Excerpt from The Bowery Project, written between 2000-02, used with permission of Coffee House Press:

The Bowery Project is centered on observations of activities that occurred and of objects that appeared on a brief section of the Bowery between Second Street and Houston, an area that contains the remnants of SRO (single room occupancy) hotels and the remains of the 1890's Bowery that are slated to be demolished by The Cooper Square Development Plan in the next year. There are several endangered historic spaces; the artist's co-op (Kate Millett lives there) that used to be McGurk's Suicide Hall, (so called because of the numerous suicides that took place there. According to Luc Sante's Low Life, in one sample year 1899, at least six suicides took place ), the Sunshine Hotel, and various soup kitchens are on the line. To date, the residents of McGurk's are fighting to preserve their building which is an important landmark in women's history.

I live a block from this section and travel through it daily. My intent is not to romanticize the suffering or demonize the Bowery or its residents, but rather to observe the changes the Bowery is currently undergoing and also to write about my own dilemma and identification as a citizen one paycheck away from the street.

The Bowery Project involves experiments in public character as inspired by Jane Jacobs in her landmark attack on urban planning in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, first published in 1961. Jacobs defines a public character as the person on the street who knows everyone and whom everyone knows, this person serves as the eyes on the street, and thus lends cohesion to the community and serves to prevent crime.

Another book that I took inspiration from was Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier, a five year study of the lives of black men who sell used books and magazines on 6th Avenue. Duneier draws upon Jacobs' insight into the use of sidewalks and the role of public characters.

So I began to think about the possibly of leaving the anonymity of the page and becoming a public character, that is a public poet.

– Brenda Coultas, August 6, 02

The Bowery Project

An Experiment in Public Character

The movie star lives in an old furniture store with huge display windows covered with gold blinds. If you look up, you can see the tops of his closets through the 2nd floor window and you say to yourself with awe, those are the suits of a famous man, those are the wire hangers and sleeves of a famous man.

The Bowery Plan goes something like this, there are explosions and condos arising Las Vegas like from the smoke. There are floodlights and fireworks or helium balloon races or ribbons cut or ground broken with ceremonial shovels or trees wrapped in yellow ribbons or butterflies, freshly hatched, flying out of boxes. That is the mayor's plan, however mine is different, mine includes groupings of tables and chairs and hanging plants, all portable, public gardens and open houses and a faux suicide reenactment by 5 bungee jumping squatters at McGurk's Suicide Hall.

Do you remember the stone soup story, how a beggar came to town and began to boil water? Well, bring me a potato. Bring me a story.

I'm not a public character nor do I sleep in open spaces or sleep on bum bed pads in public rather I sleep and toilet in private and think of public spaces. Inside I eat it all and Sal, our homeless, says he's drinking it all in before heading to Las Vegas. I'll miss our homeless although we don't do anything for him.

Don't like to be touched by ghosts except for invisible ones, not cloudy kinds where you can make out the entire face and hear them speak. Bowery Bum ghosts are real people although they sleep in rooms made of chicken wire. They are not apparitions of McGurk's Suicide Hall or tenement life circa 1900.

I squat down to touch gray Gap T-shirt on street outside Bowery Bar. I'd just seen an ad of 6 real people wearing same gray T-shirt, Thought I could wear this one. Was damp with a liquid, got repulsed, dropped it.

I take a break from the Bowery, on train to Hamptons to see our Joe and Janice. Couple fighting, young man with expensive gangster rapper pants, hand tooled 70's belt, two silver mouth studs, perfectly in your face Hampton's punk-gangster chic, saying to plain girl, "This is the worst day of my life, you miserable bitch."

Dumpster outside Fisher sheet music store
Can't see into it, must be climbed.

Double high red dumpster with office debris and a promising office chair, green leather and metal. Circa early industrial 60s half buried in the rubble. (Astor Place and Lafayette.)

Trash can by Film Anthology; a bright patterned dress pulled out with fingers, label looked expensive, got creeped out, dropped on rim of can, walked on. (2nd St. & 2nd Ave.)

I have been obsessed with chairs lately. Mostly random chairs and sitting spots, a hidden surprise plastic Andirondack chair by creek, groups of chairs as if in conversation therefore a need for close physical proximity. In restaurants, if you are one person you cannot sit at the 4 top or 6 top, you must sit at the 2 top and they remove the other place setting but leave the chair intact. In photographs of my dad's barn I notice chairs where before I used to notice cats. This time only one cat appears. Up in the hayloft are rockers with missing woven reed seats and a couch that I covered with a sheet against the bird droppings, a great place to sit and look out the window. That is what I do best, sit and look out windows.

