Homeless 101.5: All in Good Humour

Jack Nicholson

Living in Bellevue, the crazy house - even as a re-purposed homeless shelter, is one thing but letting it drive you crazy is quite another.. So it pays to keep a sense of humour on oneself at all times. Having a good laugh can make a whole crappy day go away. Poof. Gone. And so I use an old Quentin’ Tarantino trick to remember the little things that happen that I might otherwise forget. I had heard once that when asked how he could write prison lingo film dialog that Tarantino said he had been thrown into the drunk tank once, and so he just wrote down everything all his cellmates said. If I wrote down everything my roommates said at Bellevue, I’d never be able to stop writing, so I just write down the memorable stuff. Here’s some:

 “Nah, it’ll just make me feel like a cop”, responds one guy to another on the elevator when asked if he wanted a free donut. 

The Back to Work program is a government program that is supposed to prepare people to re-enter the workforce after unemployment, but what it seems to excel at is in making people wait. For instance, at the subcontractor CEC (Career Educational Consultants) that I attend, after punching in on a clock, people must wait to sign into their class (yes, that's like punching in by hand a second time), this can take an hour or more because the hallway is just jammed – and there really is no class – just a room full of banged up old computers that people who have never used a computer before try to use. And after signing in there, you can sign up again on a clipboard to see your case worker or a job consultant. This could take an hour more, or two. And then there’s the line to get your Metrocard, the card used on buses and subways – a half hour at least. And so the place is always SRO with people waiting. 


Phone rings, lady waiting in the crowd answers and then responds: “I’m at the zoo”, she says. And this oddly, all becomes normal.

“I kissed a white girl in rehab” – Says a guy on 8^th avenue to his buddy as I walk by on the way to the soup kitchen for lunch.

The other day the library gave me a little tiny library card with a hole in it for my keychain. Funny, homeless people don’t have keychains, I thought.

Back at Bellevue a conversation ensues in the room in which the word ‘tomorrow’ was used twice by the same guy – and almost, as if on cue, Marvin and I break into a chorus from the musical Annie, “Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya Tomorrow! You're always A day A way! ”, we sang in unrehearsed unison. It was friggin' hilarious.

"HA, HA, HA, Ha!", bellowed another roomie. "That's Belleview at its finest!".

So the other night at the Occupy camp was 'Kid's Night' - a night in which middle class parents brought their kids down to spend the night in a tent. Now, if that's not funny, I don't know what is. "Lookie Skip", those are hippies over there", said dad. "Just like grampa used to be".

The laughs never end around here. Wonder what Bloomberg had for dinner tonight?

Homeless 101.1: Is Homelessness a Crime in America?

Homeless America

At the 30th Street Men's Shelter in Manhattan one would certainly think so as truly homeless people are treated just like and along with criminals of a number of varieties. At the corner of the building hangs a sign pointing to the entrance. "Intake and Vagrancy Control", it reads. Upon entering all items must be removed from pockets, belts and watches removed and put in trays for x-ray. Then the 'clients' (as residents are duplicitously called) pass through a metal detector and are whisked with a wand if anything beeps. A combination of DHS (Department of Homeless Services) Police and rent-a cops patrol every inch of the place and one is never out of the view of security at any time, except when in a bunk room - but the bunk rooms have not locks or latches. "You watch your shit here, boy", said a guard to me. "We've got crooks and scammers and pimps and drug runners and more in here. You watch your shit all the time", he said in regard to anything I might be carrying. It applies to your behaviour as well. (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.

Homeless 101: An Education in US Social Service Agencies

In the case of an expatriate returning to America from overseas, one's first step is to the US State Department and Hilary Clinton. They will loan you the money to purchase a plane ticket to get home at an unspecified interest rate and waste no time in getting you to sign a contract at your embassy or consulate overseas that says you are required to pay the money back in 90 days from arrival in the US. This of course is impossible because you will be unemployed with little chance of getting a job that will pay well in 90 days. With a stated unemployment rate of 9% in the US, the real rate (including under-employed), as quoted by too many magazines, is closer to 16% (figure the former executive who is now a greeter at Wal-Mart). But you will sign the loan agreement anyway, because basically, you have little or no choice. America wants you in the same debt prison the entire country is in. That makes you a patriot.(Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.