January 5, 2008 / Perspective / Parenting / Smartmom

Smartmom gives from the wallet this holiday season

By Louise Crawford

The Brooklyn Paper

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On Christmas Eve, Smartmom had a nice conversation with Jake, the panhandler who usually stands in front of Ace Supermarket on Seventh Avenue and Berkeley Place.

Jake has a lovely smile and a very pleasant personality. Over the years, he and Smartmom have had many short conversations and she has probably given him hundreds of dollars.

A dollar here, a dollar there, Smartmom gives him money just about every time she sees him.

On the days when she’s low on cash, she crosses the street or makes excuses. “I’ll get you on my way back,” she says fully intending to do so. Usually she doesn’t come back. But Jake doesn’t seem to hold it against her.

In fact, Jake always looks happy to see Smartmom. That may be because she once gave him a $10 bill.

About an hour later he hit her up for more money. “I just gave you $10,” she told Jake somewhat miffed. What an ungrateful so and so, she thought.

“That’s right. Excuse me. Sorry, miss.”

Everyone makes mistakes.

Years ago, Smartmom read an interview with Jake in Stay Free Magazine. In it, he said that he needs $20 a day for food and his room in a flophouse somewhere in Brooklyn. That’s where he sleeps and showers.

But every day without fail, Jake is back on Seventh Avenue, where he’s as much a part of the scenery as the stroller moms, the woman who sells bags made out of kimonos, and the Chinese musician who plays the Erhu in front of Citibank.

Not all panhandlers are as pleasant as Jake. The homeless men who used to sleep on the steps of Old First Reformed Church got on a lot of people’s nerves and caused Old First’s Pastor Daniel Meeter a great deal of tsuris.

“People keep asking why don’t we get rid of them. We can’t. We’ve tried. Believe me, we have tried. They have abused our hospitality, they piss on our building, they leave food around, they leave garbage all over, they play their radio at great volumes,” Meeter wrote on his blog, oldfirst.blogsspot.com.

Meeter tried to help these men, who all allegedly have substance abuse problems, but nothing worked. According to Meeter, they’re still living on the street somewhere.

But at least the steps of his church are free of them.

The police and many in the community believe that generous Park Slopers are the cause of the homeless problem.

“One of the reasons we’re not getting rid of them is because everyone is giving them money.” Officer Nybia Cooper told The Brooklyn Paper.

But are the homeless really that big a problem in Park Slope? For Buddha’s sake, it’s not like the East Village, the Lower East Side, or San Francisco. Indeed, Park Slope has a small group of homeless people who’ve been around for years. They belong here as much as anyone else and have endeared themselves to many in the community.

For some of the same reasons that Park Slope is a red-hot real estate market, it’s a great neighborhood to be homeless in. And like most Park Slopers, the local homeless love to have intense street-side conversations.

There’s the William Burroughs’s look-a-like, who sits in front of Starbucks. Apparently he has an apartment nearby. But he comes out once a month around rent time and asks in a polite whisper if you can spare some change.

There’s the ravaged-looking woman who stands in front of Citibank and the guy who sits on a fruit crate in front of the Apple Tree and always says to the kids, “Don’t forget to read a book.”

If Officer Cooper is right, Smartmom is part of the problem. Yet, she knows she doesn’t have the heart to stop giving Jake or any of these other familiar faces money.

Even Meeter, who had his own homeless problem, admits that giving alms is important — though not necessarily for the reason you’d suspect.

“Giving alms doesn’t solve a problem, especially considering where many panhandlers spend what they get,” he told Smartmom.

“But one gives alms symbolically. When I give alms, I am telling the person I trust him or her, and I don’t care whether he or she deserves it. Giving alms is an act of humility, of honoring the person’s right to demand something of me. Giving alms is a way of saying, We’re in this together.”

Smartmom doesn’t have a problem with these Park Slope regulars, who have been on Seventh Avenue for as long as she has. She does, however, wish that they could get the help they need and improve their lives.

And that’s really the issue. Smartmom wonders if giving Jake money is part of his problem. If she and others like her stopped, would he get a job? Smartmom knows that Jake probably has complicated reasons for living the life he leads. He doesn’t seem to have a substance abuse problem. But then again, maybe he does.

Still, he seems very reliable as he shows up every day and stands in front of Ace or at the Citibank.

In a sense, panhandling is his job. And he does it very well. An unpaid doorman, he’s a good conversationalist, who’s friendly, clean, courteous, and helpful.

The other night, Jake told Smartmom that it would be a tough Christmas because his 95-year-old mother died last month. She lived in South Carolina, where Jake grew up on a farm.

He seemed proud of his rural background and talked a bit about his mom, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time. Smartmom asked if he ever thinks about moving back to South Carolina.

“The farm is long gone,” he said. But he’s really hooked on New York City. “It’s too slow down there,” he told her with a smile. “Too slow.”

Hearing about the death of Jake’s mother made Smartmom sad. But that wasn’t why she gave Jake a $10 bill. She gave it to him because it was Christmas Eve and she wanted to do something special for this man, who always makes her smile.

Louise Crawford also writes “Only the blog knows Brooklyn and is the keeper of the Park Slope 100.

©2008 Community Newspaper Group