Streetwise

This documentary hits very close to home. I grew up with "Rat" after 1984, and our lives are still involved in some ways. I saw this movie as a teenager and it really makes you think about how things could be. Most kids can't wait to get out "on their own" and when you look at the way some roads can take you, you don't ever want to leave. When I look back at how "Rat" grew up and the lives of these other kids, I think to myself how easy it could have been me or kids that I know now. When you watch this movie, you will always remember that LIFE is such a short period of time and so many things can bring you down along the journey. But you have to keep in mind that the negative is always a learning experience, the question is...would you take the same journey again?

I have lived in Seattle all my life, I watched and knew people like the kids in Streetwise. Many people would like to think that Streetwise was a "scripted" movie and that these kids "played up" their lives for the cameras. Scary as it might seem they did not. This was life on the streets of Seattle when I was 12-13. I know, I was a part of it.

Children, barely old enough to take care of themselves ran amok on the streets, had drug habits and prostituted themselves for some food money. They had parents that beat them or were in jail or molested them and that life on the streets was preferred to life at home.

I appreciate that this movie was so truthful and showed what life is really like out on the streets when you open your eyes.

I've watched this movie several times and I am happy that I got off the streets and survived. But the movie does make me wonder if I was the only one. Watch this movie and open your eyes.

I could never forget the kids in the movie, I have done some searching and found out info on some of the kids, pics too and anyone interested can email and I will fill you in. Some think it was scripted, either way it is a touching movie and a harsh look at what life on the street for anyone let alone kids is like.

If any one watched the movie & actually understood it they might understand the absurdity of that statement. When these weird people showed up & started following us around most just wanted to jump them & take their cameras & other stuff but none of us knew anyone who would buy something like that. We were on the streets for a reason & most of us had not had very good luck with adults so it was not really in our best interest to deal with them, but these folks were smart, somehow they got in good with Lulu one day Lulu told us hands off the old people, don't mess with them. So that was the way it was, after them being around for a while some of us kind of talked to them, most of us just wanted them to go away, they were strange, they didn't want sex, they weren't trying to hit or hurt us & most of us just got used to them. A lot of the others that were in the movie were trying to stay alive in some small way, the green river killer was working the crowd & that movie might be the only proof we were ever even here. Some of the kids were just trying to prove that they were making it & doing fine without their parents. D's dad was a dipstick & that is always how he talked to him. Somewhere it says that Lulu's last words were to tell these people that she was dead, that is BS, she was NOT attacked by other streetkids for no reason, she was defending her girlfriend from a drunk insane man, that is the way it was, that is the way she was. None of us got paid for this, as a matter of fact I don't even think any of us could con those folks into buying us a burger & fries at the Unique. For all of the armchair critics here who didn't have to live like this, or wasn't there, you might want to get out more. For any of those reading who may be still alive from there this is Breezy RIP Patti, Lulu, Dewaynne, John, & Bert...

I have followed (or tried to follow) Tiny through the years, she is up to 9 children now and is moving to North Carolina with her husband. He is the father of her last 4 kids. Her oldest son Daylon lives alone and is 19, her 2 oldest daughters live with a relative. Here is the link to http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

type in Mary Ellen Mark, the article is called: Focused on a life: Photographer uses camera as force for change

I heard that Rat is living on a farm or ranch, , some people say he died, does anyone have any current info?

Does anyone have a picture of Roberta, the victim of the Green River killer? I cannot remember her face.