Reply #53: Almost never [View All]

[ForrestGump]

I did, at first, when I first came to the Big City, but then I got a bit wiser. Id' never sene anything like it before. never sene peopel sleeping on the streets, or picking through trash for food, or begging for money or whatever. But soon enough I saw too much of it.

And my refusal to give to panhandlers, on general principle, has nothing to do with being 'progressive' or 'not progressive.' One thing that it did have to do with was the fact that on my long-time student budget (still paying that off, of course) I couldn't afford to throw money around unless it was for a good reason. Because I was usually on foot, walking around at street level, I saw that most of the panhandlers that I encountered regularly were 'fakes.' They may well have been homeless, but when some dude spends 20 minutes (while you're waiting for the bus) laying on this sad story and then you see him swigging away from a brown paper bag an hour later, you know he didn't want the money for the stated purpose (in one slimeball's case, a dying daughter).

In some US cities, I've been panhandled at just about every step, and those experiences were enough to deter me forever. Well, with a few exceptions. I, too, have heard and seen reports of professional panhandlers - 'white collar' beggars - who rake in a lot of money. But I'm not painting everyone with the same brush as a result. Homelessness in the US is a national shame, and I don't doubt that some panhandlers are absolutely sncere. Also, most of my experieces were from the '80s through early '90s - I gather that the demographic of homeless people has shifted further toward entire families (away from the traditional 'bum' or the Reagan-era mental patients) but I have never been panhandled by such people, to whom I'd be likely to give whatever money or help I could. Nope, most of the panhandlers who've approached me in the past decade were often dressed more expensively than me, sometimes prominently carrying a cell 'phone, and most often teen to 20-something grunge/'alternative' types who almost certainly have no legitimate reason to be asking strangers for money. they can go f*** themselves both for obvious reasons and because they're exploiting a dynamic that may be very real to some people far less fortunate than their lazy selves.

And, like others who've posted here, I've had offers of substantive help (including that of food) rejected curtly and I've seen the same f***er pull the "I need to buy gas/repair my car so I can make it to Kansas" story night after night in the same location.

Oh, yeah - I'm usually telling the truth when I tell panhandlers that I've got no money. I hardly ever carry cash. Heck, it's rare enough that I even have any. And I'll never forget the dude who asked me if I wanted to go panhandling with him - told me where we'd go, and everything. He was quite excited about the idea of team panhandling. :-) Maybe I should've given it a try.

I don't think I'm a particularly streetwise-looking person (maybe growing up in the boonies explains that), so perhaps I've tended to attract inordinate attention from such people, but I suspect that most of the panhandlers I've turned down ("sorry...no cash") are phoneys, at least in terms of their intended use of the money they're aiming for. And the nature of that use DOES concern me. For that matter, when I see one of these people smoking I go into instant f***-you mode, because if they can afford the extortionate price of cigarettes then they're really not as close to death's door as they make out. Hell, I can almnost guarantee that, as a starving student, a lot of the people who tried to scam me for money were more fiscally solvent than I was.

And the dudes in downtown LA are just plain scary. They'll get right up in your face - well within even the most gregarious person's personal space - and try to intimidate the money out of you. It's pretty much "Gimme some money." Impolite panhandlers don't even warrant a polite rebuff, but these guys are both impolite and - in the sense of entitlement that they seem to feel comes with being down-and-out and scary-looking and -acting - the bottom of the barrel. I'm taller than most of them, but they'll still freak me out, and I know that the SOBs play up the intimidation to get what they want. That's not far short of mugging, in some ways.

Then there was the extremely distraught, possibly insane, well-to-do man who told me his sad story, opened his wallet, and tried to give me hundreds of dollars within for listening. I didn't take it, but I did at least pull him out of traffic. But that's another thing all together.....