The best panhandler in your town

[luckylynch]

There is one in my town. We call him smokey since he smells like an ash tray.

His real name is rick--

He wears a full parka, earmuffs, cutt off gloves.

He has a scruffy beard and is very polite--

I see him walking on the highway and even in the summer---hes walking along with his black parka zipped up, hood over the head, gloves on--

He asks the stores--if he can solicit outside or if he can have pop bottles.

When the cops come--he just walks up the street from 7 eleven to safeway--

One time i saw him putting carts away at safeway at 11pm. Then he dropped off his pop bottles inside...He was carrying two full garbage bags full.

A little while later i saw him sitting outside of starbucks with a latte

so im nominating "smokey" from my town white rock bc canada--

[povcity]

That one dude on the F Train. He plays the trumpet very very bad and then threatens NOT to stop unless the passenagers give him money.

[TricepsNGirls]

I reside in Berkeley, California, so we have a lot of interesting figures around the area.

Most of the bums here don't ask for money. The ones who do usually do it passively, like musician with the open instrument case. Today I passed by an exceedingly polite black man who seemed to be getting good reception though. He was fairly old, had a good head on his shoulders, and could sing pretty damn well. Students here generally ignore panhandlers, but this guy seemed to hit a soft spot.

We have really wierd bums too, like an old (I'm talking 90+ yr old) chinese man who holds a poster condeming Bush. He stands on a pedestal in one spot for more than eight hours at a time. It's pretty amazing.

There's also this really loud, fat bald bastard with glasses whom some students seem to love . He'll review articles from a newspaper each day, and by review, I mean make a lot of fcking noise.

Then there's the young, highschool dropout evangelicals who dress up in blue suits and come to tell us we're all going to hell. Those guys usually stir up a bit of a ruckus.

Today, there was an old, silent man dressed up in a green blazer who was handing out condensed bibles. Something about him sparked my interest, but I didn't have time to stick around.

The far majority of the true bums simply linger around on campus benches and in parks. A lot of them have shopping carts filled to the max, so you know they've been living that lifestyle for a while.

The stereotypical hippies are almost completely gone, but you'll have some lookalike street vendors selling funny liberal shirts, bumper stickers, and cheap jewelry.

[Boston03G35]

Everett, Massachusetts has "The bummy guy" - He is this one dude who was maybe 30 (but looked 50), always offered to buy us teens alcohol, so we would flip him the change for his own brew. This was back in like 1999. "The bummy guy" was later replaced with "the bummy lady" who was in the exact same situation of "the bummy guy"...homeless alcoholic who purchases brews for underage kids at Glendale XXXXXXX on Friday and Saturday nights. "The bummy lady" is still around to this day, helping Everetts youth at Glendale Park get drunk...

Thanks Bummy People, without you, i would have led sober teenage years....!

[LatinoHeat210]

We call him Jose.

[avesher]

I sang Supermans Dead with a street busker last week--I had to pay him cause I ddint make any $$

[bxbombers]

theres one i see everyday,, hes a 22 year old vietnam vet

[Boston03G35]

Originally Posted by bxbombers

22 year old vietnam vet

um wtf?

[SmarterChild]

we have can man in the city who goes from college house to college house collecting beer cans from parties. we once asked him how much he made and he claimed $60 for 15 hrs of collecting so i figure he must live in some kind of mansion

theres also another can man who takes empties from tailgaters at the Bills games, my uncle claims the dude makes several $100 every sunday

[Big Slim DaDDy]

His name is Larry. And he is a panhandling machine.

[luckylynch]

Originally Posted by DMcBrideBoston

Everett, Massachusetts has "The bummy guy" - He is this one dude who was maybe 30 (but looked 50), always offered to buy us teens alcohol, so we would flip him the change for his own brew. This was back in like 1999. "The bummy guy" was later replaced with "the bummy lady" who was in the exact same situation of "the bummy guy"...homeless alcoholic who purchases brews for underage kids at Glendale XXXXXXX on Friday and Saturday nights. "The bummy lady" is still around to this day, helping Everetts youth at Glendale Park get drunk...

Thanks Bummy People, without you, i would have led sober teenage

years....!

thank god for bums