Catagorize the Homeless

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

San Francisco, leading the world in both quantity and quality of homeless people! And just look at the sheer variety we have to offer…

Religious Ramblers: Had a long haired John the Baptist type wearing a “Have you been saved?” sandwich board pass me recently. He was muttering to anybody within earshot: “Jesus is following me around in a magic helicopter! I’VE SEEN IT!! The father, son and holy ghost all know when you touch yourself!! ANTS!!”.

Amphetamine Cranksters: Skinny, twitchy, scabbing and itchy. Yanking their hairs out one by one and asking you when the bus is coming every thirty seconds.

Wide-eyed Screamers: For some reason they all look like Willy Nelson to me.

Crackhead Hustlers: They always have some scheme to get money for that next rock. The latest thing these creeps have taken to doing is standing in front of BART ticket dispensers, offering feed your money into the machine and keeping the change as payment for this “service”. Ugh! I once saw a crackhead shambling down University Avenue in Berkeley at two in the morning, dressed only in sweat pants (in the middle of winter) trying to sell a sad, grease encrusted toaster-oven to everybody he saw.

Vagrant Hipsters: Pierced, green-haired young summertime runaways. Hanging out on Haight Street, begging for change in their 200 dollar leather motorcycle jackets.

Comedian Hucksters: That cardboard “I won’t lie to you, I need money to go get drunk” sign was funny once, and only because I was upwind.

Rogue Window Washers: Homeless guys who wander through stalled traffic, squeegie-ing your car window with a greasy rag and demanding a handout for this “service”. Double ugh.

Thorizine Shufflers: My friend used to live on Larken street, with a Mental Health Services office on one end and a Methadone clinic on the other. Every morning the place looked like something from Night of the Living Dead. Needless to say, I rarely hung out there after dark.

Migrating Landfills: Folks wandering around with more material wealth stuffed in a grocery cart than I have in the whole of my apartment, and I’m gainfully employed!

2

I call the two shopping carts full of crap linked together with rope:

“A low budget RV”

[hijack] Hey Inky, you’re a local. Why not join us for this event?[/hijack]

3

Along those same lines, it seems every fast food restaurant on Market street from the Embarcadaro to Van Ness has a self-appointed “door man”.

“There you are, sir. Have a nice day, sir. Got a quarter, sir?”

I always feel like berating them for not wearing their beefeaters uniform.

4

Then there are those who defy categorization.

Like the highly unfashionable transvestite homeless person who has, for reasons known only to himself, decided claim the ritziest shopping district in La Jolla as his territory.

A tall rawboned man in pageboy wig, granny dress and striped leggings adds a very surreal touch to the front entrance of the local Armani outlet, I can tell you.

5

Because none of us here – and nobody we know – could ever make a string of bad decisions, become seriously mentally ill, leave an intolerable home situation, become addicted and desperate, be starving, decide to hustle for change rather than hustle our bodies, or lose all our pride and dignity in shelters and on the street. And have no homes or families or friends to help us hide our weakness, our illness or our poverty.

I’m not trying to sound self-righteous, though I probably do, but you’ve had better thread ideas than this one, Inky.

6

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jack Batty *
**

How did I manage to forget the McDoor-Men! I once saw two Crack-addled McDoor-Men fighting over who’s “territory” the place was.

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Hey, I don’t deny this at all. In fact, I almost included “Itinerant Inksters” to the list, and still might have to if my rent gets increased again.

8

In Chicago we have an extremely high volume of these Starving “Artists”

9

Around here, we also have the starving artist: A guitar with 4 strings, a 3 gallon drum, a harmonica, or any other makeshift instrument played just enough when you walk by so you think they are really an artist and you may care or not, but if you listen closely, the music stops soon after you walk by.

10

Hey Catrandom, ever been homeless? I was over twenty years ago. Ever volunteer or work in a homeless shelter? I’ve prepared breakfast for three hundred people at a time. (Incidentally, I was the only chef who could prepare the government canned pork or chicken in such a way that they would come back for seconds. See the recipe for Roux, in this thread.) Ever had people try every transparent scam on you that they can while you’re serving them free food? I refer you to a cogent bumpersticker:

“I fight homelessness, I work!”

Yes, there is a solid fraction of the indigent that are mentally incapable of supporting themselves. There is also a significant portion of the homeless who are simply too lazy to keep their sh!t together. Tell us about your direct experiences with the poor sometime.

Thanks Inky, for posting an accurate guide to the indiginous fauna that populate the streets of San Francisco.

11

Catrandom: that is almost too idiotic to respond to.

Do you really think it is just luck that I am not on the streets? That someday the fates may reach down and decide that poof I’m on the streets?

Barring those that have significant mental problems (but that is not the majority) luck played almost no role. Both the homeless guy on the corner and I made for ourselves the lives we have. I refuse to let you tell me that it is only because of luck that I am better off than him.

12

Damn, my post put me in the same company as Zenster! I’m going to have to retract it.

Seriously, though, a button got pushed and I went off a bit. I shouldn’t have, not in MSPSIMS anyway. So my apologies.

13

Thank you, obfusciatrist. I was ready to type up this exact sentiment, but now I see I dont have to because you already did it for me, and probably more concise than I could have.

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Not to worry, obfusciatrist and Zenster both. But I figure homelessness is a pretty reliable sign that something’s gone terribly wrong in that person’s life. Sorry to Inky for the hijack, and we’ll just have to agree to differ.

