gold-pressed latinum
yesterday i heard two (2) enactments of the old “stranded w/o wallet” story, and even though i told myself i would no longer go for this scam, i ended up giving two bucks, and then 50 cents. in the first instance, i told myself later that i was buying his story, so here it is, as my story:
yesterday (or i guess two days ago actually), me and a friend drove from springfield to worcester for the purposes of drinking / partying. well, we had a couple bars, we got into a dispute, and he left me here, taking with him my wallet and all my money, IDs and credit cards, which i had left in the car during the whatever. i’m just trying to get back to springfield. i went to all the places, they couldn’t help me. i need $14.75, which is the full price of a bus ticket.
pretty decent, i like “we had a couple bars” (of what?), and i like setting up the current town as “the party town”, and i really like that “empty hand technique” of going out with no ties to anything. but really, whither the lost art of panhandling? remember when grisly dudes / scientist types used to sell their poems on the street? this happened twice to me growing up, and each time i was psyched. it’s such a good racket! a small investment in photocopies, and they’re stuck there captive while you read it and then afterwards, they feel obligated to buy it, before you sspring on them the cost of a buck or two each (which really isn’t that bad for a crazy story you can tell someone later and an artifact). i remember there was one guy with a brian chippendale haircut that sold astrological posters he made, but they weren’t as good as they could’ve been. not like there’s a lot of low-level street hustlers that read this (or any (?)) blog, but let’s raise the bar, folks! let’s be new gods for once!
Crusty Tim reads this sometimes, and the terms hustler and street do apply. He panhandled down town recently with a sign: “out of work bank robber - need money for gun”. I think he got something like $30.
this happened to me AGAIN yesterday. but then later in the day some guy asked me for 15 cents and i gave him a quarter and he gave me ten cents back!
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when I was about 15 I dropped a quarter on the way to the bus and it is really hard to get a quarter from someone! Later that week, I found a ten dollar bill hanging out by itself on the street. Money is weird.
this post got reprinted in the worcester magazine this week. pretty funny.