If you live in a city of any sort of size, large or small, you’re likely familiar with the street publication known as the Homeless Paper. If you’re not, it’s a pretty simple concept – an organization, likely a non-profit, publishes a newspaper, probably once a month, containing articles that are either written by or about homeless people. Homeless people then become vendors and sell the paper for $1 on the street. I don’t know how the distribution works out but I imagine the homeless vendor keeps the majority of the money while the organization gets a percentage to cover operating costs. All in all it’s a really good concept that helps a whole bunch of people, especially those individuals who are highly motivated and not resigned to being homeless for the rest of their lives.
Having said all of that let me state this as plainly and sensitively as I can: I fucking hate the homeless paper.
Now just hold on a minute before you completely crucify me for such a blatantly dickish statement, I can explain. There are several reasons why I really don’t care for the homeless paper:
Number 1: Guilt
On any given day I will pass anywhere from 3 to 6 homeless paper vendors on my way to and from lunch and I’d love to give them all a dollar in exchange for a paper but truthfully I just can’t go spending $6 a day on homeless papers plus I don’t ever have any cash on me… Sort of. You see, one vendor in particular who I pass almost every single day stands right outside my goddamn bank. And believe me, he’s the nicest guy in the world and he truly, truly got a shitty draw in life. He was a fire fighter whose last call was 9/11 at the World Trade Center where a 10-ton slab of granite fell on him and now he’s disabled, homeless, and selling papers. So every day I pass this guy and he wishes me a nice day and I thank him and give him this look like, “Sorry dude, no cash today,” but fuck me - he can see my goddamn bank and my goddamn ATM right there! But what am I supposed to do? The other day I was pseudo approaching the guy to buy a paper when I overheard him say to a young woman, “I haven’t seen a $20 bill since December.”
“Well, shit!” I thought, “That’s just depressing as hell, plus there goes my plan to get him to break this 20 for me.” But shit, I really needed a bunch of ones. So I went on by without buying a paper.
So I feel guilty as hell when I pass the guy if I don’t buy a paper but then I feel even guiltier when I do buy a paper and he tells me how sick he is or how he wishes he could just go back to fighting fires if not for the crutches or how he only pulled down $8 the day before… And all of this while I’ve just walked out of my bank and on my way to get some dim sum at the Chinese takeout place. I mean, my god! I know he’s homeless and hungry and all that but he is guilting the shit out of me every time I see him and honestly that shit keeps me up some nights just thinking about the poor guy.
I know what you’re thinking though, and you should feel ashamed for thinking this – how do I know he’s not lying and putting on a big act just to guilt people into buying some papers? Well, I’ll tell you how. I buy a paper from the guy every few weeks, especially when the new issues come out, and the guy tells me the same story every time. He doesn’t remember me for a second and he always tells me the same story about 9/11 each and every time, so he’s consistent as hell. Of course, I’m a little fucking pissed that I buy a paper from him all the time and he doesn’t at least remember me but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Number 2: Mother Nature
As much as I would love to feel good about giving several dollars every day to every homeless paper vendor I pass, I simply can’t do that. Why, you might ask? The environment, of course. I honestly can’t bring myself to buy a paper every day because as I walk away with it in my hand all I can think about is all the trees that died in order to make it. I knowIknowIknow! It’s ridiculously hypocritical to value the lives of a couple trees over a human being, starving, without shelter, living on the street. But come on – it’s a hell of a lot of trees. And for what? A paper I’m never going to read? Okayokayokay! Just wait while I explain again…
Number 3: Zoloft
You see, that’s the other hypocrisy of the whole deal – I can’t bring myself to actually read the paper; it’s too fucking depressing. I’m serious, have you ever read anything in the homeless paper? Oh god, it’s horrible.
One day I bought a paper and I was waiting forever for my Chinese takeout so I thought, “Well, I’ll just pass the time leafing through this homeless paper… oh what’s this? It’s a poem written by a homeless man. Oh, this should be pleasant…” Holy. Shit. It was the worst thing I’d ever read. It was all about how this guy lives under a bridge because he went off to fight for his country in the army only to come back and find that his country didn’t care about him and how he wished he’d died in the war like his fallen buddies and now all he wants to do is get drunk to dull the pain while he looks up at the bridge that is his home and all he can think about is jumping off it to end it all.
