by Barbara Grady and Sarah Terry-Cobo
      
Two reporters and a photographer observed one of the busiest pieces of “the track” for eight hours one night in late February. We watched from the second story of an empty building on International Boulevard at 42nd Street, in Oakland, CA.  This is a chronicle of what we observed.

5 p.m.  As dusk settles on the intersection of International and 42nd, four or five young men appear on different corners. They look around, taking in everything around them, including us, two reporters carrying burritos. Then they migrate to the taco truck at the corner of 42nd or to the Burger King across the street. 

5:30 p.m. Rush hour traffic builds and the sky turns dark. Two young girls walk down the street without talking. One wears a red dress, sandals and a black leather jacket, the other has on tight jeans, high heeled boots and a furry jacket. They’re in no hurry. Mothers with children in strollers pass, as do young men with baggy pants and wide strides. Neon signs bearing the words “Burger King” and “Breakfast” light the street.
 
6:30 p.m.  Young women and girls walk both ways on International. A girl in a low-cut white shirt, jeans and a jacket walks alone north on International.  An ambulance races the other way, siren screeching. 

A man with a pile of papers and a cell phone goes into the Burger King. He orders food, sits down and spreads out his papers. He does not leave his seat for the next four hours, watching the street from the window.

7:09 p.m. A black SUV pulls into the Burger King parking lot. A heavyset man in a black suit holding a cell phone to his ear gets out of the SUV and goes into the restaurant. He sits without ordering. A few minutes later, a girl with white boots, a black dress and long dark hair walks in. She looks young and walks with the gait of an athlete. You can picture her as a forward on a high school basketball or soccer team. The man in the suit gets up as she enters and walks toward the door. She follows him. Neither ordered food. Neither speaks, but they leave at the same time. Outside, the man gestures toward his car and the girl walks to it as the man waits, putting about 10 feet of distance between them.  When he gets to the car, he opens a door to the backseat. She gets inside. He closes it, gets into the driver’s seat and drives away. I wonder if the girl knows where she's headed.

A nearby merchant explained that men who arrange to meet "tricks" inside Burger King are probably purchasing time with minors because they don’t want to be caught by police picking up a minor on the street.
 
7:30 p.m. Two girls who appear to be teenagers walk into Burger King and sit down at a table by the window. They do not order any food. One talks on a cell phone as the other looks out the window. She looks a bit scared. When she gets up, it's clear she hasn't developed hips; she looks maybe 11 or 12 years old.
 
The man with the papers still sits at his table in the middle of Burger King facing a window with a view stretching south down International.

8 p.m. A Burger King employee walks around and wipes off tables. He passes the man who has been sitting there for hours but does not acknowledge him. The employee also avoids the table with the two girls.

Soon after, a heavyset girl in a sleeveless cotton shirt enters and sits down with the other two. She has red hair and her arms look very white in the night.

A California Highway Patrol car comes off the I-880 ramp and stops a car without headlights on. Several other CHP patrol cars appear and stop cars for other reasons. Officers get out and talk to these drivers. They don't approach the young girls shivering in skimpy shirts.
 
8:30 p.m. The night gets colder but girls still walk up and down the block. One with wavy blond hair and dark skin walks with a guy who does not talk to her.
 
9:30 p.m. Inside Burger King, two young men walk around the tables. Occasionally they sit down but do not eat. A redheaded girl in a sleeveless shirt comes in, and one of the men sits down with her and appears to yell at her. She turns her head away. She eats something and leaves to continue the walk. It's 53 degrees outside; it is night and it is cold.

A girl with high-heeled boots walks north and a guy with baggy pants follows her 100 yards behind. Eventually he catches up but neither speaks to the other.  They walk together out of view.
 
11 p.m. The street corners are teeming with girls. We leave our post and drive south, past 44th, 45th and 46th streets, and see teenage girls out in droves. It’s especially busy from 47th to 49th streets. The girls wear fishnet stockings and short skirts, or jeans and skimpy shirts. But their faces appear empty and emotionless. One girl leans into a car and talks to its driver. Other girls wave listlessly to cars.
 
“The police around here are worrying about a lot more than prostitution. So a lot of this stuff they just let go. It’s prostitution versus a stabbing,” said our driver, a man who knows the neighborhood and whom we hired as a bodyguard. (He has not been identified to protect him from retribution in the neighborhood.)

“This place is on fire,” he said, “The police can’t beat them.”

In the same block, young men stand idle, watching the girls.
 
“The pimp has to stay close because the other pimps are always trying to get their girls,” explained the bodyguard.
 
Many of the girls stand alone waiting.
 
“You can leave this, but you don’t have any money, so where are you going to go?” he said of their plight.
 
“These guys, these pimps, are real. Some cats got two girls,” he says. “Some girls are as young as 12.”

Our bodyguard has a daughter in middle school and he shakes his head at the thought of her caught in this life. He sometimes tells her about it and warns her how awful it is.
 
“They are getting younger,” he said worriedly of the girls on the streets.  They don’t realize, he adds, that they are not invincible, that this leads to no future, nothing, at all.  

“Just imagine, walking 42nd to 53rd street, your feet hurt and it's cold outside and you’re walking all night long. The misery of it all doesn’t add up.”

Midnight The streets are still full of young girls.

This story was produced under a fellowship sponsored by the
G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a project of Tides
Center.

See the complete series here.

We also thank Robert Rosenthal and California Watch for their support, and our reporters Barbara Grady and Sarah Terry-Cobo, along with photographer Alison Yin, for their amazing work.

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