The word “hustler” has many meanings. It can mean a male prostitute, but publisher
Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine is a
monthly porn sheet that is blatantly, flagrantly heterosexual. In this post I take “hustlers” to mean people
who promote themselves or something else aggressively. Hustlers of this variety are endemic in New
York City and always have been. This
city is a mecca for hustlers of every kind, from the Wall Street sharper to the
sorriest, most down-and-out panhandler.
In previous posts I’ve covered plenty of them, as for instance:
· Panhandlers (#143)
· Patent medicine men (#191)
· Andy Warhol (#108)
· Robert Moses, the master builder (#78)
· Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean (#81)
· Walter Winchell (#86)
· Fiorello La Guardia (#102)
· Norman Mailer (#139)
· Al Sharpton (#164)
Some might question one or
another of these as examples of the hustler --
Andy Warhol, I’m told, had a very gentle manner -- but I think that
each, in his or her own way, showed the aggressiveness typical of the
species. Not included here, however, are
the subway and sidewalk entertainers described in vignette #6; some of them may
verge on hustling, but to label all such entertainers “hustlers” would be too
inclusive, and unfair. The true hustler
is usually pushy and often, though not always, offensive.
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| Some of them do have imagination … and a sense of humor. |
An exuberant and especially gifted hustler
was Jim Fisk (posts #44 and #61ff.), who graduated from Yankee peddler in
Vermont to impresario and Wall Street robber baron, promoting himself and his
wares -- whether calicoes or cancans or the stock of the near-bankrupt Erie
Railway – with vigor and flair. And his
successors, whether they’ve heard of him or not, flourish on Wall Street
today. Wall Street is, and always has
been, a nest of hustlers, a stewpot of greed.
(And a few reasonably honest individuals as well, but who ever hears of
them?) Which reminds me of what a Wall
Streeter of some years back once said: “Aim for the stars and you get chorus
girls. Aim for chorus girls and you get
nothing.” Which goes a long way toward
explaining the mental make-up of the hustler.
Have I ever been hustled? (And I don’t mean by male prostitutes, though
there’s a recent exception.) Yes. Long ago, while dining in a New York
restaurant with friends on Halloween, our table was approached by a young black
kid who wanted money – a twisted variation of “trick or treat,” since he wore
no costume and just wanted cash. How he
even got in there I can’t imagine. In
any case, we gave him nothing.
And once, returning from vacation, I was
approached at Grand Central Station by another young black kid who opened a
taxi door for me and for this needless act wanted a tip. The taxi driver told him to clear out, but,
being in a good mood, I gave him a quarter.
On another occasion I saw a woman in a
floor-length nunlike gown stride boldly into a bar and get, from an obliging
bartender, a dollar or two, and then immediately leave – bound, no doubt, for
other bars. She was, of course, a
hustler, for no authentic nun would walk into a bar in quest of donations. In my experience a nun may sit quietly in a
public place, eyes down, with a dish for donations, but she never solicits and
rarely even makes eye contact with others.
Long ago I used to see one in the subway, but now, come to think of it,
I haven’t seen any for years.
Lately, getting soft of heart and head,
I’ve often given to beggars if they look old and somewhat decrepit, but rarely
if they look young and healthy, and never if they get pushy. In other words, never if they come on like a
hustler.
And once, just a few weeks ago, I had a
curious adventure. It was the night of
my eye surgery, and with a big patch over my right eye I had gone to bed early,
but an hour later I heard the hall door, which we never close tight, creak and
squeak a bit, which told me someone had entered the apartment. Flashlight in hand and still half asleep, I
went to investigate and found a young man in his mid- to late twenties just
inside the door.
“I
saw your door was open,” he explained.
“I’m waiting for a friend. Would
you mind if I used your bathroom?”
Being barely awake and not knowing
everyone in the building, much less their friends, I said yes. Minutes later he called me into the bathroom,
said that his belt was broken and asked if I could give him some rubber bands
to fix it.
“Rubber bands?” I asked incredulously.
“Or some string,” he added.
Eager by now to get rid of him, I fetched
both rubber bands and string. But when I
returned to the bathroom he had dropped his pants enough to display the family
jewels, a sight I could barely believe.
My look of total disinterest must have registered, for he then
announced, “I can do this in the hall,” and departed with the string. Anxious to prevent his return, I put a heavy
wooden card table against the slightly open door, so if the door budged even a
little, the table would fall with a crash.
