The Street

"You know like I say I'm just a drifter. I like to travel from different cities."

The Street[1]
Series
Work In Progress
Original Broadcast Date
1988
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Real People, 60 minutes
Preceded by: Building A Church
Followed by: Lines

The Street is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Work In Progress. It was originally broadcast in 1988.

Synopsis

  • A man talks about riding the rails.
  • An evening by the campfire, fighting, anxiety, two of the three most dangerous things.
  • Two guys talk about treating people with respect, drinking, making noise in the night. A joke about Bad Johnny's pencil. They whistle and accost passers-by. Seducing young boys.
  • Having met Christ in the street and not helping him.
  • A man says he is a champion, plans to go to Canada, bitter rambling.
  • A woman by the fire: the street as a cultural experience. Her middle class upbringing. Vegetarianism and alcoholism.
  • A couple discuss life in 2017, cocktails on mars. Traveling and Europe compared with Fairy tales. Getting stuck in the US.
  • The woman is new to the street, is anxious about her children. A precocious young reader is unprepared for the material he reads.
  • Seeing one's mother killed by cops in the Watts riot.
  • Living like caucasian people made us live, fearlessness, the verge of violence.
  • Sounds from a bar, several men and a woman talk: she's from a good family, got stuck here on drugs and hooking.
  • Pride and keeping one's condition from family. Relating to poor people, preferring the street.
  • A man was in prison for eight years for strong arm robbery, makes a vow to go clean, can't get work.
  • The poor share what they have, are oppressed, while the rich commit crimes. He breaks his leg, tries to get medical help without insurance. Bar-room brawls. Carrying knives.
  • Sounds from the street: finding a place to sleep, getting harassed by cops. Food banks.

Music

This is an incomplete record of the music in this program. If you can add more information, please do.

Additional credits

The original broadcast credits state: "[P]roduced by Carey Breese."

Miscellanea

"...one program that I'm proud of, where I went out into downtown Los Angeles with a tape recorder and talked to people who were living on the streets. And what the program ultimately became was just voices of people, homeless people, people in trouble, and I wasn't in it. I just had a music mix, and you just heard these voices out of nowhere without any - not being explained, no interviewer, just the voices of the people on the street." - Joe Frank on WFMU, 1991

Footnotes

  1. Joe added music to several of his shows when they were rebroadcast or digitized. The updated versions are usually available at Joefrank.com