in the program, they all have different job functions. Some work in the kitchen, in clothing, in the laundry room, cleaning, mopping—everyone has a job function because we do put a roof over their head, we clothe them, and give them a meal. They live in New York City for free. All we ask is that they do a little work.

  We help anyone. We try to keep it structured and have rules in place but if someone comes in and they’re really in need we’ll help them. If they need a shower, are stinking things up really bad, we’ll take them down for a shower. So even if there’s rules, we’ll bend them a little bit.

  We ascend the last staircase, narrow and steep, to the roof.

  We’ve got Landmark status, did Matt say that? Historic structure. So we’re not going anywhere. In the neighborhood for good.

  We emerge outside and are surrounded by rows of barren garden beds, still awaiting warmer temperatures.

  Sitting here and watching everything grow is amazing. We’ve got all kinds of stuff, strawberries, vegetables, and kale. It’s funny because there are so many different cultures in the building—a lot of West Indian and Caribbean, and they love their hot peppers so we take requests and have all different kinds of peppers for them.

  We walk toward the front of the building and look out at the street below. Julian points halfway down the block at a recently developed condo building whose large box windows dominate the facade.

  That building, 250 Bowery, that’s ridiculous. There’s a three-bedroom penthouse on the top going for like $6–$7 million. It’s funny because, when their website went up it crashed because people were trying to get in. And someone blogged, “Gimme a break with the six million dollars. The Bowery Mission is a block away.”

  He laughs.

  I mean if you’re going to raise a family you don’t want homeless men sleeping on the front of your building. But people are buying them outright. That’s crazy.

  Julian turns in the opposite direction, toward the Salvation Army building, which flanks the south side of the Mission.

  The Salvation Army was for the Chinese elderly because Chinatown is next door. There’s ten floors but eight of the floors have been vacant for years. We tried to buy the building. Three years ago when they were first trying to sell it, we offered them $14 million—market value at the time. They wanted $24 million, ten over. And they just ended up getting $30 million for it. That’s crazy, right?

  I consider the extraordinary range of activity crammed into the building below us, and how much more might be accomplished if the Bowery Mission had acquired the Salvation Army property immediately next door. I wonder how much the Bowery Mission’s building is worth, and how many hovering investors are poised to venture a guess. Julian escorts me down to the building’s entrance. Before we part ways he invites me back to volunteer next Thanksgiving.

  I see Matt just as I’m leaving and I stop him to ask about the sale of the Salvation Army next door. Instead he tells me about the new facilities they are opening in Harlem, since that’s where they were able to successfully buy a building. But I press him on the building next door, which they wanted to buy for $14 million and use to expand services in their neighborhood.

  The building next door to us was recently purchased and it’s going to become part of the Ace Hotel group. So that will be a little bit of a change for us because of our new neighbors. Right now we work with Salvation Army: if they have resources, they share; and we share if we have. Their staff will come over and do a chapel service and our staff will do the same. We’ve been working together over the years because we’ve been shoulder to shoulder and have similar values and goals of serving the less fortunate. So we’re going to miss them.

  People ask us, “Are you moving? Are people going to want you to move?” But we’ve been in contact with the hotel developers and they well realize what we do and they’ve actually said as they’re developing, as they’re under the construction process, “Let us know whether there’s anything that we can do, or if we’re becoming a nuisance for you,” so they’ve opened up that door.

  We’re hoping that the people who are running the hotel are open to working with us. We work with a number of hotels here in the city. Sometimes it’s picking up lost and found, sometimes it’s working with their kitchen and we can take food they’re not able to use. There are a number of ways that we’ve worked with hotels in the past and I don’t see there being any difference with our new neighbors.

  Things evolve, right? I remember when I was younger we had a forest behind our house. Huge trees that were amazingly tall and over the years I realized that the tall trees were all gone because they had all fallen, but there were smaller trees where the taller trees had fallen and the forest was thicker. When I was a kid I could run straight through it and look up at the canopy. It was amazing. Years later the canopy was gone, there were still trees, but you’d have to wiggle your way through it. That was the evolution of the forest behind our house. And that’s happening here in the city as well. Neighborhoods evolve and I think if you’re willing to be a part of that process you’re really able to enjoy that process and enjoy your city.

