Here’s another great post from frequent OTBKB contributor, Brooklyn Beat. He has his own blog, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn.

He is a wandering stranger and here he is (once again) on Schermerhorn
Street. If you want to get a sense of the NYC economy, visit
Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn. The food stamp offices, the
welfare offices, the unemployment offices, they all have their lines,
their ennui, and their quiet desperation that spills onto the streets
everyday. Until recently, a homeless shelter was there also, built
under the parking gararge on Bond Street. I have been passing through
that neighborhood on foot for several years on my way to work. Since
last spring, I noticed a number of homeless folks camped outside along
the side of the gararge on Schermerhorn Street, sleeping on broken
office furniture, with sleeping bags, rolling suitcases, some who
looked as though they had lived on the streets for awhile, others who
seemed new to that existence. I read recently that the homeless
shelter, I think this one, had been closed. Suddenly, the homeless
folks were once again gone.

This week however, the wandering stranger was back. I have seen him
camped out, surrounded by a mass of ripped black trashbags with his
possessions, sitting on the sidewalk, gazing off into space, or into
mysterious universes that most of us will never see. Unlike even the
most scruffy of the usual homeless crew on Schermerhorn Street, the
wandering stranger inhabits another place altogether. He is incredibly
unkempt and filthy. His hair black, matted, skin filthy through ripped
clothes. I have seen him over and over again for the past several
years. He must travel around the borough, or the city, perhaps the
planet. Eventually making his way back to Schermerhorn Street, never
bathing or changing his torn clothes. Carrying the same gear, only more
tattered than the last time.

He is like a mountain man, surviving, he finds a spot. Once he returns,
he will seem rooted to the same spot until he disappears and, hopefully
for him, returns again. As I passed yesterday, a man was berating the
wandering stranger, how he is a disgrace, what is wrong with him, etc.
Perhaps he is mentally ill, or perhaps he inhabits a place beyond the
material, beyond the need for home or comfortable clothes. Does he feel
free, like Jeremiah Johnson, like a mountain man? Existentially free?
Pitying us poor fools with our office-cubicle prisons or welfare
humiliations? It is certainly beyond my ability to tell. But meanwhile
he will remain rooted to his spot, with his trash and his visions,
until it is time for him to move on again.

–Brooklyn Beat