Do the Right Thing

The Odyssey of New York City Street Comedian Devon Smith

A group of college students meanders through Washington Square Park, talking among themselves as they enjoy the first truly beautiful day of spring. Suddenly, a short black man jumps into their midst.

"Guys, sorry I'm late. If I make you laugh, can I earn some change?"

"Oh, you gonna tell us a joke?" one of them asks. "Alright."

The Joke Man leaps into his routine, struggling to hold their attention with a few racially charged jokes while they roll their eyes or look away. His smile and manic energy are infectious, though, and within moments he has them laughing and reaching into their pockets. They walk away as he examines his earnings.

"Two fifty," he sighs. "I got two dollars and fifty cents from the six of them. I'm not really feeling it today."

He is a Greenwich Village fixture, this Sammy Davis, Jr. look-alike who bounces from neighborhood to neighborhood, passerby to passerby, hustling to earn enough spare change to survive on the streets of New York. Nearly everyone in the park recognizes him, but almost no one knows his name.

Devon Smith is homeless, and he tells jokes to survive.

"The things that I have in my life, I get based on other people's idiosyncrasies," Smith says. "And there's no counting on it. That's it, there's no option. If you laugh, I eat. End of story."

A few years ago, Smith was sleeping in a Port-O-Potty on a former Astor Place parking lot (which is now a luxury penthouse apartment building) when it started to rain. He says that he began to cry, and he cried so hard that he eventually started to laugh.

"I recognized that I could have a pity party - poor me, poor me, poor me - or I could literally get up off my ass and make other people laugh," he says. "And by making other people laugh, I don't cry. If you make someone laugh, you change their life, even if only for a moment."

At the end of the day, as others go home to a warm bath, a fresh pair of socks or a comfortable bed, he sleeps on a park bench or in a subway car. His feet are raw and blistered from his travels.

He recites his mantra: "I'm 45. Thank God I'm still alive."