Homeless people / panhandlers

[ReDeYES88]

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MY Personal fav:

Back in 94', I brouht my Ohio GF back to visit my familia in NYC. I took her for a wander about manhattan and at lunch time we had settled onto some benches by the fountains in the middle of the WTC concourse/courtyard. Mid-sandwich, a black dude wanders up with a big smile and asks "Would you like to donate to the United Negro Pastrami Sandwich fund?" Both my gf and I laughed so hard I gave em a fiver.

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Now I will preface the following by admitting that I have not read every post in this thread.

Your post is the only one of the dozens that I've seen that says "black homeless guy" or some other variant and actually has the race of the individual matter to the rest of the story.

It just struck me as I was reading the posts that quite a few people identified the homeless person as "black", when they would never say "so this white homeless guy walked up to me on the street".

Just an observation...and food for thought.

[microbet]

There was a panhandler/comedian who used to do a vaudeville kind of routine on campus at UC Berkeley. He referred to himself as Shmoe Shmoe Lowest of the Low.

For one semester I lived at a boarding house where some of the people were there on charity and he was one of them. He seemed pretty normal, very smart and funny when doing his routine, but he definitely had some mental health problems. He was very paranoid and really thought many of the people around him were going to try to kill him.

Not a very entertaining story, but just shows that even if someone seems like they could be holding a job, it might not be the case.

[mrmr]

I used to live in Houston, and this would happen all the time on weekend nights:

I'm circling around looking for a parking place. I finally find a spot on the street to park, and as I start pulling in, a bum appears and starts "helping" me by pointing and guiding me into the spot safely. Thanks a lot.

I get out.

Bum: This is a bad part of town. A person's car could get jacked up here. I saw some guys 15 minutes ago break into a car.

Me: [My face and body language shout "I'm not at all interested"; I say nothing].

Bum: But this is my neighborhood. If I tell them to stay away from your car, they will back off. I'll protect it. So you give me a few bucks so I can get something to eat, and I'll keep an eye on your car for you until you get back. I'll keep checking in every once in a while, you know, and tell the thieves to stay away because you're my dog. But if I don't watch it, who knows what might happen to it.

This was a pretty standard scam/threat for a while in Houston. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen elsewhere.

By the way, I never paid them.

Also, an interesting tidbit on homeless culture: a former friend of mine was homeless for many years and he explained to me that by the 80's, as a whole, the homeless had decided to adopt "bum" as a non-offensive word for describing them/themselves, even if it did have derogatory origins -- and in spite of the fact that some people might try to hurl it at them as an insult. They owned the word, so it wouldn't own them, so to speak. I'm sure he couldn't speak for all homeless on this point, but I have no reason to doubt him. So, just in case anyway was steaming from my use of the word above, relax. It's cool.

[mrmr]

I've been told by security that no one could leave the building until further notice, because a crazy homeless guy was running around on the sidewalk with a crowbar chasing and beating anyone he could catch. He was eventually taken away by cops.

I've also been on a bus, about to take off from a stop, when a fellow passenger pointed out that, "Um, there's a guy out there with his head under the wheel." It was a crazy homeless guy who was crouching in the street near the bus, with his head on the ground right in front of one of the wheels. The bus driver got out and started to approach him, and he ran away. The bus driver got in and started to go through the motions of getting the bus out of the stop, when the guy came back and put his head back under the wheel. This happened a couple times before cops showed up and he ran into a nearby store. I don't know if they caught him, because the bus finally pulled out, with me in it.

Only funny story I can think of with homeless people is funny because of my friends, not because of the homeless guy. Two friends of mine, both over 6' tall, both tough guys by anyone's standards, into martial arts, and both having been in quite a few brawls as teenagers, are walking down the street in Chicago, when a small, post-middle-aged, scruffy looking homeless guy asks them if he can shine their shoes for a dollar. They decline, but in a friendly kind of way, pointing out that they are wearing sneakers, and hence no shine. The guy responds by telling them both to give him their wallets or he will kill them. And they respond by...

Let me just add that, before this incident actually happened, I am 100% sure that either of them alone or together would have ranked their options (in order of preference/likelihood) something like:

1. ignore him and keep walking
2. laugh in his face then keep walking
3. tell him to [censored] off and keep walking
4. beat the [censored] out of him
5. tell him they will call the cops and keep walking
You get the picture.

...They both responded, without seeing a knife, gun, or indeed any weapon at all, by giving the homeless guy their wallets, walking away at a fast clip, and then calling the cops, after he was long gone.

Maybe not laugh out loud funny, but just an odd turn of events. Maybe that mugging, as I guess it actually turned out to be, forced them to grow up a little bit.

[PanchoVilla]

I will give a buck to the tree branch scare guys at fisherman's wharf in SF sometimes cause they can be funny as heck to watch. Otherwise in SF I take the ignore route simply because they are so aggresive and so many. And the one time I did give a guy a buck it seemed like I got hit up every block. It's like they are all using cell phones to coordinate.

