208: Office Politics

21:45Ira Glass:Like they went on a trip. She knew basically that he was living at her place. There was not anything that she didn't know. Like the same amount of information with added psychic phenomenon as if she'd been sitting next to me the whole six months. I've never called Ms. Cleo. I've never had a tarot reading or had my tea leaves read. I've never crossed over. But when I heard there was a psychic in Long Island who could tell who was lying about breaking the office fax machine, I had to go. I called and made an appointment. She had one stipulation for letting me come. No debunking.

22:27Ira Glass:I teach you how to drive and you teach me how to be a great Italian cook. Everybody's a comedian today. Anne lives with her elderly mother and her seven-year-old daughter. When I get there, grandmother and granddaughter are nestled in easy chairs watching Golden Girls. Anne's doing a reading in the back, and her mother turns to me and asks if I'm there for a reading, too. I tell her I'm not. We watch TV together in silence for a few minutes, and then Anne's mother turns back to me and asks if I'm there for a reading. This pattern continues for the rest of the show. I finally give in and say yes, I'm there for a reading.

23:01Ira Glass:Then she gets up and shuffles off to the kitchen, and I can hear her muttering under her breath, F***ing gypsies. Then Ann comes in and takes me to her reading room. Well, we kept the red carpeting. It's your root chakra, and it gives me a lot of energy because I'm actually in a beta-level sleep state, so I'm kind of groggy, and the best thing to wake you up in the morning is that nice red carpeting. Ann's reading room looks like a suburban guest bedroom. There's a daybed that she likes because it makes it feel more like a therapist's office, pictures of her family, and a TV cluttered with tchotchkes, like a jar labeled, ashes of problem customers.

23:37Ira Glass:Ann prefers to be called a clairaudient trance medium, which means that she can hear stuff that isn't there as opposed to seeing stuff that isn't there. She goes into a trance, and then her three spirit guides feed her the information. When I talked to Ann on the phone, she told me she'd be in a trance when I got there. In fact, she'd been in a trance when she told me that. It turns out Ann's almost always in a trance. At her house, I saw her receive payment for her services, recommend a good restaurant, and usher her client to the door, all while in a trance. This seemed to be a complete abuse of the word trance.

24:08Ira Glass:Not to be debunked or anything.

24:17Ira Glass:Appointments with Ann are hard to get. She'll take anybody, but she's usually booked months in advance. People come for the usual stuff like channeling dead relatives, but she does a big business of finding lost objects, and a large percentage of her clients come about problems at work. If you think about it, that's where you spend most of your waking time. during the day in most cases is in offices. That's why there's so many issues that people, a variety of issues, I couldn't begin to count or measure. I mean, you name it, I've had them all. I watch Jan's clients drift in and out of her home from morning till night.

24:52Ira Glass:And what I learn is this. It doesn't matter that the people work in different kinds of jobs. All their stories are the same. There's the cop with the corrupt boss intent on making his life hell. You know, you could be sitting in a room of five people. He would walk in and say hello to the other four and just, like, ignore me like I wasn't there. There's a woman from the car rental agency with the boss who didn't like women. And he had already been responsible for firing the two other girls in the office. I was the last remaining female. There's a woman from the phone company who was working with a lot of people younger than her.

25:23Ira Glass:There was a few managers that had a problem with it. She was the type that laughed in your face, but she actually, like, Did you win behind your back? Talking to Ann about all this, every office is Othello, full of jealousy and greed and intrigue. Kelly's story wasn't surprising to her at all. Surprised me? Not much of it, honestly, because I find it very common in the workplace, and very oftentimes enough there's a lot of backstabbing.

26:00Ira Glass:At some point, I'm guessing, you've worried about investing too much emotional energy in your colleagues, your boss, your work. At least we're all doing it. In fact, for Kelly, one of the best things about going to Anne about to missing photos is that Anne didn't view her freakout as excessive. Up until that point, you know, I would be, like, calling my mom, saying, like, they've taken them. They've taken them. I know they have. And she would be totally freaked out, as all of my friends were. And they're like, let it go. You're going to find them. And I'd be like, no, no. This is bad. This is a horrible place.

26:35Ira Glass:And I'd be going on these rants. And my friends and my family were trying to be OK about it. But she was the first person that was like, oh, yeah, this is bad. And you're right. And that's unfortunate.

