Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (20 page)

But the Development Corp.’s ground-breaking project was Theater Row. Robert Moss, director of Playwrights Horizon, was kicked out of a YMCA in 1974, about to lose state aid if a new location was not found. In utter desperation he rented a crumbling tenement within that unholy massage parlor stretch at Ninth Avenue, from which theater people stayed away in droves. One day during his first “season,” he saw men in suits pointing at surrounding tenements, an unusual sight. One of them was Fred Papert, who would next year become chairman of 42nd Street Development; at this location and time, Moss knew urban renewal was an inconceivable fantasy. But the Nat Home Theatre and the Lion Theatre moved in next door to his Playwrights Horizons. The Development Corp. took this cue to condemn five “derelict tenements” (containing the aforementioned wondrous cesspools), and solicit public grants and tax incentives. The entire block was quickly renovated into quaint off-off Broadway theaters.

The 42nd Street Development Corporation’s brochure coverline now asks, “What’s a Nice Girl Like Estelle Parsons Doing in a Massage Parlor on 42nd Street?” The actress toasts a wineglass in front of a nude oil painting at La Rousse, “a nice French restaurant that was the not-so-nice French Palace, a massage parlor, seven years ago.”

Times Square or Bust

Port Authority cops are recognizable by a deeper blue uniform than that of the NYPD. Empowered as state police, with jurisdiction over
two
states—NewYork and New Jersey—they can chase crooks across state lines, which city cops can’t do. Their force, currently reduced to 1,200, polices the three major airports, the shipping ports, tunnels, bridges, World Trade Center, and Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street.

The bus terminal is a block and a half square, with a quarter million people passing through daily. About 110 uniformed cops are assigned there, not including detectives and plainclothes. Their police station, near the Ninth Avenue sector of the depot, seems untouched since it opened as the Union Bus Terminal in 1950. The same institutional tile and light fixtures, the dreary decor of law enforcement, enveloped within a $150-million expansion and modernization of the Eighth Avenue building. Also untouched is the crusty Mid-City Lanes, with yellowed bowling pins and greasy hamburger-smoked walls, an anachronistic treasure buried behind the exposed steel girders of the rebuilt Port Authority.

But the police deal with bus emergencies that smack of modern times. Officers casually compare their visits to a colleague recovering well from a nearly fatal attack months before: a psychotic Cuban boat-refugee had knifed the cop in the side and twisted the blade up his torso, then stabbed another officer in the leg a dozen times, before being apprehended. “Luckily he kept hitting the bone,” says one cop who assisted in the capture, without even firing a shot. On another bus, a rabid bag lady sank her teeth into the arm of a female cop and wouldn’t let go for quite some time, while other cops tried to pry her head loose.

Outside the station, a blubbering, sickly, snot-nosed teenage girl reaches her hand out to two cops. The uniforms jump back a yard and order her not to touch them physically; they don’t know what the hell she might have.

This is the turf of Sergeant Bernard Poggioli, director of the Port Authority Police Youth Service Unit, who reminisces about his rookie season at the bus terminal in 1971: “Back then, Port Authority had an isolationist attitude. Something goes on across 42nd Street, even property damage—unless it was life and death—we stayed away. Now we’ve taken the attitude we’re part of the community, we’ve joined the 42nd Street Coalition. I’m amazed how clean it’s gotten. When I first came, you couldn’t even
walk
on Eighth Avenue. Nothin’ but pross and he-shes, animals, derelicts, it was a disaster, and nobody cared.

“In 1971, I was doin’ traffic duty, I arrested a pross and she was—he, as a matter of fact—was hailin’ cars. I locked the gentleman up, and the sergeant at the time said, ‘What are you doin’? That’s not our problem, that’s a New York City problem.’

“Not only that, Midtown South was the 14th Precinct then, you had maybe seventy, eighty cops, it wasn’t a super precinct yet. The pross were all junkies too, and there’d be two hundred gentlemen pretending to be ladies out there morning, noon, and night. You’d be talking to a girl who’s six-eight. You couldn’t believe there were that many fags out there.”

Run like a private corporation, Port Authority is actually a government-sponsored, bi-state agency that turns a profit. A change of leadership involved Port Authority in Times Square redevelopment by 1976, the pivotal year; when forces of good teamed up to battle the bad. They developed a social conscience.