The night passed peacefully, and now it all seems like a dream.
Was my visitor a hustler in the broadest
sense? Absolutely. And in the narrower sense, meaning a male
prostitute? I assume so, but certainly
not a professional, or he wouldn’t have wasted time on me, when he could have
been hanging out where hustlers hang out and their patrons know to find them.
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| A pro. Sasha Kargaltsev |
But enough of this amateur; let’s have a
look at the pros. The subject has come
up recently because Mayor de Blasio has talked of eliminating the pedestrian
mall at Times Square and returning it to traffic – a proposal that alarms and
dismays New Yorkers and visitors alike.
The problem is hustlers, meaning in this case the costumed Elmos,
red-suited with goggle eyes, and the armored Iron Men, big-eared Minnie Mouses
(or Mice?), and brazen bare-breasted desnudas with wild feathered headdresses, all of whom have evidently been harassing tourists for tips, and hefty tips
at that.
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| Elmo and Minnie greeting Muslin women in headscarves. InSapphoWeTrust |
So who are these hustlers? For the most part, as noted in post #143 just
a year ago, Latino immigrants willing to parade about in cartoon-character
costumes that are stiflingly hot in the sticky summer heat, so they can stand
beside children while their parents take photos, following which Elmo or Minnie
wants a tip. Or topless Latinas with
feathered headdresses, painted breasts, and thongs who pose with male tourists
for photos and hope to extract twenty dollars or more. Costumed or near naked, Times Square hustlers
usually speak little English, fear deportation if arrested, and would do
something else if they could.
Interviewed, a nineteen-year-old Nicaraguan Spider Man says he averages
$9 an hour, better than he would do with a job, if he could get one.
In fairness, it should be noted that
tourists with children often initiate contact with Spider Man or the Cookie
Monster, and some desnudas insist
that they don’t bother anyone, that being topless in New York isn’t illegal
(true enough), and that it’s only a few of them who harass tourists and give
them all a bad name. And let’s face it,
these antics are a part of New York, they’re what bring tourists here eager to
see something in the deliciously wicked city that you can’t find in Topeka or
Des Moines. (No offense intended to
Topeka or Des Moines, which are probably delighted not to be so graced.)
Let’s have a look at some other types of
New York hustlers. In Brooklyn a few
years ago young black gang members would jam the dollar-bill slot in MetroCard
machines, so commuters couldn’t buy cards; then the hustlers would offer to get them through the turnstile
by selling them an illegal swipe for a dollar or two, or for the same fee let
them through a service gate. This being
clearly illegal, arrests followed.
More controversial are the young black
hip-hop artists who peddle their compact disks to passersby in Times Square. Often arrested for disorderly conduct and
aggressive begging, the rappers claim that they aren’t breaking the law, that
the police have it in for them, treat them differently from other vendors, and violate
their First Amendment rights. The police
insist that the rappers shove CDs at pedestrians, block the sidewalk, and
follow potential customers down the street – allegations that the rappers claim
are phony, causing their cases ultimately to get dismissed. Some of the rappers have been arrested thirty
times, and in 2014 their exasperation reached the point where eight of them filed
joint lawsuits in Manhattan Federal Court against the city and 17 policemen. How their lawsuit is playing out I don’t
know, but these guys are spunky and innovative, tailoring their sales pitch to
what people are wearing and how they look.
They remind me of the squeegee men who used to clean the windshields of
cars stopped for a red light, for which unsolicited service they hoped to get a
tip.
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| A squeegee man at work, albeit with no squeegee in evidence. |
Another species of hustlers are the
Buddhist monks in orange robes who haunt the High Line, Bryant Park, and Times
Square, pushing cheap amulets at passersby and expecting, even demanding, a
tip. I saw one once on Sixth Avenue
offering his trinkets right and left, but now they’re all over the city. When one on the High Line got five dollars
from a visitor, the holy man protested,
wanting twenty. Of course they are
fakes, just like the nun I in the bar.
Usually they are Chinese immigrants who return to flophouses in
Flushing, Queens, with their day’s earnings, some of them doffing their robes en
route on the subway, before setting out in khakis and Nike sneakers for a meal
spiced with liquor in a local restaurant.
