The New York Subway trying-to-ignore-the-beggar shame face: C/D

On the Red Line (Chicago) we get the "Ladies and gentlemen on the train, I do not mean to offend anyone on the train, please help me; I am totally blind, but I make my way through the train--as you ride the train please help."

I have stopped giving change to any of the random people I see on the streets.

The exception is the old Latina woman who looks like my Mexican mom who (by chance of physiognomy) gets $10 or $15 from me. As for the rest, I really hope they benefit from the donations I give to reputable charities.

Funiest was a guy who brought a milk crate and a keyboard and played like Wesley Willis-type stuff, singing about the fact that he would only go away if we gave him money.

my take-along reading material is for reading! subways, waiting rooms, and coffee shops are the only places i feel comfortable reading.

Anyway, what's my point? Oh yeah, if I have change in my pocket, I'll give it to random panhandlers. I try to make eye contact and smile or say something (although the other day I said, "Have a good day!" after giving someone like, 27 cents and that was pretty fucking lame of me) whether I have change or not, to avoid the very phenomena that the threadstarter describes, but I don't always succeed.

my first day of work in London, I'm racing to the tube and I see this somewhat attractive blonde with a shoulder padded business suit on. she looks distraught, and has change in her hand. she asks if i can spare a pound as she is short the money needed for a fare. now, i'd probably give it anyway, but i'm certainly not going to jinx my first day at a new job.

about a month later, i see her again at the same stop. i'm a bit wtf? so i ask the station manager what her story is. he told me she was just a local junkie who comes by for an hour or two every couple days to busk. said she probably took home 200 quid an outing.

anybody who does anything this entertaining would totally get money from me.

the only people I won't give money to are people I can tell are obviously being disingenuous and manipulative.

And F train riders, has Sonny Paine vanished?

- the Bubushka Twins. Two old ladies of indeterminite eastern-European origin who do their best to look and dress *exactly* alike (business suits, handkerchiefs tied around the head, "sensible" shoes), then split up and canvas downtown one block at a time. They're relatively well-dressed and have been doing this for years. It creeps me out.
- the Crying Hippie. This guy used to frequent 24th St in the Mission until people all got fucking sick of him. Young (early 20s), blonde dude with a scraggly beard and long hair who would actually get down on his hands and knees and burst into tears while making his pitch for cash. One time he was claiming to need money for food - while carrying a bag of food. Another time I saw him get some money from a guy in a suit, then immediately head to 24th/Mission BART to cop some heroin. It got to be so bad that one time I saw him doing his routine and a guy who was speeding by on a bike yelled out "he's just gonna use it to buy heroin" at him. I used to see him hanging around the methadone clinic, only seen him once this year tho (he got all pissed off at me when I told him to fuck off). maybe he got wise and cleaned up.

maybe he wanted mushroom instead of pepperoni.

doesn't get in yr face or disturb anybody, just taps his little magic cart with his wand, it's easy to ignore if you don't want to watch the act

then he does a bunch of tricks and pulls out a bunny and a dove, who just sit there chillin' in the cart until the train gets to the next stop

I totally give that guy a buck ... haven't seen him very often though

There's a guy in Jersey City who gets on the PATH train and asks for money to help feed the" homeless women and children" at a local shelter. He collects donations and then writes something in his clipboard. I've glanced at these notes on his clipboard. They're uniform, wavy scrawls.

whatevah. i get panhandled an average of 6 times a day on the way to and from work (because i work off times square). first of all, it would cost me a buck or two a day to give everybody even a quarter, which adds up to $300 or so a year. but second, it's not even the money so much as i don't want to have to stop and hand out money six times a day, or go through the mental routine every time: do i have any change? do i want to give it to this person? why or why not? i'm on my way to work, or i'm on my way home, and it makes my life a lot easier if i just decide ahead of time to ignore the panhandlers. some stranger asking me on the street for money doesn't create any moral obligation on my part that i know of.

(Not getting panhandled on the subway, but getting bummed for $$$ in a transportation area nonetheless.)

I'm not compiling a top ten list or anything

Tho maybe I should give face-kickers even MORE money. HMMM.

OTM -- and the ones with the most elaborate stories almost always turn out to see the junkies you see again two weeks later with variations on the same stories. "My car broke down and I have to catch a train to Summit NJ" -- I used to see that guy all the time in New Brunswick, which is a pretty damned small city to be using the same line over and over again. And BTW there is no train to Summit.

Also I once met a woman on a train who worked for a shelter for battered women and told me never to believe any beggar who said she was from a shelter, because women who stay in those shelters are not allowed to panhandle (she told me this because there was a panhandler claiming to be from a shelter).

If somone asks for money for food, I sometimes offer to buy food. At least a few times people have taken me up, in which case I feel good about it, and other times people make up an excuse, in which case I assume they were lying.

HAHAHAHAHA. LMAO.

Anyway, I always give the beggars money. Even when they're obviously con artists. I'm just a sucker, I guess..

In Melbourne about a year ago there was a guy and his girlfriend asking people for money as they needed somewhere to sleep for the night. I offered to take them over to a hotel and pay for their room on the spot. He said "no I only want to take things from people that trust me." Junkies, obviously.

People like this are the reason why I don't give to beggars and panhandlers. When people are willing to blatantly lie for a couple of dollars it just makes me feel horrible about humanity.

xpost

I think that's kind of awesome, honestly.