26:56Ira Glass:And I said, well, you know, I brought photos, you know, so I wanted to show her the photos to show her the different places in the office. And she basically looked at the first one, which was a Polaroid of all the guys in the office, and said, oh, that's him. He was really mad when you were taking that photo because he knew that you were coming here. The man she pointed to was Kelly's boss. He's red in the face in this photo, glaring at me. His veins on his neck are sticking out, and it looks like he could probably hit me. How much actual clairvoyance was involved in this is anyone's guess. Anne's clients all swear by her.

27:33Ira Glass:Love her, actually. But Anne and her clients all say that a part of what Anne does is confirm what you already know. Kelly suspected her bosses. Anne told her she was right, too. Armed with this new knowledge, Kelly did absolutely nothing. She didn't confront her bosses or go over their heads to the head of the company. She didn't do anything. She didn't need to. She felt better. I felt totally vindicated. I felt, like, released. After Anne. Yeah, I totally felt released because before I went to her, I kept waiting for them to break. I kept thinking that maybe they'd tell me or that they'd admit to it or that they'd just, like, put them on my desk at night and I'd come in in the morning and they'd be there.

28:12Ira Glass:I had fantasies about that a lot. And then afterward, I just, I didn't have to worry anymore. I had no suspicions. I knew that everything that I had thought she had told me was true. And I stopped caring. I felt like I could look at them from a different angle. And it wasn't personal anymore. It was just more like, wow, that's pretty pathetic, you know.

28:42Ira Glass:The lost photos were never found. just like Anne said they wouldn't be. Kelly and Al work somewhere else. Anne is booked for next summer. The problem with office politics is it never really makes sense outside the office. Your friends and family will never fully understand what it is you hate so much about the girl down the hall. With Anne, not only does she seem to understand, you don't even have to tell her about it.

29:09Calvin Morrill:Starlee Hine, she was a producer on our show when she made that story. In the years since we first broadcast today's show, she went on to create this beloved and short-lived podcast called Mystery Show. If you like this story, you might want to check that out wherever you get your podcasts.

29:27Calvin Morrill:Act two, she kicks in the conference room, whiskey after dark. Americans are, as everybody knows, spending more time on the job, which means more people's social lives are organized around their work lives. and more holidays are celebrated more intensely and mean more on the job site. David Rakoff wrote this next story while we at This American Life took our show on the road, doing our show before live audiences around the country. It is a parable of three such holidays as celebrated on the job. Holiday the first, National Secretary's Day.

30:04Calvin Morrill:At least we consoled ourselves. we were assistants, not secretaries. In the world we were in, the world of New York publishing, these titles meant everything. It's a loathsome distinction, the almost meaningless difference between field and house slave. After all, we all of us, secretaries and assistants alike, had much the same duties, filing, photocopying, taking dictation, and making reservations for meals we would never get to eat. There was one glaring discrepancy between us and the secretaries. Specifically, their salaries dwarfed ours. But our penury came with the promise that we were bound for better things.

30:49Calvin Morrill:We would be mentored, promoted, and one day raised to our rightful stations as book editors, our faith in the East Coast meritocracy restored. Still, every April, when National Secretaries' Day rolled around, many of us took sick days genuinely nauseous with worry that we might be mistook for them and there on our assistant's desks would be the asparagus fern and baby's breath surrounded long stem roses with the heartfelt note from the boss who just couldn't do it without you laughter

31:30Calvin Morrill:instead of National Secretaries Day we assistants had our own folk traditions with our own holidays one of which we celebrated often almost nightly in fact we called it drinking

31:47Calvin Morrill:with disturbing regularity the end of the work day found us at the old monkey bar, the dorset bar, the warwick bar all of which were attached to serviceable and somewhat down at heel hotels Midtown Manhattan used to be full of just such comfortably shabby establishments where career waiters with brilliant-tuned comb-overs and shiny elbowed jackets served marvelously cheap, albeit watery, drinks along with free snacks. Withered celery sticks. Unironic faux Asian poopoo platters. Pretzel nuggets accompanying a cheese spread of a color that in nature usually signals I am an alluring yet highly poisonous tree frog.

32:28Calvin Morrill:Beware.