“We used to go across the street, there was a place called Pleasure Studios; somebody’d get ripped off, somebody’d get shot, somebody’d get stabbed, people would fly out the windows. Everybody was makin’ money, except the poor schmuck who used to go in there and lose it.

“We shut down topless bars and massage parlors on 42nd Street between Ninth and Tenth. They sent over the manager of the bus terminal to one joint. It was funny, ‘cause he walked over with a summons like a businessman, said, ‘I’m with the Port Authority, we’re closing this down.’ The man answers, ‘Either get outta here, or we’ll kill ya.’ These people, ya gave ‘em a summons, they didn’t know anything. The manager got a little panicky, came back to the terminal. That became the first time we ever went over in force and did something. Once they saw the uniforms, they realized they hadda leave. ‘Okay, you’re closed, get out.’ Manager brought in the maintenance guys, they boarded it right up.”

The Youth Services Unit began in 1976 as an alternative to the criminal justice system. Three teams, each consisting of one plainclothes cop and one female social worker, escort kids unable to explain their presence in the terminal to the office, separate from police detention. Runaways are “status offenders”—the same actions by adults would not be illegal. Police return anyone under sixteen home, but they also confer with seven other children’s agencies. The unit handles runaways at all Port Authority facilities. Kennedy Airport, for instance, gets about fifteen runaways a year—international ones, at that. The bus terminal is legendary, however, as the gateway into Times Square for everyone who’s been run out of town by the sheriff, every discharged mental patient for whom funds have run out, and particularly for the proverbial runaway teens from across the U.S.A. who come here to be prostitutes. In 1983, Port Authority only caught fourteen runaways from midwestern states.

“The Minnesota Strip is a myth,” says Poggioli. “We dealt with twenty-five hundred kids last year. Out of that, nine hundred and thirty were runaways. Out of that nine hundred thirty, sixty-nine percent were from New York. You’re talking about a majority of kids being from the five boroughs, most from Brooklyn. It’s not that we never get kids from Minnesota, but it’s more fictionalized. Like all the kids that allegedly come here to be stars, to go onto Broadway. I think I’ve met two kids that actually came here thinking they were gonna do something. We met one yesterday who we took to the airport today. She walked outside and said, ‘Nooo, this is not what I expected, I’m goin’ home.’”

The sergeant points to an “upcoming social phenomenon.” Kids who’ve been tossed out by their families to fend for themselves in limbo are known as “throwaways.” He estimates some 20,000 desolate teenagers living out of abandoned tenements or rooftops in New York. Runaways at least have a potential place to return; throwaways don’t. Enter pimps and chicken hawks.

“They’re out there. That’s why our major concern is to get these kids before they leave the bus terminal for the street, where they’ll become hungry, confused. The pimps don’t have to go lookin’ for them. Other girls tell ‘em. The kid might find another girl who tells her how to work the street, then they move in together. Pimps don’t come in the bus terminal too often. Under 21 down the block houses two hundred fifty kids, walking in and out. Why should a pimp come in here and risk getting captured? One thing cops hate are pimps. Especially pimps that prey on kids. You’re always lookin’ at kids as if they were your own, and out of all the cops here, maybe four don’t have children. You see a guy approach a kid, you’re gonna hassle him. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that dude is gonna get hassled. He’s gonna get bounced. You have their car towed, you create such aggravation that they don’t wanna be here. We have a loitering statute. Legalized harassment. If we don’t do that, they’ll move in.

“The classic pimp, with the big yellow Cadillac and the white-wall tires, they’re few and far between. What you do have is a lot of boyfriend-type pimps. When these girls don’t do what the pimp tells ‘em, the pimp beats ‘em, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts. This is their philosophy. There’s an entire subculture out there. You don’t go out cold as a sweet little kid to this big bad pimp. Everybody drills into their kids you don’t talk to strangers, watch out for pimps in flashy cars. But you start talking to other kids who’ve been on the street and they’ll tell you, ‘What’s the difference? So you do this guy, so what? You never did it before?’ Some of these kids are embarrassed to say they never did it before, now they gotta show they’re street-smart. Everybody’s doin’ it, so what’s the difference? This one’s doin’ John, Frank, Jim, and Jack, so why not do Freddy too, for a ten-spot?