I don't really like the panhandlers that hold doors open for you, because it's pushing a service to me and expecting to be compensated (like squeegee punks... they're my Achille heels; I give them a dollar to *not* smear my windshield). Last time I refused to give money to a door-holdin' hobo, he told me to 'go back to my country'.

People like this are the reason why I don't give to beggars and panhandlers. When people are willing to blatantly lie for a couple of dollars it just makes me feel horrible about humanity.

Problem is, this is ALL of them pretty much - certainly the great majority of the examples in this thread, I reckon. I have mentioned my particular bete noire before - it's a girl who begs near Waterloo station who, while begging, is ALWAYS in tears. When you see her around not actually in the process of begging, she's never crying. And she has a bike.

Oh, and there's another one who really for some reason gets to me. He is a sweet-looking bloke of about 20 who begs with his arms out and his legs tucked under themselves in some kind of traditional (like, medieval) begging pose. I'm sure he makes an absolute fortune, and he is often surrounded by (usually female groups), all presumably taken in by his puppydog appearance.

up here in Astoria we've got The Cadillac Man, Recycling Engineer ... he's constantly being filmed ... they wrote about him in the Times city section, supposedly he was working on a memoir and was going to write an essay for Esquire magazine!

in London i was walking late at night through the tony Notting Hill district, on an empty cul de sac among multi-million dollar houses. this crazy old beggar woman asked me for some money, i gave her a pound, because it was strange finding here there, and perhaps i felt bad she didnt know enough to beg in a high traffic area.

after i gave her the money, she spied my cigarette and asked to buy one. the irony of this situation was too good to pass up, so i sold one to her for 30 pence, she gave me back my money, and i made change for her.

A couple of times in Detroit a guy would show up in the park across from my office and would sing Sinatra songs loudly and terribly. There was a fancy restaurant downstairs with lots of relatively well-off people going in and out and he's stop every once in a while to yell "Y'all are scared of the Black Sinatra" at them. A coworker ran into him once and he yelled "Mort Crim is afraid of the Black Sinatra" at him. Mort Crim is a Detroit TV newsanchor, I don't know what this had to do with my coworker.

There was also Shakey Jake in Ann Arbor, who played a badly tuned guitar and sold bumper stickers of himself. He was more of a local institution rather than a hobo, I guess.

they always say, "ALL I HAVE is Starburst and M&M peanut" .... like they are acknowledging right off the bat that, yeah, you would probably rather get a Milky Way

DUD

I always thought it would be funny if everybody in the subway car started reciting Sonny's litany along with him (since most people who have ridden the F for a long time know it by heart), but I guess that might be cruel even though in my mind I envision it as a tribute.

I don't usually see beggars either, so I don't have any replies handy, and just now, when I left the self-banking thing at my bank where I'd taken a 50 euro note from the ATM, this girl came up to me and asked me money for something to eat. I was so surprised that I just said "No, sorry." (it would have been a little weird to say "I only have a 50 euro note") She looked me right in the eye and asked me again, and I was so taken aback that I just said "No, sorry" again. She dejectedly turned around and left me standing there, feeling like a greedy bastard.

I could have told her to wait while I went to the ATM to fetch something smaller, I could have gone into the night shop to change into smaller bills, I could have checked if I had any coins, but I've only thought about these options since I got home.

Why am I feeling bad about this? I have no problems seeing this one homeless guy who's hanging around my neighborhood all the time with his plastic bags, trying to avoid everyone's gaze, refusing the money people voluntarily try to give him (he doesn't beg), so why am I feeling bad now? :-/

I once tried to give a beggar my extra sandwich that was still wrapped and she wouldn't take it because she was vegetarian and it had ham.

The only people I really dislike are the young hippie "travelers" trying to get to their next destination or something sitting there with a sign. Like really, get a credit card.

i've taken a few econ. exams that damn near blew out my mind, too!

there's also no shortage of crying bums in NYC -- e.g., this one guy who's always at the subway station at the corner of 52nd and 7th.

and then the next day i discovered my friend's roommate was originally from there as well. fucking strange.

THEY ARE ALL IN UNION SQ AREA I THINK. ALSO ALL THE GIRLS ARE "PREGNANT". ALSO, OVERLY LONG SIGNS. MANY OF THEM JUST KEEP THEIR HEADS DOWN AND HOPE THE SIGN WILL WORK FOR THEM. WHERE'S THE HUSTLE -- FUCK YOU HIPPIES!!!

he was engaged in what appeared to be a tense conversation with a homeless woman when i saw him.

oh yeah, re the homeless/battered womens' shelter dude who used to be omnipresent on the PATH trains at night -- i have not seen him in the longest time! maybe he finally got a legit job, or something.

i think that transportation hubs (like train stations and bus stations) are natural hubs for panhandlers, junkies, and other street people. that's why port authority is still really sketchy, even after they cleaned up times square.

bob's gonna be on YOUR SHIT.

i no longer give out money to pan handlers but i continue to give out cigarettes, which, in today's chicago, is probably more lucrative for the hobo's.

It took about a year of living in DC before I became an uncaring selfish bastard. Avoiding eye contact is just something you have to do so you don't end up being that one hapless fucker they decide to converse with at length and/or scream at and/or continually up the ante with. a cigarette, some change, a dollar, and so forth. Oh fuck off.

bum-in-a-box!

give him his shot then buy his shoes for the department.

then chill with coop and eat some donuts.