Hoop Dreams

On the M train home from picking up my son from school, a black boy around nine or ten years old came on our car and made an announcement on how he was asking for donations to help his basketball team get new supplies. I never know whether people on the subway, whether they be kids or adults, are really asking for money for the causes they claim. But it's not just the subway panhandlers I'm not so sure about - I also wonder if the money donated to charities just goes into the pockets of the people in charge. So I don't give anything, except to musicians if I think they're good. Besides, never having had much money I've always chosen to give of my time. Since I was fifteen, I've volunteered at food banks, soup kitchens, prepared food for homebound people with AIDS, read to the blind, mentored kids from homeless shelters, tutored low income kids in East Harlem, taught photography at low income schools, and delivered meals to homebound senior citizens.

Big Joe gives money to just about anyone who asks. He figures that if they're asking, they need it, he doesn't care what their reasons are.

Once, a skinny black man stopped me on the way home late one rainy night in Park Slope, giving me a long hard luck story about needing money to get his AIDS medication. He was even crying. He promised to pay me back and gave me his name and address. I offered to get the medication for him, but he told me the drugstore that carried his prescription was in another neighbourhood. So I gave him a hug and ten bucks. Needless to say, the name and address were fake. And years ago I used to give money to homeless people on the street, but a number of times the homeless men used that opportunity to make lewd comments to me. So that was the end of that. But today I got to thinking about the popularity of basketball in our hood and the sad state of the basketball hoops on Bed-Stuy's streets. And it makes me wonder if I should have given this kid some money after all. Or even better, to start a fundraiser to replace the milk crates in our hood with actual hoops. Because the need is clearly there, subway scammers or no.