Street Sense launches new e-mail newsletter!

We sent out our very first e-mail newsletter to more than 150 readers today! We're excited about this new service and we're eager to see it grow.

You may have noticed the nifty new box on our Web site that asks if you'd like to join our mailing list. Every two weeks, we'll send the top stories from the latest Street Sense issue right to your inbox. We won't spam you, honest. In fact, our e-mail service makes us promise up and down and sideways that every person on our mailing list is absolutely, positively sure he or she wants to receive our newsletters. You can always unsubscribe if you don't like what you read.

So, c'mon. Sign up. Get Street Sense in your inbox. And if you like what you read, buy a paper from your favorite vendor. Your dollar will help a homeless person earn an income with dignity.

-- Koki Smith

New Vendor Profiles Page!

After days of swimming through html code, our fabulous intern Desiree Perez has updated the Our Vendors profile page!

Click here to check up on your favorite vendors, see who has joined our ranks, and get to know the stories behind the faces of Street Sense.

Street Sense arrives on Facebook

Street Sense is on Facebook! Join our Facebook group, chime in on our discussion forum, post pictures and write on our wall!

We've also created a Causes application on Facebook. Add our button to your profile to help support our paper and raise online donations.

Ivory Leaves an Impression

Since we started tracking our Web site traffic about a month ago, one pattern has stayed consistent: more people search the Internet for Ivory Wilson, a Street Sense vendor who frequently contributes short fiction to the paper, than for any other vendor. One such search originated in Tokyo. Who knew Ivory had a fan in Japan?

Ivory usually sells papers at the corner of 7th and E streets, NW, and recently published a poem about his regular customers. One of them, a local writer, recently blogged about her impressions of Ivory and her struggle to reconcile their friendship with his past as a pimp. Read her post here.

Read Ivory's latest short story, about a merciless genie in a lamp, here.

And click here to read more about Ivory's colorful past.