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Tony pays $280 a month for a room in a rooming house. The location, 7th and Market, is safe, but the street noise is terrible. Tony has a front room. There is no kitchen, only a common bathroom on each floor. "One of the guys there shits on the toilet seat," Tony complains. He's from Kensington, a traditionally Irish neighborhood that is now Irish, Puerto Rican, Black and Vietnamese. Tony used to work as pizza delivery man. He drove in Philly, but that felt so unsafe, he got a job in Cape May on the New Jersey Shore. On an average night, he'd make $100. On a very good night, $200 or more. Tony bought a house for 40 grand, sold it a few years later for a 20 thousand dollar profit. He also inherited 50 grand from an uncle. That was Tony's financial peak.

In drug rehab, Tony met Tina McGuinness. I'd run into Tina at a Camden tent city. Kensington girl, Tina told me she was a former Miss New Jersey.

Tony's been busking for two years. He gets nervous playing in public so, this day, he drank two cans of beer beforehand. He couldn't afford to go inside a bar, so he knocked them down outside. "I'm too old to be arrested for drinking in public," he said. "And plus, I wouldn't be able to pay the fine." On this Sunday, he could have picked a much better spot to make money, not this back corridor of a nearly empty commuter train station.





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