32:34Calvin Morrill:Dinner and forgetfulness all for$10. Youth is not wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young. Hooch happily was one luxury we could afford. Our drunkenness was twofold. First, there was the liquor, but there was also the intoxication brought on by the self-aggrandizing conviction that we happy few, we cheery booze hounds, were the new incarnations of that most mythic bunch of souses, the Algonquin Round Table. This pipe dream sustained not just us, but I suspect countless other tables of publishing menials all over town. So desperate were we to assume the mantles of Parker, Benchley, and their ilk that we weren't going to let some silly thing like a dearth of wit or the complete absence of a body of work on any of our parts deter us.

33:29Calvin Morrill:With enough$4 drinks sloshing through our veins Even the most dunder-headed schoolyard japery Qualified as coruscating repartee What do you want? A riposte might begin A medal or a chest to pin it on Oh, touche! We cried merrily as we clutched our martinis

33:54Calvin Morrill:that represented the high point of the discourse gradually our tongues thickened and our moods darkened unpleasantly as the evenings wore on a hostile gin-scented pole fell over everything and our glittering aphorisms were reduced to the wishful and direct I hope my boss is dead right now

34:22Calvin Morrill:Paying the bill, we stumbled out into the street and back to our apartments where we spent the rest of the night jealously reading the manuscripts of those who actually wrote and didn't just drink about it

34:36Calvin Morrill:Rising unrefreshed, we would return to the office and, rubbing alcohol and cotton balls in hand get down to work swabbing leaf by leaf the potted plants in our boss's office a vain attempt to stop the outbreak of whitefly that was going around the floor. Impressing the higher-ups became our constant purpose. We spent an inordinate amount of time attaching disproportionate significance to our message-taking skills, our collating acumen, no small feat from under a hovering cloud of job hatred. How sad to realize, from the vantage point of years later, that the answer to the question that was perpetually on our minds, what do they think of me was they didn't.

35:18Calvin Morrill:At all. Realistically, we were the help, and it was best not to forget it. Holiday the second, Christmas. Those three weeks or so of Midtown Manhattan Christmas are an assistant's dream. No work gets done, and all is romanticized melancholy. It was precisely why so many of us had moved to the city, so that we too might gaze misanthropically at the corporate Christmas tree in the lobby surrounded with gift-wrapped empty boxes that fooled nobody, and in the institutional fluorescent-lit sadness of it all feel something approaching... depth? The phone's idle, we spent our days going to the movies during lunch, returning hours later to troll the halls of the office Foraging through the gift baskets like a ravening pack of voles Subsisting on cars, water biscuits, individually red wax dip balls of baby gouda, butternut toffee, popcorn, smokehouse almonds And fancy fruit preserves eaten directly from the jar A diet that had our faces peppered with blackheads And glistening with oily sebum As unto the shining visages of the apostles Our bosses were away with their families At country houses, having real lives We wondered how they might greet the sight Of the empty food baskets upon their return Such anarchy, such transgression As usual, they never even noticed We, on the other hand, could not even conceive of a world wherein we did not know the exact quantity and location of our giant cashews.

37:01Calvin Morrill:Holiday the Third. Happy birthday. After any moment of extreme assistant subjugation, say, a morning wherein one might innocently open an unsolicited manuscript only to find that someone had mailed the publishing house a jiffy pack full of human feces, or one might be sent to the corner to pick up a cappuccino for an author who had just been given a million dollar book advance a coffee for which I was not reimbursed laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter after such moments we would make our way to Sheila's cubicle where we could always be guaranteed clear-eyed advice and cigarettes Sheila was our bad girl leader A poet and writer herself, she despised her job and didn't care who knew it, smoking openly at her desk and standing on ceremony for no one.

37:56Calvin Morrill:These would be my pajamas that I slept in last night, she would say, indicating the black long-sleeved T-shirt and black workout pants she was wearing. And this, she would add, fingering a crusted white smear on the hem of the top, this would be spilled food. Nice. Well, they say, dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

38:20Calvin Morrill:So, of course, it was immediately to Sheila that I went when I received my birthday card. It was late November. Opening the envelope, my eyes fell upon it, a reproduction of one of those tinted B-movie stills from the 1950s. A woman in a smart worsted business jacket wearing a pair of glasses at which men seldom make passes, and a switchboard operator's headset out of which we're shooting tiny lightning bolts were shown to be thinking, someone needs coffee. Above her head, in screaming sci-fi acid yellow type, was the title of this card's purported movie, The Amazing Tale of the Psychic Secretary.