15

Hey Catrandom, no offense taken. I agree with you that when a person is homeless that something is wrong. Unfortunately, flawed philosophies seem to be the order of the day*. I have watched my own kinfolk act as though the world owed them a living. Each one of them had a severely skewed mindset though. Sadly, too many people have irrational value structures that allow for an imbalanced view of what it takes to survive. Of course, there exists a quotient of people that are fundamentally incapable, they just don’t happen to be the majority.
By the way Catrandom, you have yet to answer as to whether you have ever worked directly with the homeless. I will add to all of this an observation that comes from first hand experience. I still don’t know what broke my own heart the worst. The bewildered look on a newly homeless child’s face, or the gaze of a kid who was way too familiar with the entire scene.
*( I find it really strange that obsfuciatrist withdrew his more eloquently stated refutation of your OP solely one the basis that I beat him to it.)

16

If you could only see all the homeless people I’ve come across…

I lived in a residential hotel, for 9 months, that was right on the corner of Powell and O’Farrell. This is right next to Union Square (a big tourist attraction) which means where there are tourists, there are homeless people trying to hustle. My girl and I started to give them all names since we were always passing them either to go to work, get something to eat, do laundry, whatever…they were always there. One quy was called Spare Change because that was all he ever said, “Spare change, spare change, sir, could you spare some change”. Over and over and over. I used to hate standing on the corner, waiting for a light when he was around. Dolphin Guy used to have this blue and white dolphin hand puppet. “Are you having a good day? Smile…”. Tweekin’ Crack Lady used to scare people the way she was so “in your face”. “Please help me, please help me. I need to eat”. At first I felt bad, and even gave her my change. Little did I know that she was buying crack in the Tenderloin. I found that out one night when I was coming home from picking up some Thai, and I saw her there buying and then imediately smoking crack, in plain view of everyone. Next time I saw her she was saying the same shit, up in everyone’s face. So I told her to fuck off, that I had seen her buy and smoke crack the other night, and that she was a fraud. She didn’t give a damned what I had to say!

There’s just too many to name. I still give my change to the fast food door holders though. I don’t know why since it’s my policy now to just ignore the homeless. I used to get into arguments with them when I would say I didn’t have anything to give, and they would say “Fuck you rich motherfucker”! This is when I was living in the residential hotel, one paycheck away from where they were. But I still went to work every morning…taking pictures of tourist down at Pier 39, and I finally got out of that fucking place. So to save myself from arguments I just ignore them. It’s sad to think that this city has turned me into this type of person. I once saw a manager come out of Planet Hollywood and offer a homeless young person a job, and they turned it down saying they could probably make more on the streets just sitting on the sidewalk with a cup in front of them!

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zenster *
**
By the way Catrandom, you have yet to answer as to whether you have ever worked directly with the homeless. I will add to all of this an observation that comes from first hand experience.
**
OK – though, having apologized for hijacking, here I am hijacking again. Nope. I did have a homeless acquaintance a few years back with whom I occasionally had lunch. He was an educated man who described himself as “lazy” and “a drunk” and said that street life was his preference. I lost touch with Wayne after he went back to drinking heavily; I’d be amazed if he was still alive. So my own experience rather contends against my expressed viewpoint, doesn’t it?

18

OOh, I’ve got one.

Gay kids.

Fifty percent of street youth are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. They flee or are kicked out of homophobic parents’ homes.

Like my best friend.

He is a living argument for social programs. After he fled his homophobic parents, he was picking garbage and begging to survive. He was able to get welfare and thus move cross-country and restart his life. (He’s now working and finishing his degree in English lit.) If it wasn’t for social assistance, he tells me, he’d probably be a prostitute or dead (or both).

Therefore:

Depends. Does your sexual orientation count as “luck”?

19

Zenster: I didn’t retract my statement because you beat me to it or because it made me agree with you (notice it was followed by “. . . seriously though”). That was a - apparently feeble - joke. But your email was pleastant and heartily enjoyed.

I retracted my statement because I decided that it was inappropriate to MPSIMS and contrary to the tone of the OP.

Matt: The circumstances you describe are a tough case and worthy of consideration. First, though, the numbers you mention don’t match my experience. Seattle’s U-District (5 years ago) provided most of my experience with street youth.

None of those I knew well enough were self-identifying as homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered. I’m not saying that none were, but that the ratio doesn’t seem to have been anywhere near 50%.

I think it is safe to say that teenagers should mostly be exempt from my statement that the homeless are mostly responsible for their position. The reason teenagers are still considered children is that they can not be REQUIRED to take care of themselves (though obviously many COULD if necessary). There certainly should be some form of support for children with negligent parents.

That said, my experience with Seattle’s street youth was that most of them had run away with dramatized claims of abuse (which frequently boiled down to “can you believe my mom wouldn’t let me die my hair orange? She just doesn’t understand me, the bitch”). Strangely, most of that angst would dry up as soon as it got cold in the winter. Most of the street kids would then go back home, only to reappear the next summer. I’m not saying that all of these kids were running away from happy homes, but rather few of them were actually running away from abusive homes.

Nothing is absolute, there are exceptions and extremes on every topic, but I do think that MANY of the kids you see on the street have made their messes (but since it could be argued that youth is just another form of mental incompetence you can really place upon them the full burden of responsibility).

20

I have to say, I probably spend more time with homeless people (I technicly am one) than anyone else here (please correct me if I’m wrong), and almost all of them are kind, generous people. you probably don’t think so, because most (if not all) of your contact with them is probably with the hustlers, crackheads and weirdos. let me say that this is a vast minority. To make such abrasive remarks about those you know so little about is simply ignorant.