What drives a person to become a pimp?
Last time I was in this neighborhood, while walking along Roosevelt Avenue in the shadows of the overhead MTA rails, someone, invariably Latino, who seemed to just stand around doing nothing, suddenly shifts in his stand and says, partly to himself, partly to the air, and partly enough to a passer-by to know that he's being addressed, "Social! Social?"
It has since been explained to me by Eric that they're offering fake social security cards, presumably to illegal immigrants. Last time I was here, a big fake social security card gang was busted, their headquarter turned out to be a chinese restaurant along Roosevelt Avenue, 80's Street crossing.
This time around, for a split second, when the usual street stander-by flinched when I passed by, I thought, the bust was completely useless. They're back. Then a surprise. instead of offering social security cards, they now offer, "Chicas!, Chicas?"
In Manhattan, it's big business I guess. If you're desirable, there's plenty of people who has plenty enough money to give you want you want. I highly doubt if for the big city prostitue, it's a matter of survival. But here... I suspect it's a completely different dynamic. This is on the same street where, just a few blocks away, on a bridge, immigrants stand by offering themselves to day-to-day manual labor. A vehicle parks, the driver, say, needs someone to shovel the snow from his front yard, and engages one of the immigrants on the bridge. The chicas-offering pimps don't even cater to this drive-by customers, but to pedestrian passers-by. How much could the chicas possibly earn from this? How much could these pimps get from this?
Or maybe it is the same... It's all a matter of survival. Maybe it's just a different kind. For a moment I tried to picture a woman in a small dark room waiting for her pimp bringing in a customer. The image I had in my mind was just too ugly that I just walked along as fast as I could.
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