  Again the man with the shiny gold buttons appears and this time Matt introduces us, passing along my name but not his. The man smiles at me, smiles big, and looks away, presumably distracted by something in the distance, which he follows out of the room. Matt tells me that the mysterious man is one of the developers for the hotel next door.

  First-name basis, loves the Mission. You can see their heart for what we do here. You know, yes, he’s thinking about making money but he’s also thinking about the neighborhood.

  I tell Matt I’d love to talk to the man with the gold buttons about the hotel and how he sees it fitting into the neighborhood. Matt suddenly looks mildly worried and asks me to stay in place while he chases after the man. When he returns his boyish grin has yielded to a grimace and he tells me that the man with the gold buttons wishes to remain anonymous. Something about that phrasing—“wishes to remain anonymous”—told me these were the man’s exact words, and not Matt’s own, and instantly I admire the framework of seeking anonymity: it makes it feel as though a gift has been humbly bestowed.

  Later when I call to ask the Salvation Army about the sale of 225 Bowery, they respond to me as they do to all inquisitors: no comment. When I ask about the previous market rate offer that the Bowery Mission made, they do not respond to my question, or illuminate what factors, other than cash on offer, were considered when choosing a buyer for the building, which has now begun the transition from a shelter to a hotel that is plugged into a chain with locations in Portland, Palm Springs, Seattle, Los Angeles, and London.

  19.

  Just around the corner from the Bowery, Barbara Shaum shuffles over to the stool in the middle of her shop. The whole place is swamped with leather. Everything else in this narrow space—shelves, chairs, cabinets, workbenches—peeks out from behind leather in one form or another: sandals, bags, belts, big sheets of it rolled up and stashed in overhead wooden bins, scraps of it gathered in drawers and corners and jars. Guarding her recently shattered femur, Barbara settles onto the stool. At eighty-four, she is short and slender and fits perfectly in this sliver of East Fourth Street. The empty-handed mailman is at the door.

  Barbara: Hey, Jimmy!

  Jimmy: Barbara!

  Barbara: You don’t have any mail for me?

  Jimmy: Nothing. No bill. I only give you check, no bill.

  They smile at each other.

  Barbara: I know, darling, I’m waiting for a check.

  Jimmy: Don’t worry, I pay attention for the check. I don’t give you bill; I throw it away.

&n
bsp; Barbara: Okay.

  She smiles and watches him go. She watches until he’s out of sight so it’s silent for a while. Then:

  His name is—well, Jimmy is his American name, right? And I said, “Stop—that’s not your Chinese name.”

  He said, “I can’t tell you my Chinese name.”

  I said, “Oh come on, Jimmy.”

  He said, “Nah, in English, dirty word.”

  “You can tell me.”

  He said, “Fuk Yoo.”

  Barbara laughs, which leads to a throat-clearing cough. Her frailty cannot be overstated. She is a collection of bones beneath a magnetic smile and lucid, engaging eyes. With her sharp nose, pale coloring, and short auburn hair, she sits like a wise bird. She sips a large coffee and tosses small pinches of a pumpkin muffin into her mouth. She looks around constantly—searching for thoughts and tools all at once. Though most of the hammers in the shop seem to outweigh her, including those she made herself, she does not hesitate to raise any of them over her head—or to bring them down with authority. Another sip of coffee, another pinch of muffin, and this time it lodges in her throat. Her assistant, Jessica, emerges from behind a sheet of leather hanging in the back and begins patting Barbara on the back. Barbara, still doubled over with the choking, screams despite her disappearing voice:

  Harder! Harder!

  Her voice always sounds faint and broken but now it’s nearly imperceptible:

  Harder!

  Jessica thumps her in the back—wincing immediately, fearing what her blow might do to the old woman’s rib cage. But the impact is just right and suddenly Barbara rises, clearing her throat. She takes a sip of coffee, shakes her head, thanks Jessica, and reaches for a different, bigger hammer.