39:02Calvin Morrill:I slid the card back into the envelope, walked over and showed it to her. Get your coat, she said, her voice businesslike, her face unreadable. we went to the Warwick Bar don't talk for a while just smoke, she said and then as an afterthought she added but you knew I was going to say that didn't you, psychic secretary laughter laughter

39:36Calvin Morrill:across from us in the darkened booth a couple sat, a man and a woman they'd clearly been there for hours because the woman's head was lolling about on her neck as she alternately whispered lubriciously or laughed too heartily at her companion's jokes. We had a clear view under the table where we could see her rubbing ever higher up his thigh. I knew where this exchange was leading. Psychic. Not long after that evening, I sat in a movie theater packed to the rafters. Just before the lights went down, a woman marched up the aisle, looked at me and asked, is that seat taken? I was nowhere near the end of the row, but trying to be helpful, I asked, which seat?

40:22Calvin Morrill:Looking directly into my eyes, she said, that seat. She pointed. She was pointing to the center of my chest, to my very heart.

40:32Calvin Morrill:Well, I'm sitting here. I managed, finally. as if I were her college-aged daughter who had suddenly announced that I was a vegetarian she shrugged in a kind of suture self-indulgence of my fantasy of existence and moved on

40:53Calvin Morrill:I looked up and down the row for some sort of laughter some eye-rolling commiseration or just plain corroboration that this had just happened but I got no response to this day I cannot explain it was this an emissary sent from on high at that time of year not to trumpet the birth of the son of God but to proclaim with heavenly proof my complete and utter insignificance she's right, I thought this seat isn't taken it was the perfect moment for that time in my life I mean that of course in the worst way possible the theater went dark up on the screen the camera zoomed past a huge close-up of the Statue of Liberty swooping down to find the Staten Island ferry scudding along the water transporting our working girl to her office job where we already knew she would triumph, vanquish the harpy boss and win the love of the man Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations interminable lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, being trapped by the office bore beside the sheet cake in the conference room and the like.

42:10Calvin Morrill:Maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and mask-like with the faintest tint of a smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can and just as you feel you're about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone's neck. Fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now, with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Over and over again as you pretend to listen. You will find that this brings a spontaneous look of interest and pleased engagement to your countenance.

43:05Calvin Morrill:Continue and repeat as necessary. In the dark of the theatre, I write my message pressing hard into the flesh of my hand. Although I don't know who I'm writing to, I'm just glad to feel that it hurts. Thank you.

43:28Calvin Morrill:The late David Rakoff. He put a version of this story into his first book, which is called Fraud. Coming up, Philip Glass, Spike Lee, and Stephen Hawking sit around and have a casual conversation about, you know, whatever. That'll be the day. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. Support for This American Life comes from Squarespace. Build a fully custom website in just a few steps using Squarespace's AI-enhanced website builder, Blueprint AI. Simply provide basic details about your industry, goals, and personality, and Blueprint AI will generate high-quality content, along with personalized design suggestions.

44:09Highlight your offerings with a website tailored to help your business grow.

44:14Calvin Morrill:Visit squarespace.com slash American to get 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.

44:21Ira Glass:This message comes from NPR sponsor FX's Love Story, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, the new limited series from executive producer Ryan Murphy. It explores the complex courtship of the iconic couple considered to be American royalty, whose love story captured the attention of the nation. Their fairy tale romance would unfold in front of the public eye and become a national obsession. FX's Love Story, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. Watch now on FX, Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

45:18Calvin Morrill:busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. This is American Life from Ira Glass. Each week in our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show is a rerun from many, many, many years ago. Office politics, high drama in our nation's workplaces. We've arrived at Act Three. Act Three, when the job to get you off the streets is on the streets. So there's a time in New York City, it's 6th Avenue and 8th Street in Greenwich Village, where pretty much any day you would see tables on the sidewalks manned by scruffy-looking men.

45:56Calvin Morrill:These days, there's just a handful of tables like this, but back in the early 2000s, when we first made this episode and put it on the air, the tables extended for two blocks, one after another, selling magazines and books. Most of those magazines and books have been pulled from the trash, found in dumpsters. Julie Snyder reports on the politics of this particular business.

46:17Ira Glass:After spending a couple of days on the corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street, what strikes me is not how different street vending is from other businesses, but how similar. As if the rules of business are so deeply encoded in us that as soon as anyone starts to sell anything in any setting, the rules and hierarchies of a company start to gel around them, even if what they're doing is selling other people's trash. On the corner, you've got your entry levels, and you've got the people who have worked and clawed their way to the top. That's more or less what Ishmael Walker did. When I visit, he has the best spot on the block, right on the corner in front of the Barnes & Noble.