Some have also been seen sneaking a smoke on the sly, or napping on
ledges of the Fifth Avenue public library.
Real Buddhist monks might carry a beggar’s bowl to receive gifts of
money or food, but they would never aggressively solicit cash, and would shun cigarettes and alcohol. Authentic New York Buddhists are offended by
these fakers, who disrespect the faith.
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| Even in Hong Kong. Is it a franchise? |
An observer who recently surveyed the
Times Square scene reported the aforementioned costume characters, topless
cuties, CD hawkers, and bogus monks, but also these:
· Ticket hustlers who try to sell you tickets for comedy
clubs, Broadway shows, and bus tours
· Coupon hustlers who thrust at you coupons for
sandwiches, massages, and strip clubs
· The Naked Cowboy playing his guitar in his
undershorts, now joined by scantly clad Naked Cowgirls likewise strumming
guitars
· Statue people who stand stock still, spray-painted
gold or silver or purple, including one or several Lady Liberties, sea-foam
green replicas of the Statue of Liberty
· Religious hucksters parading about with signs urging REPENT! FOLLOW JESUS and similar messages, and buttonholing passersby to
ask if they can tell you about their Savior
· A very middle-class-looking man in a jacket and tie,
giving an intense deadpan stare and flaunting a sign TV IS BRAINWASHING
And some of them get into
fights with one another, which should vastly enhance the entertainment of
tourists.
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| Kris from Seattle |
Another kind of hustler is the
testosterone huckster. Is Low T making you feel like a shadow of
your former self? asks the bold-face ad.
The solution for low energy and low sex drive, this and other ads
propose, is one or another prescription drug.
U.S. sales of testosterone boosters, a mere $324 million in 2002, soared
to about $2 billion in 2012. And in 2012
drug makers spent $107 million advertising top brand-name testosterone drugs in
the U.S. “Low T” is now proclaimed a
malady with symptoms like listlessness, increased body fat, and moodiness, and
multitudes of 40-year-old males and up have been convinced that they need these
drugs, the long-term effects of which have yet to be determined.
Should aggressive advertising like this be
termed “hustling,” and its practitioners “hustlers”? All advertising involves a good bit of
hustling, but the aggressiveness of testosterone marketing inclines me to say
yes. Likewise the ubiquitous subway ads,
big and colorful, of Dr. Zizmor, a Manhattan-based dermatologist with
unblemished features, who promises “beautiful, clear skin.” I would label all today’s medical hustlers a
new phenomenon, if their ads didn’t echo the blatant claims of the
nineteenth-century patent medicine men, who, unlike today’s hucksters, didn’t
have a legitimate degree in medicine.
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| Ernie in later years. |
A different kind of hustler that I have
just read about online haunted neither Times Square nor Bryant Park nor any
other park, but only the city’s bowling alleys.
Back in the 1960s those alleys were jammed all night with bowlers and
the cigar-puffing gamblers, some of them gangsters, who bet on the games. It was the time of action bowling, a
high-stakes form of gambling in which bowlers, often only in their teens,
played for thousands of dollars. The
king of the scene was an arrogant kid from Manhattan’s West Side named Ernie
Schlegel, a real New York wiseguy with scraggly blond hair who favored black
stovepipe pants, a white silk shirt, and an iridescent raincoat. Before he bowled, he’d have one drink and then
throw a shot of bourbon on his head or down his neck, so that he reeked of
liquor, and his opponents became overly confident, thinking he was drunk. The result?
“I crushed ’em.” Working weekdays
as a stock boy at a watch store, he earned $42.50 a week, but in a single night
of bowling he could pocket hundreds, and once even $7,800, in cash. Little wonder that, drooping with exhaustion
at work, he quit before they could fire him.
His parents disapproved, until he showed them his earnings -- wads of cash
stuffed in his bureau drawers.
Once the other bowlers got wise to his
tricks, Ernie’s hustling days were over.
It was years before the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) let him
join their tours, but in 1976 he toured the nation with them as the
Bicentennial Kid, wearing a white jumpsuit decked with blue sequins,
red-white-and-blue shoes, and aviator sunglasses. After that he went on to win legitimately a
series of titles in bowling matches and become a PBA Hall of Famer. But he still had his New York chutzpah,
declaring “I am the greatest!” and promising to take on any challenger and
“beat the living daylights out of him!”
