Excerpt from "Ethnography" by Ricky Price

I began volunteering for the Shelter on a weekly basis, initially attending an information session run by Lucky Michaels, the director of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York City’s (MCCNY) Homeless Youth Services. Lucky is a sprightly young gay man in his late twenties. He’s worked at the shelter since its inception and was promoted to Director of Homeless Services the previous summer. Lucky has a shaved head, which makes visible his tattoo of a circle with two horns, placed off-center on the back of his head. He usually dresses casually in jeans and a t-shirt, occasionally wearing a hooded sweatshirt. His clothes are baggy giving him a scrappy appearance that belies his remarkable ability at 5’7” or 5’8” to take command of the often-chaotic conditions at the shelter; his fervency and passion for his work emanate from his demeanor and personality. At the end of the information session Lucky stated, “These kids are rejected everywhere they go, this is the only place that’s theirs.” This statement would prove prescient as ideas, thoughts and sites of rejection became one of the most common themes throughout the ethnographic study.
When traveling to the site I take the F train to 34th Street and 6th avenue and from there it’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the shelter. The walk takes me across three avenue blocks, past the buzz of Madison Square Garden and the energy of the garment district. There is a swift change in this energy as I cross from 8th avenue to 9th : the throngs of people thin out and buildings quickly devolve from busy commercial restaurants and clothing stores into rundown apartment buildings. Colors also shift from bright red, blue and yellow to pale and paltry grays. The exit ramp for the Lincoln tunnel splits 36th street in half as I walk from 9th to 10th avenue and acts as a physical barrier between the western side of Manhattan and the bustle of midtown. Crossing the ramp is difficult and I wait five to seven minutes for an opportunity. It’s an area where the traffic feels dangerous and I often find myself comparing it to a great river crossing. During these moments I can’t help but see a symbolic significance within this physical barrier, a man-made asphalt river separating the shelter from the world.

Excerpt from "Ethnography" by Ricky Price