46:54Ira Glass:And what got him there was simple ambition. At one time, I was down the block. And I was just sitting out. I said, damn, all the money's up there and everybody up there. Because, see, that bookstore, people go and buy books, right? And I got books on the table. I got magazines. I might just get what they want.

47:18Ira Glass:There are other reasons Ishmael went in the corner. Right across is Grazed Papaya, a hot dog restaurant with plate glass windows that looks directly onto the corner. When it rains, he can sit inside and eat and still keep an eye on his staff. Also, there's a small alcove that's right in front of Ishmael's table where he keeps a chair and can relax or nap during the day. To understand how you rise to the best space on the block, or how you get demoted to the worst, consider Ron's story. I told you one time I had this old block from the light post to the light post. This was when I first came out here.

47:51Ira Glass:Ron's at the very end of the blocks in what is arguably the worst location. Years ago, before Ishmael made his move to the top, Ron controlled the entire block, including the area where Ishmael is now. Now, how I got control of this old block was that I was living here. I was living right here on the sidewalk. There was no way anybody was going to get here before me. You understand? And I used to sleep over there. Me and a few other guys used to sleep over there. I'd pack my stuff up in a dumpster, a post office thing, and I would push it over there. You understand? If I wanted, I could be up 24 hours if I wanted to.

48:27Ira Glass:More than half the guys on 6th Avenue were homeless, so it's easier for them to stay with their stuff and keep their spaces on the street. Eventually, Ron moved in with his aunt in Harlem. He lost control of the block, and now he doesn't get as much business as Ishmael does. he's away from all the action. But it's just not worth it to Ron anymore. Because I'm not going to stay out here all night to hold down the spot. I got a place to live now. You understand? I'm going to pack my stuff up at night and go home. You understand?

48:59Ira Glass:The way Ron started here is the way all the guys start. He was a panhandler. But you're lucky if you get any of the guys to admit that because, for the most part, the vendors are embarrassed about their panhandling pass. The panhandlers, meanwhile, look down on the vendors, saying they have too much pride to sell someone else's trash. Ron remembers panhandling as just being humiliating. I was like panhandling over there on 9th Street. And I remember one day I walked up to my brother-in-law. I didn't walk up to him. I was panhandling like my back was turned. And he walked up and I turned around and said, there's been some change, and it was my brother-in-law.

49:34Ira Glass:And he looked at me like, said, I got a wife and kids to support. and he kept going, you know. And one time I was really embarrassed. This time I was working at this job. I was working at this job as a timekeeper. I was getting good money. And I ended up leaving that job because, you know, of my drinking. And one of the workers, one of the coworkers that I didn't really get along with that good was a girl. And she had a boyfriend. Her boyfriend was a police, a New Jersey cop. and I remember one day I was panhandling uptown and she walked up and she looked at me like she was real startled and she was with the guy.

50:13Ira Glass:I remember I was really embarrassed that time. So I'm actually glad that I was able to start bending, which is, you know, more respectable.

50:29Ira Glass:When you spend time on the corner, what it looks like is there will be 20 or 30 guys all around the tables, and it seems like they're just hanging out, doing nothing. But it turns out they all have different and distinct jobs, with different responsibilities and pay scales. There are placeholders who camp out overnight on the sidewalk, holding a space that they sell to vendors in the morning. That usually pays around$20 to$30. Guys called storage providers have places either in their apartments or under the subway tracks or in empty storerooms, where they charge$7 to$10 for the vendors to keep their tables and crates of magazines during the night.

51:04Ira Glass:The movers help the vendors haul their stuff on and off the sidewalks. They generally make$5 to$10 a move. If you were to show up on 6th Avenue tomorrow to start in the business, even with a high school or college degree, even with other job experience, you'd have to work your way up, same as anyone, before you'd make vendor. When sociologist Mitch Denier came to the block to write about the vendors, he was first put to work getting coffee and helping out in little ways for months before getting his own table. He ended up spending years with the vendors.

51:35Calvin Morrill:Not anybody can come out here and set up a table. You have to work your way through the system because there's only a certain number of legal spots on the street.

51:44Ira Glass:The city regulates how many spots there can be.