An unrepentant hustler, but one who finds time to coach young bowlers,
too.
Some of the bowling hustlers were not
above out-and-out cheating. They would
drill a hole in a bowling ball, pour mercury in, and plug the hole with a
liquid that hardened overnight. As the
“loaded” ball rolled, the mercury would shift in the ball, making it go
sideways and topple more pins. When some
of the gangsters who bet on the games discovered that one bowler was throwing a
loaded ball, they took the offender outside, flattened him on the ground, held
his bowling bowl high above their heads, and smashed his hand with it, so that he
never bowled again. Another bowler,
having bet on himself to lose, learned that some gun-toting gangsters had bet
on him to win, and so he faced a dilemma: he could win and lose his bet, or he
could lose and risk the wrath of the gangsters.
But never underestimate the resourcefulness of a hustler. Getting up to throw the next ball, he grabbed
his chest, faked a heart attack, and collapsed.
Taken away in an ambulance, he lived to bowl another day.
I hesitate to label political wannabes
hustlers, since campaigning requires a good deal of aggressive
self-promotion. But among today’s
Republican wannabes one goes beyond the bounds, breaks all the rules, and
merits the name of hustler: Donald Trump.
New Yorkers – meaning residents of the city or the state – have rarely
made it to the White House, with the exception of two, both of whom bore the
magical name of Roosevelt. The others
failed for one of two reasons: they struck Middle America as either too brash
or too suave, and probably of dubious morality as well. Trump is the epitome of brash, a
thrice-married, rude New Yorker who has lived all his life in Gomorrah, meaning
New York City. Similarly, Rudolph
Giuliani failed in the 2008 primaries and caucuses, when mainstream Republicans
saw in him a brash and bullying New Yorker who had likewise been married two
times too many.
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| Can a hustler become President? Time will tell. Gage Skidmore |
As for suave, the rich and sophisticated
Nelson Rockefeller failed to get the Republican nomination in 1964, being seen
as too Eastern establishment, too urban and urbane, and divorced as well, and
married to a divorced woman. And in the
1970s John Lindsay, a Republican turned Democrat, lost out because he struck
mainstream voters as too smooth, too big-city sophisticated, too to-the-manner-born,
too bright, and I’d almost add too handsome, too dapper. Hustlers or not – and Rockefeller and Lindsay
certainly weren’t hustlers – New Yorkers just can’t cut it with the great
masses of voters who decide presidential elections.
So who are the New York hustlers? People who are desperate but resourceful, and
too full of energy to give up. People
who are driven, who have to do, who
can’t stand still. And why do they
hustle? For money, for excitement, for power,
and for glory. Whatever you think of
them, New York wouldn’t be New York without them. But if you encounter them, hang on to your
wallet and your wits.
Note on sources: Information on New York hustlers is available
from numerous sources online. For action
bowling, I am especially indebted to a 2012 article by Gianmarc Manzione, who
interviewed many of the action bowlers in their later years or quoted from
earlier interviews.
An update: When walking on 42nd Street near
Times Square the other day, I saw an African-American couple negotiating with a
fake Buddhist monk who seemed to be offering a trinket. “He’s a fake,” I whispered as I walked
briskly by. They flashed a smile;
perhaps they didn’t care. And when, a
bit later, I made a quick foray into Times Square, I didn’t see a single Elmo,
a single Spider Man or Minnie. Either
they were off duty or, aware of the Mayor’s diatribe, they were lying warily
low. But they are still around, and a
coalition of elected officials, property owners, and business leaders has
proposed, as a solution for the Times Square mess, three different zones:
activity zones for hustlers; civic zones for public events or special programs;
and flow zones where pedestrians can pass through freely, without being harassed. Confined to activity zones, the hustlers
would not be allowed to operate elsewhere.
Will it come to pass? Who knows?
Coming soon: Roughriders on West 44th Street,
posing two pertinent questions: (1) What percentage of our thoughts are
negative? (2) Should a successful single
businesswoman of 38 with international experience get a dog or starting looking
for a husband? Plus a side glance at a
candidate who went to bed thinking he was the president elect, and woke up to
learn that he wasn’t.
 |
My new book: Many thanks to those of you who have ordered it, and no problem with those who have not; it will find its readers. The cheaper e-book will soon be available.
©
2015 Clifford Browder
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