For as much as you loathe and resent having to be somewhere at a certain time in order to get money, walking up the steps of the M train at Bryant Park to find a homeless woman splayed out on her cardboard mattress staring directly at you in askance and expectance in the dead of winter is enough to make you mildly reconsider how much you hate your life.
Later in the day, if you happen to like taking jaunts on your lunch break, you will encounter not only her again, but also a gaggle of other pot-smoking homeless men (this is the one release they can always scrounge up money for). A tenement has formed off the M train right before your very eyes. And then it hits you: they’re living rent-free while you toil away for an apartment with a ceiling that’s caving in. And all to maintain your so-called foothold in New York while the Midtown homeless alliance has managed to do it without paying a dime.