51:47Calvin Morrill:And so some guys show up in the morning and their whole job is just to be a mover. And in fact, that's how Conrad got started out here. He was originally just a mover. And now he moved up to getting his own table. And there are many people who start out as table watchers, watching a table all night while someone else goes to sleep, or watching a table while people go to the bathroom, and, you know, they may wind up having their own table one day.

52:10Ira Glass:Mitch introduced me to everyone on 6th Avenue and explained that excessive drug use is pretty much what brought all of the guys out here. Most times, a person's position on the sidewalk correlates to their level of addiction. If you smoke a lot of crack and aren't too trustworthy, a placeholder is about the best job you can get. If you're pretty clean, you're probably a regular table watcher or a vendor.

52:36Ira Glass:So there are cliques on the sidewalks and mutual snobberies between the panhandlers and the vendors. But like in any workplace, there are people who sidestep those trivialities, ignore the politics. B.A. is one of those people.

52:52Ira Glass:Some people say the BA stands for bad attitude, but BA prefers business administrator. It's an apt title for him because he's sort of a floater on 6th Avenue, one of the few guys who jumps from job to job during the day. On this afternoon, BA is table watching. He's also placeholding a space next to him for a vendor named Joe, an elderly white guy who sells rare and out-of-print books but only comes to the sidewalks on weekends. And then on top of all of that, at four in the afternoon most days, he goes down to the PATH train station to panhandle. Though today he isn't going. Yeah, I got somebody down there working for me.

53:29Ira Glass:At the train? Yeah, the PATH train station. You pay somebody to go down there for you if you can't go and then... They pay me when they come up. They pay me. Because you have a spot down there too? Yeah, they take my time. You know what I'm saying? My time is from 46, right? So if they want to get on my time, I tell them, give me half. If you go down there from 46, give me half. So right now, you're making money down at the train station. And then you're also making money right now on the table. Of course. That's how I go. And then you'll also make money tonight by holding the space for Joe for tomorrow.

54:09Ira Glass:Got it.

54:15Ira Glass:What would you do if they went if somebody like just went down there from 4 to 6 and started panhandling and you didn't know them and they didn't pay you? Like isn't that possible? No, no. They got to go. Because I go like 3.30 and I check out my spot. You know what I'm saying? I go at 3.30 I go make sure everything is clear. I'm saying I go set myself up, put my crate down there get my cup ready. I change my clothes to look like a bum. Wait. At the risk of making homeless advocates cringe, I want to make sure you caught that. Right now, B.A. is wearing a polo shirt from The Gap, khakis and Adidas.

54:53Ira Glass:But when he goes down to Panhandle, he says, he changes his clothes to look like a bum. I change my clothes to look like a bum. You change your clothes to look like, because right now you look really nice. That's what I said. I told you I had to go change and everything. You have to go down and go panhandling, then what do you wear? I'm putting on my old rolls or something, change my sneakers up, you know, just dusting something, dusting on my durag or something like that. You know, and sit down and just look homeless. And in two hours, how much can you get? About$60 to$80.

55:38Ira Glass:Hey, Shorty, where you get those babies from? What's the name? Magazine? At one point in the corner, Ishmael's friend Shorty pulls up on the sidewalk and gets out of a cab carrying several cardboard boxes. Someone had cleaned out their apartment and given Shorty a bunch of old books. Oh, oh, oh, oh. You got something up in there. The guys gather around and evaluate the books. Most of them seem pretty old, with titles nobody's ever heard of. But there are a few known sellers.

56:07Calvin Morrill:Oh, look over here. We used to miss the Babysitter's Club.

56:12Ira Glass:The Babysitter's Club. These are sales, bro. Don't let nobody tell them, like, a person on sell books or magazines don't know nothing about it.

56:28Ira Glass:Some of these guys have known each other for over 20 years. In the mid-80s, they lived together in Penn Station before the city cleaned it up. After time in jail and treatment programs, the guys regrouped on 6th Avenue. And they're close in a way that makes it nice to hang out with them. They joke around, they get into little arguments that last a day or two, and then blow over.

56:52Ira Glass:These are all good prices, my brother. How much are you? I'll give you a dollar piece on them. It's a good deal for those. Starting around 4 in the afternoon, the sidewalks start getting busier, the music gets turned up on the stereos, and what's known as the power hour begins. Each table has about 150 to 200 magazines laid out. The sellers? Vogue, Vibe, GQ, Martha Stewart Living, Architectural Digest. There are foreign fashion magazines like Italian Vogue and the occasional specialty order. I got a girl right now, she wants a Drew Barrymore Playboy issue.

