merv sims

I was a bicycle messenger and from 8 to 3, it would mostly be always “Call back” or a busy signal. This one day, I was doing my routine, working the pay phone, and this StreetWise vendor was selling Street-

Wise. I picked up the phone, I dialed the number, and I got a busy signal. By the time I picked up that phone and hung up that phone, the StreetWise vendor had made $3. In that amount of time! Now, I am riding around on a bicycle from 8 in the morning til 3 o’clock in the afternoon – six hours!-- making no money, and this StreetWise vendor had made $3! I was like, ‘Man, how do you do that?

It just so happened the bicycle messenger office was right around the corner from the StreetWise office at 60 E. 13th St. I went to the StreetWise office the next day. That was a Wednesday, and on Friday, I was selling StreetWise.

People stay as vendors because they are people-people. They meet interesting people and they become friends with those people. Everybody cannot be a StreetWise vendor. A lot of people will take a StreetWise and hit somebody upside the head with it because of the looks they get: ‘If you don’t get out of my way….’ You get a lot of that. You as a StreetWise vendor have to be thick-skinned to turn that person around, that person that’s looking like, ‘If you don’t get out of my way, I have been working woo, woo, woo.’ [But] you have been out here six years and [they] have had three different jobs in that time. You are still out here doing the same thing, so it must be good.

Everybody cannot be a StreetWise vendor. It’s not a walk in the park, It’s not an office job. It’s a good job – if you are a people-person.

I got to meet a lot of people like Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Mayor Michael Bilandic, Mayor Jane Byrne, [three-time NBA All Star Jamaal] Keith Wilkes, [six-time NBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist and philanthropist] David Robinson, [16-year Chicago Cub and 12-time All-Star] Ryne Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, [singer] Rod Stewart, and [comedian] Sinbad. I sold across the street from the John Hancock Building, Fourth Presbyterian Church, just about all of those people, that’s where I met them. Jane Byrne lived right there, at 111 E. Chestnut. Just across the street is a restaurant called Ditka’s.

May 2000

StreetWise moves from bi-weekly to weekly circulation.

May 2000

StreetWise wins 5 awards at the Mate E. Palmer Communications contest of the Illinois Women’s Press Association

• Managing Editor Charity Crouse received 1st Place for “Chicago: City of Neighborhoods for Sale; Real Estate Boom Takes Communities to the Market”

• City Editor Suzanne Hanney won 1st place for continuing coverage of the police code of silence.

July 2000

StreetWise expands to Washington, D.C.

June 25, 2000

Opening night of the StreetWise “Not Your Momma’s Bus Tour” series running every Friday and Saturday. A theatrical bus tour hosted by formerly homeless StreetWise vendors used humor and drama to earn additional income while telling their stories, from trials to triumphs. There were 60 tours between May and October 2001 that visited Maxwell Street, Cabrini Green, Malcolm X College, and Cook County Hospital.