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How American Homeless Stay Wired
theodp writes "San Franciscan Charles Pitts has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs a Yahoo forum, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. Nothing unusual, right? Except Pitts has been homeless for two years and manages this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge. Thanks to cheap computers, free Internet access and sheer determination, the WSJ reports that being homeless isn't stopping some from staying wired. 'You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper,' says Pitts. 'But you need the Internet.'"
If you can reach friends and family, can't you ask for help? Maybe I grew up in an environment where homelessness was not an option because I'm sure that I could chill on someone's couch until I worked my way back into an apartment. If you can't reach anybody on the internet who is willing or able to help you out while you're living under a bridge, perhaps you should re-evaluate your ongoing communications with those people. I realize that not everybody will be able to work up a western-union order for bus fair in a week or a cross-country plane ticket in a month to help their friend, you'd have to be pretty low on my list of acquaintances for me to not help you out, and I make sure I hang out with people that would do the same for me. This is really sad, while yes, its good that they can stay in contact, this is a case of communication without value.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I'm self-unemployed after a real hard season of playing Blade Runner for a year. I don't have too much money to spend but...
I have a 24 hour permanent link to Internet
I can load tens of Gigabytes per month.
Have several different channels to reach Internet, from wherever I am, in several possible means.
And have a miriad of places to go for info and communication.
At home I have also three different ways to reach Internet from several systems around the house. I can freely move with a Internet link
And all this usually costs me some. Let's see... Some 40 dollars per month? Uh!
And to think I paid a 100 dollars for some piece of junky channel just four years ago. Hey and I could load only 2 Gigs! I was robbed!
It's a great world.
It's easy to shower without friends or crash-pads. Go to the local university or junior college because you get get into the locker room and shower without hassle. The phenomenon described in this discussion is actually widespread, in fact, the JC I was showering at(a popular one in Los Angeles) was known for people sleeping in its locker rooms and even classrooms after lights-out. This was back around 2005 when the economy was decent.
Before I thought of that, I would rub my body down with body wash (while wearing boardshorts) and find an apartment complex with a pool or jacuzzi, then I'd get in and bathe in them! Scrubbing with fingernails exfoliates skin and the bromine keeps you clean while the body wash keeps you fresh, though just the bromine will suffice if you scrub with your fingernails.
Just make sure you have more than one towl and do a drying rotation. In locker rooms I've seen bums showering who didn't even have a towel, and they used half a roll of paper towels from the dispenser to dry their body off! xD
In Japan, they move into internet cafes
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
3,304 pounds of food per second. 263,013,699 pounds of food every day. 1.5 tons of food per year for every person in America.
A couple of decades ago, Harry Chapin said something like "In a country where we produce enough food to feed the entire planet 6 times over, it's unthinkable that anybody shouldn't have enough to eat". Not much has changed in the interim.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Doing the math on those numbers, they don't even agree with each other.
1) 365days * 24hours * 60minutes * 60seconds = 31,536,000 seconds. Multiply by 3304 pounds per second = 104,194,944,000 pounds per year.
2) 263,013,699 pounds * 365 = 96,000,000,135 pounds per year. (Well, that's close... but wait...)
3) Since you used pounds, I will assume the short ton (the smallest 'ton' available) = 2,000 pounds * 1.5... So, 3000 pounds per person * 306 million persons in America = 918,000,000,000 pounds per year. Oops.
I'll admit that the smallest number equates to about 313 pounds per person per year for each American (less than 1 pound a day), bad numbers like that make me a bit suspicious of their methodology.
Yeah, OK, I'll admit I snagged them direct. The 3304/second I'm quite confident in. It's a USDA number that's been floating around for some time and I have read the actual study somewhere in the deep dark past. I guess I'll have to go find it again.
Sorry for not double checking the numbers before I posted them ...
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
If you live in Seattle, Essential Bakery in Fremont is prime for dumpster diving as well.
(I'm not homeless, but I'm a college student, and the bread is usually VERY fresh. I promise. :D)
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
If you look in to it you'll find that it is rather rare to see someone who is homeless 100% by circumstance....
How would you "look into" this kind of thing? Would you trade your clothes for rags and go live on the street to observe? If you did, would you keep things to yourself or write a book so that others did not have to? That would be cool, but you know it's easier to read the last book and the overflowing literature written since about life on the street. When you do, you will drop your judgment like the turd it is. Here's a reasonable opinion by someone who did all of the above:
What you do from here is up to you, but recognize yourself in those less fortunate. RMS genreally buys people on the street food if they ask him for money. You have to walk them into the place and buy it because only a fool would trust food they did not see made like that. The world is full of people who ignorantly cast blame and would harm them for sport. Such are the extremes of behavior people with means chose.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There was a This American Life about this a few months back:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=358
Two poets 'decided' to become homless to 'focus on their poetry'. As the story goes it was really less about choosing to be free as it was about being put on the street by their substance addictions and minor mental health issues. The Parent Post sounds to be pretty stable (after all he returned to normal life). But I think a lot of people who "decide to go homeless" are really people with deeper problems who won't acknowledge them. For me my apartment is the opposite of something I need to worry about. Auto bill pay and as far as I'm concerned it's free. 0 hastle. No constant battle to survive.
Now I've certainly felt the desire to 'go free' before and just move into a tent in the wilderness with a year's worth food. And have spent a month camping for the fun of it. But I think there is a difference between that and the constant rat race in the city.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/31/BAPB1227KF.DTL Tom Sepa would rather not be called homeless. "That word is loaded," he said. "I prefer 'urban outdoorsman.' " It is true that Sepa has a lot of things that aren't generally associated with the stereotypical San Francisco homeless person - like a full-time job.
But that's the most important thing to have !!!
:-D
Exactly. I was a bum before the internet even existed, but I was always a man who knew where his towel was.
One of every four homeless people in the USA is a veteran. However, given what the world knows about what the US military does in places like Abu Ghraib, I'd salute anyone who didn't go back.
We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
..........While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
..........But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind -
..........There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
..........O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!