anyone ever PANHANDLED?
youngEINSTEIN
2,443 Posts
just wondering if anyone has ever had to do this?
peace, stein. . . 
peace, stein. . .
Comments
It's not easy when you're hungry and someone says get a job. You're like, "Ok, so if I get a job today, my first paycheck wont come for three weeks. What do I eat till then. Not mentioning how hard it is to find a job when you are homeless, without a phone.
with all that said, I stopped panhandling and started selling stuff. Legal/illegal, whatever kept me looking fresh and money in my pocket.
IF anyone needs help getting off the street, this is what you do. Get a friend who lets you use their address and phone for messages. That way the employer doesn't know you're homeless.
worked for me. After 3 years on and off the streets I said fuckit. I got 2 jobs, working 7 days a week, got a place and never looked back.
So the answer was, GET A JOB! Hahaha!
i suspect that it was probably an inflated number, and the whole "new investigation" reeked of the whole "skinny news lady in an embarrassingly obvious fat person suit who gets made fun of by high school kids".
and not to thread jack, but bums need to dead the whole "who am i kidding, i need a beer" sign.
This one dude was standing there saying "any help for the residentially challenged?" Shit was funny, and he totally knew it. Dude was well dressed too, but maybe he just liked to stay fresh too!
so true... creative bums can at least get a lil more money by making people laugh...
my favorite bum in town has a blank sign. piece of cardboard with nothing on it. i asked him why his sign was blank and he said with a smile "because im a fuckin asshole!"
that guy has probably gotten $40 from me at least so far...
There's a career panhandler in Beverly Hills who has an apt. near MacCarther Park. Another B.H. panhandler I saw get up out of his wheelchair and hop in a jeep, completely able bodied.
Here's the deal on professional panhandlers. They work hard. You want to stand on a freeway ramp in all weather all day with a sign? Some days you make a few hundred, some days not much. Me, I'd rather wash windows. My brother says in Denver they have managers (pimps) who drive everyone out to their freeway ramps and collect a piece of the take. Different guys control different ramps and get to decide who works where.
So the guy who washs my shop window use to be a steel worker in Seattle. Go down to the union hall every morning and if he got called he worked. Union steel workers make good change when they work. One day his buddy got picked and he didn't. His buddy said here take my bucket and squeegy and ask shop owners if they want their windows washed. He made more money that day washing windows than he would have walking beams 30 stories up. He's been washing windows ever since.
also did a fair share of hitchhiking from mount hood to portland. Met everyone from bikers to christian construction workers to well-off families heading home after skiing. never a bad experience. best had to be heading up from sf to mendoncino and meeting some cool folks who let me crash for a night and gave me an ounce of chron. no woof.
The Old town Pasadena area has several dudes who panhandle while faking homelessness and handicaps. One dude who used to come into the store I worked at to change out his coins for bills disappearedfor a few weeks. I asked a couple co-workers if they knew where he was and they both said he was on a vacation in Australia. Turns out dude worked at JPL.
There was another dude who went by the name "Gary" that feigned palsy, I always felt sorry for dude cause my pops was diagnosed with that at birth. Despite the fact I was making minimum wage I'd still spare dude some extra scratch or buy him some food, than one day I caught him pulling a Kaizer Soze. I was fucking steamed but just let the situation go.
Because of the lessons I learned from old town I no longer give homeless people money, I'd rather give to charity.
When I started my first job out of college I encountered him near Civic Center. I was thinking "hmm, that's kind of cool." I saw him a few times later and finally realized he was faking it. He obviously found a photo album and came up with the idea. I'll give him credit for that. He's still doing it though, like 6 years later. Last time I saw him was at 9th and Irving and I said "you've been asking me for years now" and he just said "oh."
Another lady cornered me near Christmas time, crying, telling me a sob story about being lost and she needs money to get home. She was fairly convincing and I gave her a dollar. Next Christmas rolled around and she did the same exact shit to me. I just said no. I saw her shortly after and she did it again and I said "this is the thrid time you've told me this story" and she just walked away.
So, I've never pan handled. I do appreciate the people who get creative with it, like the ninja sign. I do not like the kids on haight street who have signs that say "Money for drugs" or ask for money for beer. I worked at Amoeba, so I would see these kids all the time and they got so annoying after awhile. Them and the "greenbud" and "dank nug" whisperers.
i would gladly kill these people
It was Berkeley, 1990, I was selling candy
This kind of shit happened often. Fuckin hippies.
Yes, he is everywhere throughout the Bay Area and he is a fucking clown. He knows jack shit about graffiti, you can drop all the big name spots throughout the area and he is clueless. His photo album is wack as hell. If he comes on campus again here we will have words, because I am tired of his schtick.
The dude on Telegraph with the jokes had some funny stuff going on, though I don't see him anymore. One of the only dudes I ever gave money to.
Personally, I never give money to panhandlers. You just never know what the story is. I'm not a fan of feeding drug addictions or getting hustled out of my money by a dude who owns a car and has a place to live. When I donate my time and money, I prefer to donate it to the working poor families in neglected communities throughout the area, in large part because that's the environment my dad grew up in.
That's not to say that I don't care about homelessness, because it is a serious problem, especially in San Francisco. But quite simply, your quarters aren't equipped to deal with the psychological, financial and educational needs that must be met for the chronically homeless. I have loads of respect for anyone who is working to help homeless people, because it is emotionally draining work having done some of it and having seen homeless families with young children, junkies having withdrawal seizures, disabled people with no place to go.
A lot of mentally ill folks abandoned by society.
Disable people have very very hard times in China (the guy above is blind, like a lot of begging street-musicians). They are shunned by most of society, it??s cruel there you know? Places just aren??t built to accomodate wheelchairs. When I lived in Shanghai there was only one subway-station with a ramp. Why would you go down to take the train if you can??t get out at any of the other stations?
It??s seriously sad, and those guys always got some spare change off me.
- J
My wife saw all of our local panhandlers meeting at a 7-11. I guess they were having a union meeting or something.
Speaking of Bay Area panhandling...
how many of you know Rare? He was mostly a Berkeley guy. He's racist and scary, but I have to admit that it was very funny to see him walk down Telegraph and peek inside stores and yell "Rarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeee."
He was banned from the Berkeley Amoeba and he started coming to the SF store. He's into psych and cheesy 60/70s rock. He was buying Wishbone Ash or something like that and he was telling me all about the cd, but he kept asking if it had a certain song on it. Then when it came time to pay he pulled out a bag of change. I had to count something like $36 in change, and there were only a few dollars in quarters. He ended up getting mad about not having enough for an extra cd, but I was actually trying to be nice because he said he needed change to get home. Apparently he has a semi-normal girlfriend and he used to be a hockey player. He's loopy and funny at times, but he's huge so it's really scary when he starts to get angry.
Yeah the panhandling and pickpocketing game in major European cities is really
Oh shit--my friend who used to work at Amoeba told me about this guy! He sounds like a real trip.
Tired of that shit.
Yeah, I get that one a lot. A couple months ago, I got a decent variation, actually--instead of being out of gas, dude said he had a flat and needed to pull together $5 for one of those fix-a-flat jammies. This dude had his game down pretty good, though--when he first stepped up, he just asked if I had a lug wrench in my car (it didn't hurt that I was rummaging through my trunk as I was filling up, so my lug wrench was sitting right there out in the open). He then said, "Nah, this is the wrong size" and went into his spiel. He clearly had practiced his routine and delivered it real smooth and convincing-like. I knew it was a hustle, but I gave him a buck anyway.