DRAG RATS

Guadalupe street runs the length of the UT campus proper on the east side of the street, there are all manner of stores and shops on the west side that run beyond. From MLK Blvd. to 26th st. is what is known as the "drag".
Hang out for, over the years, hippies, punks, college students and in ever increasing numbers, tourists. I spent a lot of time there as a kid...cruising with my friends...smoking out...being "cool".
And there were always drag rats...or drag worms...or crusties...or bums...or, to be PC, the homeless.
A mix of drug addicts and drunks,hobos,the mentally ill and wannabes.
Toward the end of my career in social services I did street outreach with this diverse group of people.
Some of them were truly homeless and in need of help, some of them were rich kids from westlake hills who embraced the culture as rebellion and hung out on the drag, dressed in the clothes and drenched themselves in the attitude of the crusties. Until it got dark. then they would get in their cars or catch a ride back to the 300,000 dollar plus homes of their folks and ignore them while listening to emo/goth music and sticking more safety pins into their bodies.
Gentrification has been a creeping illness in this town and it hit the drag a few years ago, and there was a push to rid the drag of it's rats...worms...whatever.
I documented this change on the website I ran while I was doing outreach...the police handcuffing people to chain link fences and holding guns to the heads of their dogs.
Most drag rats have them...it's the fashionable accessory of any savvy drag rat. To their credit, they take good care of them, mostly because organizations like the one I worked for provided free food and had the hearts of several vets in our pockets.
Can't save the person, at least feed the dog.
Heroin was the currency of the crusties...a barter system revolving around addiction and usery.
There was a mobile needle exchange program, that,because of the rules and regulations of the city, we weren't allowed to disclose it's location...exactly...but we could give you a bleach kit.
And point you in the right direction.
The number of crusties has declined over the years, but they are still here.
The rich spoiled kid version has not changed in number, but they are somehow,perversely, more upscale. The uniform has gotten slicker...more Hot Topic and less homemade punk.
Poverty and poison courtesy of a fucking store at the mall.
I'm up and down the drag these days as an observer...we work at UT and go to places on the drag for break and for lunch.
We were cruising around 29th-30th streets the other day,killing time before going back to work after lunch.
This area to the east of the drag is student housing and a neighborhood and a kind of mini greenbelt park where the crusties have been pushed, away from the co-op and the metro and the starbucks.
I saw a small group of the "tribe" who had set up camp in an esplanade separating a hip coffee house and bordering a hip tex-mex restaurant.
There were four of them...all dressed in the traditional garb of the crusty. They looked like sex pistol era punks.
One of them was shooting up...one of them was doing the heroin nod in a dilapidated lawn chair...the other two were laying on a blanket.
In broad daylight, in the middle of the city, with a cop car less than a block away.
For some reason I thought of indians, and blankets.
And smallpox.