Positively 4th Street

I've forgotten the party, but I remember the bum, the one in Washington Square, stumbling around singing "New York, New York" to all the tourists and the students and the dogwalkers and dealers, really belting it out; he had a hell of a voice this guy, a boozy, old time Bowery voice, a real charming hounddog crooner, but he only had one note, a sustained shout he threw in anywhere he wanted to: at the end of "New York, New Yo--------k," or in the middle of some other jumbled line. He sang,

If you can make it there
You'll make it anywhere
It's up to you - 8 fucking million
You---------------------

He wore a wool Yankees cap and jean jacket and carried around a jug of chocolate milk he drank from in between songs. He was drunk, but I wasn't sure it was permanent or temporary. For all I knew this guy had a house with a backyard in Queens; he had work boots on; he could have been a contractor or the owner of a trucking company or a lost beat poet, the one in Tangier, sitting slumped in the corner of the room, ignoring the others, picking away at his guitar, mumbling to himself, "If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier." What I know for sure, what we all remember, is that this man was compelled to sing and he was making it up as he went along.