Well, fucking-a! If I want to be that depressed I’ll get a bottle of white zinfandel, put on some Sinead O’Connor and go through my old yearbooks and circle the pictures of all the chicks that wouldn’t go out with me. Jesus, who wants to do that? So instead I just buy the papers and they collect in a large stack at my desk without getting read until the once-monthly paper recycling pickup at which point I just look at the stack and think, “Well, that sure is a hell of a lot of trees sitting there…” I mean, you’d think they could go digital like all the other publications in the world, right? Yeah, there’s some logistics to work through with that but what else are they thinking about all day?
Number 4: Competition
The thing with the homeless paper vendor is, they’re not beholden to anyone else, not even any other vendors, so it’s actually a very competitive endeavor for these people. One guy stakes a claim on a street corner and that becomes his territory. The code of the homeless paper vendor clearly states that no other vendor can encroach on his territory any closer than one linear block. But even then, one linear block isn’t very big so you can imagine how in the heart of downtown there is literally one vendor on every single street corner. So when I walk to lunch to Subway to get my $5 footlong sub because I’m always starving by the time lunch comes around and you really can’t beat $5 for an entire foot of Subway eat fresh sub although I only ever eat like 50, maybe 60% of the sub before I put the rest if the fridge and tell myself I’ll finish it later but I never do because once you put the mayonnaise on it really only has a shelf life of 20, maybe 30 minutes before the bread gets unacceptably soggy so I always end up throwing away like $2, maybe $2.50 worth of sub so when I’m on my way to go do that at lunch every day I pass like three homeless paper vendors and if I happened to stop and buy a paper from one of them the other two can clearly see me do it because it’s only one fucking linear block so what am I really going to say as I pass those other two vendors with a paper already in my hand? “Sorry, that dude has a better corner. You should really take his corner and then I’ll buy a paper from you.” So again, it goes back to the guilt.
So at this point you must be asking yourself, in a world where a bunch of greedy assholes on Wall Street can literally devise something out of thin air like a credit default swap and sell that worthless piece of shit for millions of dollars, how can I possibly be any more insensitive about a few homeless people trying to feed themselves by selling a legitimate product for one dollar? Well, clearly you underestimate me.
The thing is, some vendors have it down and know how to sell some papers and some just don’t. The key is to look just homeless enough but not too homeless. Some homeless vendors put on their best clothes to go sell papers and honestly it just gets confusing because if they’re not clearly homeless then you have to wonder what this asshole is doing selling newspapers like the asshole parents who sell the candy bars for their kid’s marching band at work instead of making their kids actually sell them. If I’m going to buy a homeless paper or not buy a homeless paper I want to buy it or not buy it from an actual homeless person.
They also need to lay on the guilt, but not too thick. The guy I buy from has a great story – injured at the World Trade Centers. It’s consistent and it makes me feel bad for him. But one day I bought from a different dude and he was telling me about his chronic illness and was like, “Some days I don’t know if I’m going to make it, COUGH-COUGH!” Alright dude, I want a homeless paper, not a bout of the whooping cough, so this is the last time I’ll be buying from you.
And lastly, if you’re going to sell some homeless papers, keep the crazy under control. For instance, there’s a guy who yells, whistles and barks at people in order to draw attention to himself to sell some papers. Literally he’ll be like, “HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER HERE! BARK! BARK! GET YOUR PAPER! YUP! YUP! HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER! BARK! BARK!” I didn’t take any advertising classes in college but I don’t think he did either because I don’t care if he’s selling cheap beer with free porn on the side, if there’s one thing I’m going to avoid it’s a crazy ass homeless person.
So there it is; that’s why the homeless paper tortures me on a daily basis and hopefully you can empathize with my situation. If you can’t and you just think I’m a dick for all of this, well that’s fine – the new issue of the homeless paper comes out this week so you can go buy one for yourself. Just don't come crying to me when you can't get to sleep tonight.
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