Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department 1984-2004, by Joseph Rivera, powerHouse Books/Miss Rosen Editions, $35.
To veterans of New York City life, an undercurrent of concern runs through the ongoing fiscal crisis, a worry that it could trigger disorder similar to what unfolded during the city’s last prolonged economic downturn. By the mid-1980s, New York had only just begun to emerge from a long decline (at least until the crack epidemic and another recession wreaked more havoc by the early 90s) in which neglect worsened conditions for impoverished neighborhoods, the homeless population surged and crime soared to record levels.
And while much in the city has changed in recent years – as illustrated by the calm reaction to the 2003 blackout compared to the mayhem that accompanied the 1977 power outage – the perception that the midnight hour morphs New York into a threatening metropolis still endures as conventional wisdom.
Not entirely without reason. In the so-called “city that never sleeps,” a 3:30 a.m. stroll in Times Square, even, reveals desolate sidewalks in a daunting landscape. Married co-authors Russell Leigh Sharman, a Brooklyn College anthropology professor who also published “The Tenants of East Harlem” in 2006, and writer Cheryl Harris Sharman spent one year plumbing the city’s overnights. They explain that when “...the day-dwellers lock themselves in against an accumulated fear of the night, the city slowly slouches into its own skin, revealing a vulnerability and an occasional mean streak to those who brave its darker side.”
Beginning in the spring of 2006, the Sharmans spent a year traveling throughout the five boroughs to explore the daily lives of individuals working long after most people have gone to sleep: 24-hour deli employees, cabdrivers, custodians and subway conductors. In other words, those who are usually invisible because they work in the shadows. What the authors unearth isn’t the frighteningly gritty landscape that has been seared into the public consciousness courtesy of Hollywood screenwriters since the 1970s. Instead, this nonfiction tour bypasses generalizations with thorough research and sharp reporting to illuminate a complex and insular world foreign to most New Yorkers. Over 18 chapters, each concerning a different theme in which the detail-oriented authors allow the story behind the rhythm of the night to unfold through the eyes of those who know it best, we learn that in the dark, New York actually has much in common with the rest of the country.
As the authors themselves point out, previous works like 1987’s “Night as Frontier” by sociologist Murray Melbin already have contrasted denizens of the night with their daytime counterparts. But with superbly non-intrusive storytelling, the Sharmans examine conditions faced by a labor pool of lower and working-class people of color – mostly immigrants from countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean – as they toil away on the city’s late shift in the age of globalization. With its focus on workers, as opposed to, say, nightclubs or crime, “Nightshift NYC” becomes a book about labor issues as much as anything.
Not surprisingly, an ample array of colorful characters materialize, but the strength of the book ultimately lies in its ability to connect those lives to the broader fault lines of society. And so, a Pakistani taxi driver, who resides in Brooklyn, tries to reconcile safety concerns with his own fear of picking up black pedestrians commuting to the borough. There’s the female registered nurse who, after working overnight at a local hospital, sacrifices hours of daytime sleep to maintain relationships with family members and friends. And a customs border protection officer at JFK International Airport who works the nightshift to put himself through college only to watch his grades plummet in the process.
