Late night, bus stop bums

Late one night, I was waiting for the 22 Fillmore bus in San Francisco, and an aggressive crackster started begging for change, escalating as he ranted: "I need a dime! A quarter! Fifty cents! A dollar, I need a dollar!" "I don't have any change, damn it!" I swore at him. Thing was, I had on a pair of Levis that I loved and washed frequently, and it was exactly at this moment that the thin cloth of the front pockets gave out, cascading coins onto the sidewalk. I tell this story because Steve Powers' graphic-arts book illustrates such tales—street hassles in which one hustler is outwitted by another, much as an immovable object will sometimes overcome irresistible force. "You can't win if I don't lose" reads one of Powers' captions.

-Richard von Busack of Metro Newspapers