The guys drinking beer on the corner

"A'int got no time for the corner boys..."

I actually like the guys who drink beer on the corner, at least some of the time.

There’s one I’ve known for years. I think that maybe I drank beer with him at the deli a few blocks away about ten years ago. He’s always nice to me and never appears to be extremely drunk. Some days he isn’t even drinking beer, he’s just hanging out.

Then there are the guys who drink beer on the corner who are very drunk and get a little less pleasant to be around. Like the one who was drinking a 40 and started trying to chat me up while I waited for the light to change so I could risk my life by crossing the main street.

“What can I buy you for Christmas?” he asked.

“I’m fine thanks but have a good holiday!” I replied.

As a good friend of mine once said, I’ve talked to enough drunk people in my life. I don’t need more.

The deli that used to be a local hang out was open 365 days of the year from 9 am - midnight on weekdays and until 2 am on weekends before the pandemic. In addition to tons of expensive and cheap beer, it had great cheeseburgers, fries and grilled cheese sandwiches. I ate there frequently when not drinking at all, and picked up the occasional Diet Coke or cat litter too. I knew the staff. My good friend who has a masters in East Asian languages and speaks Japanese and Korean fluently used to chat with the Korean staff members.

Around about 2015 until I moved to Reading in 2018 I would sometimes hang out in the beer deli and drink with the various people who came in, or just with my friends. It was quite the local establishment, and nowhere near as much of a dive as the bar that literally blew up down the street from me.

Some of the guys who used to drink beer at the deli have transitioned to drinking beer on the corner outside the corner store where I frequently get small items. Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Vietnamese immigrants I think, are the very nice store owners. They work seven days a week and seem to work all day and all evening. They have a cat whom I knew when she was a kitten. Mr. and Mrs. Lee are the kind of small business owners who suffer when there is looting. They have to cover the door with a giant metal gate every night just to keep their glass from being smashed in.

I’ve seen Mrs. Lee get harassed by people wanting cigarettes for free, or trying to get her to sell them one as a “loosey,” which is actually illegal here. I’ve seen people try to get her to give them things they can’t pay for, like sodas or candy. I’ve been asked for money “so I can buy food for my children” and given a dollar only to see the person buy a big pack of Swedish fish. I love Swedish fish too, but that’s not a) food or b) for your children. That may have been the last time I ever gave money to someone asking for it on the street or in a store.

Against my better judgement I got into a comment argument with an acquaintance on Facebook today. He was complaining about customer service, then the thread turned to people complaining about items in stores being locked behind glass because of shoplifting. Shoplifting is not a real problem, said the commenters, because retail stores factor it into the cost of doing business.

It is well documented that shop lifting is a problem. Businesses are leaving neighborhoods like mine and centers of cities like mine because of shoplifting. They are afraid for their employees. The DA does not prosecute shoplifters anymore, so nothing will really happen to discourage the practice.

I suspect that my leftist acquaintance has never spent time in an urban public school, in a poor urban neighborhood, or at corner stores. Like many with luxury beliefs, he can have a Les Miserables + Robinhood vision of the poor justifiably stealing from corner stores to “fight the man” and never see the suffering of the corner store owners, the people who lose when businesses close or put things under lock and key, and the parents of children who end up in jail or with criminal records because crime is praised.

Crime is not glamorous or an act of social justice warfare. Crime is just… crime. Even if one does not have a sense of theft being wrong, I would hope they would at least want to avoid the likely consequences.

Except there are often no consequences, not to the thief anyway. The store owners and the community pay the price in higher prices then no stores at all. Jobs are lost when stores close or move out of the area. Jobs that could be good first jobs for high school students trying to make some money and get work experience disappear. Small business owners who have worked hard and put their lives into providing things for the neighborhood lose everything.

But back to the guys on the corner drinking beer.

I have no reason to think they steal from stores. They appear to be on good terms with Mr. and Mrs. Lee, which is to their advantage as they hang out on the store steps. They form a little gauntlet for customers to walk through, but they are usually if drunk, and they do not ask for money.

But I do not want my students to end up drinking beer all day in front of the corner store. Having spent a few too many days of my past drinking this or that, I can say that it’s not a great way to live. It really does feel better to go to work, do an honest days labor for an honest day’s wage, and go home to a family that you can provide for, even if that family is feline.

When kids see the grown men in their neighborhood spending their days drinking beer in front of the corner store, what does that tell them about adult manhood?

Thank the Father Cat God there are honorable, amazing men at the schools where I teach, modeling an entirely different kind of behavior. Showing up early, staying late, being constantly, kindly and firmly engaged with students and teachers… this is what young men and women need to see in the men around them.

As for me, alcohol doesn’t agree with me anymore, and I like going to work. Even on days when it is exhausting and I’m tired when the alarm goes off at 5 am, I’m grateful to have a job, clean clothes to put on, hair to put up, and a cat to feed and pet and sing, “Mommy go to work work work” to the tune of Rhianna’s “Work” to before I walk out the door.

Earning a living is better than dependence. Going to work really does feel better than drinking beer on the corner.

Well, to be fair, I never drank beer on the corner. I did drink vodka out of a bottle with some guys hanging out outside the Journal Square PATH train stop in Jersey City in about 2013. My share of days wandering through places where nice white girls with Yale degrees are rarely seen gave me the empathy and street smarts that make me a good teacher now, for a population that most nice white girls from Yale would not be able to relate to. When I see the kids behaving in ways that seem to me to be counterproductive, I remember some things I’ve done that were less than wise too. Then I give them stickers and redirect them toward the assignment, or at least away from hitting each other.

“Education is the path to freedom,” goes the first line of the pledge the boys at one school where I teach say every morning. I say it with them, though quietly. “Education is the path to justice.”

No, we are not making “wage slaves for capitalism.” We are trying to grow responsible citizens who can provide for their own families and create a life that is as secure and meaningful as possible. We want them to do better than their parents were able to. That was the American dream and for us it still is.

The NBA and TikTok fame are not the ways to security. Nor is crime. Or drinking beer on the corner.

Earlier this week, I went back to the school I go to the least often because it’s pretty far away. I had been there the first week in December, and two boys who had acted up badly got lunch detention with Mr. J. As I was leaving, I saw them eating silently and sullenly in Mr. J’s office.

I had one of the two boys in class late last week. While many other members of the class were acting up, this young man was the model of a good student and a gentleman. He did his work, politely asked for a bathroom and thanked me, and separated himself from the characters who were bouncing off the walls and cursing.

“Lunch detention is an act of love,” I told my mom that night when I came home. I never see the administrators at that school without a kid in their office. From dawn until close to dusk this time of year, they are with the children, even when the children are angry, sullen, and dealing with the consequences of their bad behavior. Especially then.

I suspect that the lunch detention earlier this month was a big factor in the young man’s excellent behavior last week. I told him he was doing great, wrote a good note for the teacher and told Mr. J too.

I don’t expect as I’ll be seeing that young man on the corner drinking beer, or shoplifting, or hear that he went to jail. I pray that I never find out that he was the victim of violence. Maybe some day I’ll look in the paper and see a wedding announcement. Young men who do their work in school and are polite to the substitute teacher are the kind of men a young woman should marry. If you want to know who a man really is, ask a substitute teacher. We know. We know how people behave when they think no one important is watching, because most people think we are not important. We know everything.

Who knows, maybe I’ll marry a school administrator. Unlike most people, they respect substitute teachers. There might be a few single ones left out there. And as Bruce Springsteen once said, “I ain’t got no time for the corner boys.”

A street near me decked out for the holiday.