David Simon - The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighbourhood

= Open-air drug markets in 1993
Numbers in italic type refer to inset

1. Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center
   1a. MLK center playground
2. The Dew Drop Inn, 1625 Fayette Street (home to Fran, DeAndre, DeRodd in January 1993)
3. 1717 Fayette Street (vacant house, once home to Gary, Fran, and DeAndre)
4. 1806 Fayette Street (Ella Thompsons apartment)
5. 1827 Vine Street (the McCullough home)
6. 1825 Vine Street (Annies house)
7. 1846 Fayette Street (Blues house)
8. R.C.s apartment building
9. St. James Methodist Church
10. St. Martin's Roman Catholic Church
11. Monroe and Fayette (Fat Curts corner)
12. Bentalou Recreation Center
13. 2526 Boyd Street (new home for Fran, DeAndre, and DeRodd as of late September 1993)
14. Westside Shopping Center
15. United Iron & Metal Company
16. The scrap yard on McPhail Street
17. Bon Secours Hospital
18. Scoogies house
19. Tyreekas house in January 1993 (the family's later move to Riggs Avenue puts them twenty blocks north by northwest, off the map)
20. Francis M. Woods Senior High School
21. Franklin Square Park
22. Union Square Park
23. Seapride Crabhouse (one of four In the Pratt and Monroe Street area, known as Crab Alley)
24. Pops shooting gallery
25. Browns funeral establishment
26. Fairmount and Gilmore (DeAndres winter corner)
27. McHenry and Gilmore (C.M.B.s summer corner)
28. Mt. Clare Shopping Center

ONE

Fat Curt is on the corner.

He leans hard into his aluminum hospital cane, bent to this ancient business of survival. His fattened, needle-scarred hands will never again see the deep bottom of a trouser pocket; his forearms are swollen leather; his bloated legs mass up from the concrete. But then obese limbs converge on a withered torso: At the heart of the man, Fat Curt is fat no more.

Yo, Curt.

Turning slightly, Curt watches Junie glide over from the other side of Fayette, heading into Blues for the evenings last shot. Curt stops, a few feet from Blues door, and heres Mr. Blue himself, standing on the front steps of what was once his mothers pristine rowhome, scratching at the edges of his beard between arrivals, pocketing two bills from each, though its two more if you need a fresh tool. No charge, of course, for share and share alike.

From down the hill near Gilmor comes a short string of gunshotstoo even, too deliberate for firecrackers. Barely tensing, Blue allows Junie to edge past him on the marble steps. A regular: no charge for Junie.

They shootin already, says Blue.

Curt grunts. Motherfuckers cant tell no time.

Blue smiles softly, then turns to follow Junie inside.

Fat Curt slips slowly toward Monroe, reddened eyes tracking a white boy who pulls to the curb in a battered pickup. But theres no play here; one of Gee Moneys younger touts has already laid hands on the sale.

Curt works his way around the corner to Vine, passing Bryan, who nods acknowledgment. No sale here, either; not with Bryan Sampson out here working his own tired hustle, selling that baking soda. Curt shakes his head: Bryan looking to get his ass shot up again behind that Arm & Hammer shit.

From down the hill, from somewhere around Hollins and Payson this time, comes more crackling syncopationthe beginning of the deluge to come, though it isnt quite eleven yet. Curt shrugs it off and shuffles back toward Fayette. Time enough left, he knows, to make a little money.

Wassup?

Finally, a face he knows from down on Mount Street, a gaunt dark-skinned fiend, scurrying up the hill in the hope of catching a better product. Coming right at Curt.

Wassup now?

Curt growls assent. Shops open.

Somethin good?

Fat Curt, the oracle. Twenty-five years in service on these streets, and everyone knows theres no better tout at the corner where Fayette meets Monroe. Curtis Davis is the gravel-voiced purveyor of credible information, a steadfast believer in quality control and consumer advocacy. No bullshit, no burn bags, no watered-down B-and-Q garbage. Fat Curt, a tout among touts.

Might try round the way, he says, turning and gesturing with his cane toward the entrance to Vine Street.

The fiend takes his hunger down the block as Curt gives a confirming nod to the lookout at the mouth of the alley. Slowly, the aging tout canes his way back to the corner, shuffling beneath the jaundiced glare of sodium vapor. The city has put stage lighting out here; its harsh and direct, openly contemptuous of the scene itself. Fat Curt is forever exposed in the ugly glow, but he can remember when dull blue light washed more gently over these deeds, a time when the neighborhood was permitted some small privacy. Now, at an hour to midnight, the corner is visible at a full blocks distance. Dope and coke. Coke and dope. Twenty-four, seven: twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

More gunshots. Fulton and Lex by the sound of it. But Curt is still on post, waiting for the next sale, when the Western uniforms roll up for a last pass at the corner. The radio cars move slowly down Monroe, but its not a jump-out this time, just the ceremonial eyefuck and a sullen showing of the colors.

From down near Hollins and Payson again comes a long, staccato string. Ten or twelve in a row and nine millimeter by the report. But the police ignore it, their faces instead scanning the foot traffic, their brake lights showing red.

The lookouts raise up and go. The touts, customers, and runners stream away, evaporating like mist, moving down Fayette and into the back alleys. Fat Curt, too, turns from the police cruisers, stepping cane-to-foot-to-cane so slowly that any movement is more implied than realjust enough effort to suggest a polite, territorial retreat. From experience, Curt knows that it will be a short visit, that no right-minded police will be out on these streets fifteen minutes from now.