Otherwise its mainly a function of how sketchy a place it is and if they are doing something entertaining.

A friend of mine lived in DC for several years. He did work related to political fundraising. He saw the same guy panhandling quite often on his walk to work asking for change. One day he talked to the guy and suggested he try a new tactic. Instead of asking them for money on the way to work, when they might need the change, he should instead just ask them that if they had any change left at the end of the day if they would give it to him. He saw the guy the next week and the guy told him thanks, he was getting like 5x as much change as he was before.

Pancho

Not really panhandling but I was amazed at the different levels of street perfomers, depending on where you are. SJ, you max out at crappy music, SF you get jugglers, or the robot guys, London we saw a guy with great showmanship and hype, and a semi decent performance with handstand walks, balancing trick. Paris took the cake though. This one guy was easily like Circus level acrobats. Free show in a big plaza outside that building with the plumbing on the outside. He did the following.

Balance a chair on his chin.
Balance a ~25 foot long section of pvc typ pipes on his chin.
Balance a chair on top of the 25 foot pvc pipe that was on his chin.
But the capper was when he balanced on top of the following stack of items
a 1x3 plank
6 in diameter ball
plank
6 inch diamater pvc tube
plank
6 inch diamteter pvc tube perpendicular to 1st one
all on top of a table so.
That guy put on a 20-25 min show and probably made several hundred Euro. I gave him like 5 and almost felt like I was ripping him off.

[El Diablo]

All,

Someone tried this one the other day, and neither of the two friends with me had any clue what was going on. So, just curious if you guys are familiar with this.

Walking down the street, guy gets my attention, then shows me a handful of change including maybe 8 quarters and asks me "Hey, any chance you have a dollar you could trade me for four quarters? I don't want anything, just want to change my quarters for bills."

Just curious if EDF posters are savvy to this one.

[Boris]

pancho - "Paris took the cake though. This one guy was easily like Circus level acrobats. Free show in a big plaza outside that building with the plumbing on the outside. "

Yea that's the modern art museum. I don't recall the museum being all that great but like you said, the plaza outside had awesome street performers. I didn't see the chair balancing guy.

Diablo - I would probably fall for the coin trick just to see the trick. It's only a dollar right?

[ZeeJustin]

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All,

Someone tried this one the other day, and neither of the two friends with me had any clue what was going on. So, just curious if you guys are familiar with this.

Walking down the street, guy gets my attention, then shows me a handful of change including maybe 8 quarters and asks me "Hey, any chance you have a dollar you could trade me for four quarters? I don't want anything, just want to change my quarters for bills."

Just curious if EDF posters are savvy to this one.

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My guess would be he wants you to realize he's poor, and too "proud to beg" and expects you to give him money out of respect.

It's also possible he thought you were rich and wanted you to pull out your wallet so he could grab it and run (asking for change doesn't require someone to pull out their wallet in most cases).

[Jurollo]

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"My favorite panhandler con is probably the "car ran out of gas" and now I'm stranded, just need a few bucks for gas one."

I fell for a variation of that in Boston a few years ago. Standard "I need thirteen", you give him thirteen, and he then looks stunned and says, "I said I need thirty", or other similar sounding combos. I felt like such a dummy.

I generally don't give much, except under special circumstances (either how I'm feeling or they do something unique). The one exception is subway musicians.. I generally give a buck or two to them when they're good.

Some bums used to hang out in Kenmore Sq., right across from a Campus Convenience store that I knew gave away muffins and such at the end of the night, so sometimes I'd grab a couple of those and bring them over.

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Fell for this drunk, the guy was in a blazer and was saying he would take me back to his car and asked for $13 so I gave him a $20 and then he said no I said $30 and I went into a full fledged drunken fit telling him to give me my f-ing $20 back and he was backing off saying no no $20 is fine. Suffice to say I never saw that $20 again.

[El Diablo]

J,

Somewhat amusing "gas money" story. Guy in Safeway parking lot approaches me, needing money for gas, stranded here w/ family, etc from someplace 100 miles away or so. I ask him where car is. He tells me, stalled on freeway half mile or so away. I tell him I'll fill a container full of gas and drive him there, he says no need, I offer again, he wants cash, I laugh him off, he says something about what a jerk I am for not helping his stranded family.

Next night I am coming out of a bar around closing time. The SAME GUY approaches me and starts talking about how he is stranded a few blocks away. I then tell the guy it must suck really bad to have run out of gas like that two days in a row. Guy does a double take and then starts walking away, but I (drunk) follow him asking him questions. Finally he is like, OK man, yeah I'm not stuck I'm just lying to get some money, please give me a break so I can talk to some people before everyone is gone. I laughed and took off.

In Houston, near the medical center, the scam always involved gas or bus fare back home after coming there to visit some sick relatives in the hospital.