Woke up seeing garbage with new eyes and new fresh attitude. Felt transcendental all day.

In order to transform into a public character I need to claim a public space. I will sit in a chair on the Bowery at the same place and time for a season and participate and expedite street life. I'm going to dump it all in, everything that occurs to me or everything I see. That will be my data, my eyes upon the street; the first hand observation of this last bum-claimed space, a small record before the wrecking ball arrives. I'm taking only pen and notepad. Everything I truly need will appear--I'm not an archaeologist, but am a studier of persons and documentor of trails. (Bowery & 1st)

She said he lives here pointing at a green building and I said what is he like?
"Intense." She said.
I said thinking about his photographs and how he carves words into his prints, "for a person like that it must be hard to be in the world."
"Yes," She said.
I thought about the emotion of his pictures.
I said, "You can't see inside."
We walked on. (Bleeker & Bowery)

I've cultivated a joy of dumpsters out of necessity, romanticized dumpster diving in order to make hunting and gathering interesting. I had a good attitude until recently, I've become ashamed, developed a fear of being yelled at for disturbing the recycling. That's where I get my magazines. Some people say "You love garbage, I've seen you get so excited about it." But really, its just a glamorous pose.

I used to dream of yard sales, where I was the first person there and every collectable I ever desired was on the table, but I had to grab them before the others arrived. I trembled, I tremble in real life before the good stuff.

A Bowery Bum asked "Can I talk to you for a minute? He burped loudly in my ear. Later he asked me to look up at the sun where he had written his name. Then to hug him, I did both. Why do I listen to Bowery Bums?

Peacock fan chair on sidewalk. Another peacock chair lying in vacant lot next to wet matted rat.

No notable garbage today despite big pile of rubble from the destruction of a collapsed building on 2nd and Houston. Big blue dumpster hauled to the scene. Would I see anything worth recording? Will I have access to that dumspter or will it remain behind the cops' yellow ribbon?

Later remembered sadly that I hadn't thought about my revolutionary idea of surprise chairs in public space. Or the accidental overlooking of sitting space, such as rails without spikes, or bum-friendly stoops like Joe's where Sal lives. This is a new plan, reverse musical chairs. The number of chairs increases every time there's a pause in the honking, holey mufflers, brakes squealing, cell phone conversations, sirens wailing and humans crying, a new chair appears. The point of the game is to seat everyone. The point is that there is a seat for everyone.

II

Orange chair, 70s, metal legs, dirt ring in plastic seat, Apple color printer, metal cig machine on top of dumpster, front opened. Air conditioner without a shell. (February 8, 01, Bowery & 2nd St.)

Wooden canvas cot folded up and chairs grouped by a fire hydrant and a man explaining the function of formally everyday objects because we couldn't understand anymore and we couldn't even see how the body fit into them nor how they could possibly serve it. There was a metal dish on a stand. It was a nurse's basin he explained. I examined it, turning it over
There was a long metal cylinder lying on the ground.
"Is that an iron lung?"
"No, that's a mid-century Electrolux."

Puddle of puke ( Bowery & First St., March 1, 01)

We were talking about the garbage in the 1970s before people got black plastic bags and ruined it. He said you couldn't window shop big trash night anymore. There was no way to see what was inside the plastic without opening it. He said you should have seen it before, copper pots and pans, designer bric a brack, china, crystal, the clothes from Bloomingsdales, no less! All in plain sight. He said imagine the castoffs of the upper east side! What glorious days.

Someone said if you had a million dollars I know you'd still work, that's the kind of person you are. What kind of person is that? Then I was very angry at myself for working as if I was a millionaire.

This will be my museum. I'll put it all down here on the page, a portable museum of the 1890s and the 1990s on the Bowery, better'n film, no pocket projectors invented yet, but real words to be copied and read and I write slow cause I expect to live a long time.

What I saw on the Bowery: A bum sitting in an early 20th century vault, a small vault, front door missing, on its back filled with water and trash and now, a bum drinking out of bag, his ass firmly planted, his arms and legs sticking out. That's what I saw, a resourceful response to chairlessness.