Homelessness as a LifestyleFootnote³

3 Drawn from fieldnotes taken during a 3-year, participant observation study in New York’s Bowery, from Fall 1976 to Fall 1979. Along with Benedict Giamo, my fieldwork partner from the start, I had spent several hours weekly in conversation with one or another Bowery resident, individually or in groups. This quote was from a man named Sugar Hart who had been bragging that he had traveled all over the country, and he could pick up and go anytime he pleased. Mter he said this, our notes of November 6, 1977 read, “He stood silent as if to stand apart from his words. He leaned forward towards us with eagerness and intensity. ’Now wait a minute, wait a minute. If I go to a psychiatrist maybe he tells me I got a problem, but if I do have a problem I don’t know nothin’ about it.’“