Emmett Grace is methodical. There is a pattern to his sweeping. He attacks the sidewalk in front of Tony's Auto Parts on the northeast corner of Central Avenue and 11th Street section by section, each one the exact size of his makeshift whisk broom — a kids' pair of jeans, carefully folded into a rectangle. Wearing an old Seattle Mariners hat and a maroon hoodie, Grace bends down slowly for each brush of the concrete, pushing the cigarette butts, dirt and leaves closer to the street. He has to sweep carefully — jeans must be manipulated just so if they're going to work as a broom. So Emmett Grace takes his time. The sun has yet to rise as Grace finishes clearing this patch of Central Avenue sidewalk that's come to be known as "the break corner," a spot that for years has been occupied by men commonly known as day laborers. They come in old sweatshirts and roughed-up jeans, by bicycle, by foot and by car. Most of them aren't homeless, and most wouldn't even accept the term day laborers. They are specialists: roofers and landscapers, masons and framers. But they will do anything, most of them say, for the right price. Need some help moving? Your yard raked? Your car washed?
Come down to the break corner.
"It's historical," announces Tyrannus Tucker later in the day. "This is legendary. It's constant."
A 52-year-old man wearing a wool hat and tired paint-splattered boots, Tucker laughs as he says this, but quickly stops himself. It is almost 4 in the afternoon, too late to actually get a job, and he wants to make it clear that the corner isn't just a place to get off the couch and hang.
"This is where you come to find work," he says. "Write that down."
Other men voice the same sentiment.
"This is the work corner."
"The money corner."
"The hustle corner."
They are defensive, because for anyone looking on, for local business owners or folks who drive by every morning on their way downtown, these guys don't look like they're working. They look like they're loitering. And they know that doesn't always look good.
But the break corner is a fixture here, in the neighborhood formerly known as the Dome District, just south of Tropicana Field. The corner's been in business longer than the small antique shops, longer than the restaurants, and certainly longer than the stadium; one man says the spot was well-known when he first came looking for work in 1962.
The district is changing. Condominium developers are pouncing on the neighborhood's vacant lots. Some businesspeople in the area doubt that $300,000 condo dwellers will tolerate the day laborers' presence. But as the locals have learned, the corner's not going anywhere.
'I've been here for three years. How could I not have a relationship with them?" asks Donald Biglands, the co-owner of Agnis Godfrey Antiques and Collectibles, which shares the end of the 1000 block with the guys waiting for work. Biglands knows many of them by name, and says hello when he walks a customer out of the store. He has found a way to co-exist with the corner, in part because he has employed some of the men to do work in his memorial AIDS garden next door. But the relationship isn't problem-free, Biglands says. He claims the men often use the garden for a bathroom, and sometimes rush his customers assuming they've come looking for a laborer. Some of his fellow merchants have complained about the guys hanging around past 11 a.m., when jobs trickle off and shoppers start trickling in. "Sure it hurts our business," says Biglands, "but not enough for me to want them off the corner."
"They've been here longer than I have," he says. "Who am I to throw them off?"
Other local business owners echo Biglands, seemingly more deferential to the history of the corner than to the men themselves. If there are problems, no one wants to go on the record about them.
Will Bailey, a former firefighter who specializes in concrete and framing, arrives at the corner at 7:30 a.m. "You run into a shithead every now and again like you do anywhere else," says Bailey, settling back into one of the corner's worn-down chairs with a copy of the St. Pete Times. "But on average, these are good guys." An early-morning philosopher, Bailey opens the paper up to the obituaries and remarks to no one, "It's a good day if I'm not in here."
It's December 30, and the jobs are slow during the holidays. So Bailey, Grace and the other men sit back, eat cold Domino's pizza, and wait. It's an odds game, a calculated risk that isn't all that risky when you consider the alternatives.
"As long as you know you gave it a shot, you can't feel that bad," Bailey says. "If you just sit around all day doing nothing, you can't ask for anything later."
"You just gotta be here," says Emmett Grace. "Some days are good, some days are bad."
Today is a bad one, just three jobs by 8 a.m. So the guys wait. And they talk.
Eventually, the conversation turns to the condominium complex slated for the vacant lot across the street. The sprawling five-story complex, 1010 Central, will house 112 condominiums, each selling for between $160,000 and $350,000. It's one of many developments earmarked for this area of Central Avenue, which has yet to see the boom promised before the construction of the Trop.
Some members of the community, Biglands included, foresee tensions between the tenants and the break corner. "I can't believe anybody living across the street and spending that kind of money would want [the guys on the corner] to stay there," Biglands says.
But according to Jason Perry, 1010 Central's project developer, it shouldn't be a problem. "We're on our property and they're on theirs," Perry says. "We can't make them leave. They have the right to be there just like our clients have the right to buy a $300,000 condo."
The men on the corner are optimistic, for the most part. "If anything, it might mean more opportunities," Bailey says.
But Scott Evers, a general manager for Baston Cook, the construction manager assigned to the project, says there is little chance that he'll use men from the corner. "In the rare case we would use one, it would be for labor work," he says. "But I can't recall ever going to a corner and picking up a worker for a big commercial project like this one."
Even if they don't get work at the complex, most men on the corner say they doubt there will be any problems.
"It's not gonna faze us," Bailey says.
This is the break corner. It's constant.
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2005.