57:26Calvin Morrill:She said on the internet, they're asking$60 for it. I done had that book many times. I'm waiting on it now. I'm going to just charge you$3,$5.

57:36Ira Glass:The losers? Any weekly magazine. The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek. Neighbors will often donate stacks of weekly magazines, like People, to the vendors. The vendors will take them just to be polite and later quietly throw them away.

57:56Ira Glass:It seems that smut sells the best, and there's a surprisingly large stock of gay porn that everyone is completely matter-of-fact about. In fact, it's all pretty relaxed, no hard sell, except for Ishmael, sitting in his premium spot at the top of the block. At one point, a cab driver, who Ishmael has apparently dealt with before, pulls up next to the tables and asks Ishmael if he has any computer books or software. Yeah, they right there, the whole section, the whole foot. Come on out your cab. You got to get up out of the cab and come on by the table, bro. The cab driver is reluctant to leave his cab parked, sitting in the middle of a lane of traffic on the side of a busy New York City street.

58:36Ira Glass:You gotta come on out. You gotta get up at it. But we ain't gonna have that accident no more like we did last time. I don't know why I bought the ticket. I want you to see the books, man. Ishmael actually gets the cab driver to come out of his cab and to the table. He sells the computer book for$10. Now, I don't understand how you're gonna see like that. You have to go around the table and you can see what's in front of me. What got Ishmael to the top of the block is pretty much what gets someone to the top of any business. He just wanted it more. When he first started on the sidewalk, there was a guy named Scotty sitting at the corner by the bookstore.

59:09Ira Glass:So Ishmael made a plan. He says he stayed inside and rested up for a week and got ready to make his move on Scotty. So the day come, he didn't come yet. So my tables was in there. Next minute, here he come. Oh boy. I fought for three mornings, three days straight. Right? Physically fighting. Tables in the street, comic books in the street, books in the street. He kicked mine and I kicked it. For three days straight, 8 o 'clock to about 11 o 'clock in the afternoon. Morning.

59:47Ira Glass:When Mitch first introduced me to Ishmael, Mitch said he'd met few people in his life with the determination that Ishmael has. And I know it's weird that the path to triumph will be kicking the ass of your opponent for three hours every morning, but if Coke and Pepsi could do the same thing, don't you think they would?

1:00:03Calvin Morrill:Ishmael, I have seen you in 30 below zero weather at 4 o 'clock in the morning.

1:00:13Ira Glass:I've seen you preserving this space out here when everybody else was gone. Because it's like they said, the ghosts come out at night. And if you're not dead, believe me, somebody is willing to slip up in there.

1:00:34Ira Glass:On a good day, when the weather's nice and lots of people are out, Ishmael makes about$150. But he works seven days a week. And a lot of days, it rains.

1:00:50Calvin Morrill:Julie Snyder was the senior producer of our show back when we first broadcast today's program. She went on to co-create the Serial Podcast, thanks to Mitch Denier for acting as our guide to this story. His book, documenting several years in the lives of the vendors, is called Sidewalk. That book became a documentary film with the same name. But Mitch still visits the vendors every few months. B.A. and Shorty have since passed away. Ron was deported to Jamaica. But Ishmael still hangs around the neighborhood. He's retired now. When people started looking on their phones on the subway and stopped buying books and magazines to read there, the vendors on 6th Avenue took a big hit.

1:01:32Calvin Morrill:Thanks today to Monica Hall and Chris Neary. Production help on this rerun from Michael Comete, Molly Marcello, Stone Nelson, and Ryan Rummery. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tory Malatia. You know, when Spike Lee walks in on Tory and me and Philip Glass and Stephen Hawking, this is what happens. He would walk in and say hello to the other four and just, like, ignore me like I wasn't there. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

1:02:05Ira Glass:Ooh, ooh, ooh, I'm working, girl.

1:02:11Calvin Morrill:Next week on the podcast of This American Life. A bus full of people going to D.C. Only the driver doesn't want to go to D.C. He's going to go wherever he wants. And the passengers? Strangers who never met till now?

1:02:25Ira Glass:Nothing like one rogue person to make everyone else unite, you know, right?

1:02:30Calvin Morrill:What happens next? A real-life version of the movie Speed. Next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.

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