One was a night to go to the theater and watch "Storied Streets," a documentary about the homeless, produced by Susan Sarandon. It was a great experience, particularly as what I see here in my town varies significantly from what those who work with the homeless in big cities see. It was mostly the big city homeless who were focused on in this doc. By the way, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about homelessness. It's available on Amazon Prime for around $15.
Anyway, the most heart-rending thing about this documentary was the footage it featured of kids doing horrible things to those sleeping on the streets. I had to turn my head at one point, and I won't go into the details here, because why perpetuate the awfulness? Watching and hearing about these things, however, got me wondering what Bobby's homeless experience had been in New York. It hurt my very heart to think that any abuse was heaped upon him in this way.
Of course, I've mentioned countless times on this blog that there are more questions than answers regarding Bobby's state of affairs in NYC, and we know that obviously he was found on a cot in an abandoned apartment. So he was, clearly, homeless. But we can't know for how long, or if he'd had any experience sleeping on the actual streets. The odd thing about Bobby's homeless experience is, there are contradictions to what you'd see out of the typical New York homeless person's life. For instance, in the last two pictures taken of him, he was still well-dressed and somewhat stylish. He was finding a way to get clothes, and it could be that they were charity clothes that he knew how to match well, but he also seemed to find a way to shave and clean up -- at least outwardly. He also was using most of the time he was there, so I'm not sure how he was getting money for drugs, either. The point is -- be it legitimate resourcefulness or through illicit activities, Bobby was finding a way to "make it" by slightly higher standards the brunt of the time he was in the city. So I'm not really sure how much of his experience mirrored most of the rest of the homeless population there.
One must also, however, remember that the NYC of the 1960's isn't the NYC of today. So I went searching for some information about being homeless during that time period, and found some video footage of some homeless people right around the time Bobby would have been (or shortly after his death).
If you're interested, watch it. They may give some insight as to what life was like for him in those last months. I've been surprised at how many additional resources can give a window into Bobby's life that doesn't actually have to do with him directly.
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