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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 2012)
street roots Jan. 6, 2012 One day in the life of a Russian vendor Selling the street paper with Vitaly, one o f the homeless millions in an unforgiving landscape BY ALEKSEY TALIPOV STREET NEWS SERVICE ne of four million homeless people in Russia, Vitaly Petrovich Shashlov is a vendor of street paper Put Domoi in St. Petersburg. He is 67 years old and has been selling the magazine for 12 years. To know what a day in the life of a Russian street paper vendor is all about, I am spending a day with Vitaly in St. Petersburg. We meet at the Put Domoi distribution center, where Vitaly arrives with his iron cart and a rucksack. He looks at me suspiciously and is thinking for a long time before answering each question. He says he wants to make sure he says the right things. When I ask whether I can take pictures of him, he appears somewhat shy at first. Thankfully, I manage to break the ice a few minutes later. Vitaly picks up several heavy packs of newspapers and realizes that he can’t manage to put them all in his cart and rucksack. I offer to help, which he seems to appreciate. On our way to a tramway stop, he brightens up, but still Russian vendor o f street paper P u t Domoi Vitaly Petrovich Shashlov on the streets o f St. Petersburg. does not want to speak much about himself. After a while, he opens up and tells me about his previous job as a street cleaner. Then, something wonderful happens. A He says he was proud of that job because younger woman with grocery bags he could do it regardless of his age. I see approaches Vitaly, pulls him aside by his him off to go selling, and we agree to meet sleeve and tells him something later at the Nevskiy Prospect tube station. confidentially. Vitaly listens to her, almost While saying goodbye, he looks at me for a looking like a father figure, nodding his while and offers me a handshake. head sympathetically. To a spectator, the At the meeting time, I search the area two of them — Vitaly with his wild beard and around the station but I can’t find Vitaly. the petite Russian woman — look like an When I call him to find out where he is, he Orthodox priest and a parishioner. sounds a bit irritated and says he is in the In the flow of people, Vitaliy stands out, station hall, but that he doesn’t have time, despite his short posture. Unlike other before hanging up the phone. I take the newspaper sellers, he does not shout out stairs to the station hall when he rings me loud to advertise his product. Instead, he again, and tells me to go to the stands quietly, pressing the pack of papers Vasileostrovskaya station instead to meet against his chest, only moving his head, him. looking over his shoulder to make eye As I arrive there, I see Vitaly stand contact with a new stream of customers proudly in the center of the hall talking to a coming off a train or escalator. He moves young person, who buys a copy of Put his head slowly towards his shoulder from Domoi from him. I decide to stay out of his time to time but his body does not move. sight not to distract him. It soon gets busy And still, there is something about him that as if he wants to say: “Just you watch.” and another young man smiles at Vitaly and makes you look twice. He mirrors wisdom Within minutes after my comment the buys a copy. I watch for a while as more and life experience. women start to approach us. people approach Vitaly, talk to him for some Slowly moving toward me, he tells me we Vitaly explains that his readers are all time and buy a street paper. When there are boarding the next train and going to very different. “I cannot describe one Primorskaya station. Once we are on the seemed to be a slight break in the steady particular kind of buyer, it is all sorts of coach, he complains that he is not allowed move of customers, I walked up to him and people,” he says. His comment is illustrated to distribute the papers in a train, which ask if my shooting pictures could interfere by the many people that approach Vitaly in seems unfair as a lot of illegal sellers get with his work. Shashlov grins at me and the short time we are at the station: from away with it. “They are putting up a show,” tells me his trade secret: “The more people students to older women and young working he says, with irony in his voice. there are around me, the higher the professionals who according to Vitalyu “like At Primorskaya station I do not take any probability that other people come.” unusual things.” pictures, but just stand next to him and And indeed, people kept coming and At the end of a long sales day, Vitaly watch the business. Vitaly manages to sell going and buying his newspapers as I took seems satisfied with the turnover. I thank almost all the papers. He has taken with pictures and chatted with Vitaly. Business is him. He explains how difficult it is to predict him and buy one of his last copies before we good, but Vitaly explains that it is not say goodbye. each morning how much stock to buy, as possible to stay at one station for a long you never know how many papers you might time, because police officers are watching Translated from R ussian into English by sell. A lot of young people approach Vitaly. and often ask him to leave. He explains that Elena Volkova When I notice that not many younger ladies was the reason why he had to leave the seem to buy the paper from him, he smiles previous station in a rush. O ,A' -Wj i | |||| 1| Don't let an old paper get you down! Vendors are out selling new issues of Street Roots every two weeks! P H O T O S B Y A L E K S E Y T A L IP O V Homelessness in Russia In Russia, a homeless person is not simply someone without a home. Access to virtually all state-funded social and medical services in Russia is dependent on a person’s having a “propiska” — that is, registration at their place of residence. If, for whatever reason (family circumstances, a fraudulent property deal, inability to replace lost documents, etc.), a person cannot show that they have this registration, they are effectively excluded from society: they will not be able to obtain a legitimate job, access free healthcare, take recourse to law, have their marriage registered, or obtain education for their children, among other complications. There are currently about four million people living in Russia without registration. Many of these people have nowhere to stay, face hunger, cold, poverty and loneliness, and are treated with suspicion by those around them. In most cases, they receive no help in solving their problems or surviving the dangers of life on the streets. St. Petersburg-based street paper Put Domoi, a sister paper to Street Roots, is one of the few organizations in Russia that provides a financial lifeline directly to the homeless. Street Roots, Put Domoi, and 115 other papers are members of the International Network of Street Papers around the world. Combined, the street paper movement provide an income for about 1 million vendors globally. The more a person loves themselves and takes themselves seriously, chances are the people you come across will do the same as well. ” — Marlon Crump Street Roots Vendor
