What's your hustle young?
"What's your hustle young?"...or "youngster"...or "young man"...sometimes "youngen".
These were the varying formats of the same question I heard growing up in New York City in the early and mid 1980's. Those were the days. The hustle was everywhere. From 233rd street out to the Belt Parkway tip and around to Wall Street...everybody had a hustle and was working it.
The electronics store peddlers on every major avenue had bootleg brand boom boxes for up to $800 bucks and would always charge you a few Franklins extra if they could. Little tramps like me bought boxes of lighters in Chinatown and resold them to ladies of the night in Times Square before MTV came and sterilized the Apple of its core.
There were two kings of the street, however, there was the gangsters and the banksters...and don't fool yourselves fellas there will always be a thin line.
Though you would think Broad Street and 125th didn't have an intersection, in my youth they certainly did. In fact, if you ask some of the vets still around today they would tell you Tha Street and The Street were peas in a pod back then.
I go off on this ramble today, because off how automatized we're becoming as a society. Reading this sorta thing makes me wonder, will people (men specifically) actually have their own "hustle" in the future? Their own skill set, personality, wants, tastes, talents? Or will everything boil down to some "track" somebody else set for us. Evolution is not supposed to be linear and every now and then my inner primate hops out and flings a turd or two over it.
The point I'm trying to drive home is that with the approach of recruiting season and the tension of today's hiring and firing, boom bust cycles...try and keep a little piece of yourself for yourself. Be a man, not a machine. Allow yourself the possibility of failing to success and the logic of not using reason at all.
Remember or if you haven't already...discover what your hustle is and remember that what makes life great isn't stability or security it's the wanton lust of the unexpected and uncharted.
Know how to leave anything in thirty seconds...that's a greater bonus than any you will receive on the street.
In the words of one of my mentors, who never graduated high school yet made more money on Wall Street in the 80's than Boesky:
I'm not in it to win it. I'm in it for the minute and living it, while I'm in it.
Midas there have always been tracks that your average schmuck locks his casters onto and goes on in as predictable and uninspired fashion as possible. Those are the limits/parameters set forth in the bubble we live in by our particular brand of society... and it happens to be the 2+2+2---> house in CT with a dumb cunt wife and ungrateful kids.
Then you've got the people who couldn't give a fuck about those limits or parameters. They've got their own goals and visions in mind and will try to make the world bend to it. Thats the way the world has always been. From ancients days and on to today.
Its very easy to fall into the trap of remembering the old days better than they actually were. Nothing has changed, except the year.
true as your statement is, New York today can't compare...PG ain't for me.
And prop trading...
As far as recruiting on the street goes, I can understand the emphasis on where you went to school. A lot of people on the street graduated from Ivies. Naturally, they want people from their school. But what's with the emphasis on grades? Why do you need a 3.5 to do marginal analyst work? I talked to someone at Barclays and they said (this may not be accurate) that they only take people in their IBD with a 3.8 and above. Is there that much of a difference between someone with a 3.7 and someone with a 3.8? Has the street lost its swagger in the last few years? If so, what happened?
I turned 20 in August. Since turning 20 I've started to feel like my life has become too structured and my future relatively predictable given my current track and available options. Sometimes I fantasize about throwing some clothes into the back of my car and just driving through the Americas without a care in the world..I'd have to buy a car first of course. However, I think all these annoying little feelings that arise can be quickly quashed with a wild night out; get very drunk , do some stupid shit and possibly end up spending the night in a drunk tank. I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe we should try to find a balance between planning for and working towards the future and living in the present..The path can really distort life's true wonders sometimes.
Love your posts Midas. Refreshing.
Much obliged pal.
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