Curbstone Singers

Curbstones are the stones that line the edge of the sidewalk. For any foreign readers who might be wondering, the curb is the edge between the sidewalk and the street. To walk into the street, you step off the curb.

In the 1800's "curbstone" was used also as an adjective meaning "of the street". Irving Lewis Allen, in his great book "The City in Slang" (a must for NYC history lovers), gives some examples: "Curbstone justice, before the days of Miranda, was an old-fashioned, informal discipline meted out by the cop on the beat to kids in poor neighborhoods. Curbstone singers were nineteenth-century street singers, sometimes whole impoverished families, who sang for their supper. A curbstone philosopher was an urban successor to the cracker-barrel philosopher of the country general store."

For a bum in those days, a curbstone was also a cigarette made out of tobacco taken from butts picked up in the street (mostly near the curb, naturally).

And then of course there is the American Stock Exchange, which used to be the New York Curb Exchange. It started in the last century with "curbstone brokers", who would congregate on Broad Street, meet their clients right in the street, and then communicate by shouting or sign language with their colleagues leaning out of windows above. They didn't move indoors until 1921.

Unfortunately nowadays it seems that curbs are mostly made of concrete, sometimes with a metal edge at the very corner. This is not nearly as visually pleasing or iconically powerful as a real stone curb. If this non-stone-curb policy continues, as sidewalks are gradually replaced real curbstones will eventually disappear from the face of the city. Curbstones will become a cherished rarity, much like a checkered cab is today.

For these reasons, we are Curbstone.

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