“A boy doesn’t stick out as much as a girl, he’s dressed normal. You ask him how he’s making money, he’ll say ‘I rip somebody off, I shine shoes,’ most boys aren’t gonna tell you they sell their ass. The girls’ll say, ‘Well, I got a boyfriend who takes care of me.’ Now, if a girl decides she wants to press against a pimp, we’ll definitely arrest the guy, no ifs, ands, or buts. But chances are it’s not goin’ anywhere. This court system is so screwed up now, they’ll say the kid probably did it on her own, unless she’s a first-time runaway that just came out of Catholic school and planned on being a nun until she left.”

Times Square’s Good Shepherd

In Covenant House’s modest chapel—where Father Bruce Ritter, the organization’s founder and president, once conducted Sunday services—there are eight huge paintings by a Franciscan priest, a colleague of Father Bruce’s. They represent the Covenant House/Under 21 experience. First in the series is a crucified Hispanic male who also bleeds from the crotch, with the face of Jesus superimposed. This, says a Covenant volunteer standing before the painting, symbolizes “Christ still being crucified today in Times Square.” The image of this muscular, goateed Roberto Duran look-alike is that of a man, not a boy
under twenty-one.
The second canvas portrays Father Bruce hovering over two ragamuffins, his arms spread in a lordly gesture of acceptance.

A few paintings down the road, we come to the phase of religious counseling, a later step within the strict curriculum for kids who stick it out at Covenant House. It shows a black boy sitting under a rainbow, inwardly reflective. The last painting brings back the crucified Roberto Duran, back on his feet, his soul repaired and rejuvenated, but with crucifixion scars, symbolic of leaving Covenant House successfully.

These days, Father Bruce rarely makes it to the chapel where he is portrayed in an almost biblical confrontation between good and evil. He can now conduct a dozen Masses on a weekend, busily soliciting funds around the country for his internationally expanding homeless-youth crisis centers. The budget for six cities was $24 million in 1983. Father Bruce has described his flagship Times Square operation as “an intensive care unit for dying children.”

Covenant’s satellite crisis center, Under 21, is out on Eighth Avenue, housing nineteen-and twenty-year-old males. Some of the ravaged faces who appear at its doors could almost pass for forty. The kids deposit their knives at the front desk before being buzzed through for a night’s sleep. But Covenant House itself is a large, concrete compound at 41st and Tenth Avenue—formerly a state-prison drug rehab center—which now serves as Times Square’s cultish sanctuary for runaways, throwaways, and homeless teens. No questions asked, no background check, immediate grub, roof, threads, medical care, or protection. Closed to all but those “Under 21,” with home-made security guards to keep out riffraff and pimps who have threatened to come in shooting if their girls weren’t released, according to staff.

In the reception area are several Puerto Rican girls with black eyes, waiting for appointments with their social workers. Nuns in blue summer habits pass by. The furniture, in brightly colored modern shapes, is part of an expenditure to soften up the institutional layout for children’s eyes. An endless procession of donated clothes and records comes to the front desk.

A tall, stunning Amazonian lady is escorted in, carrying boxes. She emanates wealth, much out of place here, her hair coiffed, dressed for evening, as if a limo awaits outside from which she keeps producing gifts. None of the nuns or staff inside blink an eye; charity is routine at the desk. Covenant personnel assist her in carrying a rowing machine, donated to Father Bruce’s “kids.” Someone else has donated a radar detector, sitting on the floor. Staffers will weed through these clothes and records, rejecting unwholesome influences. A woman once came to Covenant House’s reception desk with two Blackglama fur coats. The receptionist wrapped himself in one, but Father Bruce took them away. Another anonymous female citizen dropped off an envelope containing five grand in cash. The basement contains stockpiles of extra stuff for kids who’ve “graduated,” deserving silverware, towels, and the like when setting up house.

They’re all “good kids,” Father Bruce has always said, “my kids,” generically, and more than 230 are provided with meals, room, and board each day. Others trample through just for meals, or give it a brief try after living out of subways, gutters, and Playland video arcades where the boys behind the pinballs sell their tails to fags. Incorporated in 1972, the Covenant now mostly houses dispossessed black boys from the boroughs.