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How the street lives with it

• Money is mostly on phones: payment apps, store credit, game scrip, privacy coins swapped through someone's cousin.

Cash still exists and is a sign that you have a reason to use it.

• Every voice can be faked from three seconds of audio, so people who matter to each other use a code word and call

back on a number they know. A voice note is never proof.

• Phones are cloned, numbers are swapped, and an alert saying "SIM change requested" in the middle of a deal is the

worst text a dealer can get.

• Tenants, not landlords, run the rooftops: community mesh antennas carry the traffic the carriers cannot see. A

repair crew pulling one node can drop a whole block off the air.

• Batteries are everywhere and some of them burn. The smell of hot plastic in a stairwell clears it faster than a

siren.

• Scaffolding goes up for repairs and stays for a decade; people stash things in it, sleep under it, sell from it.
• Ad screens go on whatever will hold a bracket: shutters, bus shelters, the sides of old brownstones. Cheap panels,

zip-tied and bright, flickering in the rain and showing a loop for a platform or a clinic.