Giving Money to Beggars: A Reference Guide

I think that the question of whether or not to give money to someone on the street who asks for it is an important one for people who live in or frequent the city. I’ve found that it comes up a lot in conversation. Everybody has an opinion on it, which is good, because you had better have your mind already made up when someone actually approaches you on the street to ask for change. Stopping to think about it is tacky and it could get you robbed. Also, nobody likes it when you stop walking on a busy sidewalk to think about something. You’re holding up the flow of traffic, damn it. Keep it moving.

In many beggar encounters, it’s pretty easy to decide whether or not to give someone money. Usually, you can just say no and move along. But sometimes there are more complicated situations that may befuddle your sense of morals and ethics. So, in an effort to aid those of you who are unsure about beggar etiquette, allow me to share a few personal experiences and the verdicts I reached/wish I had reached at the time.

Situation 1: Two Loud Fat Ladies Ask Me For Food

I was at a lunch truck in Center City a few months ago, grabbing a quick hot dog while running errands for work. Two fat, middle-aged, unkempt women approached me (I could hear them yelling to each other a block away) and asked me, very abrasively, to buy them something to eat from the truck. “I just want a muffin,” one of them said, “a muffin and a bag of chips.”

When the subject comes up in conversation, I’ve always said that I would give a beggar food or even a Septa token instead of money, so I know that the money isn’t going toward drugs or something. And also, being hungry sucks, no matter who you are.

These women, however, did not appear to be malnourished in any way. They obviously had enough energy to waddle down the streets of Center City, yelling at each other at a completely inappropriate volume. Not to mention, their request came out quite rudely, which was offensive to me. How are you going to ask a total stranger, who has absolutely no obligation to you, to use his/her hard-earned money to buy you something without being the least bit polite about it?

Nonetheless, I remembered what I had always said: that giving food to beggars was usually okay. It wasn’t like they were asking for a steak dinner or anything. When it comes down to it, food is food, and who was I to deny someone a basic human necessity if I was able to provide it? Even though these women looked fat and rude, I had no real way of knowing their story. Maybe they had some medical problems that made them fat and rude and also unable to provide shelter for themselves. So I bought them what they asked for, albeit begrudgingly, and they shuffled on their way.

Verdict: Give food if you can

Situation 2: Sad-Looking Guy Pleads for Change

There’s a middle-aged guy that hangs around Center City who always recites the same plea to no one in particular, but to everyone at the same time: “Homeless and hungry, anything will help.” He never directly asks you for change, so you never feel guilty if you don’t give him anything. I see him around almost every day. In the mornings he’s by the subway, and sometimes he re-words his plea to ask for some change so he can buy a cup of coffee. I have no way of knowing what his story is. There’s no way to speculate what any of their stories are, for that matter. But he’s polite, non-invasive, and clearly trying to get things somewhat together (why else would he need that morning cup of coffee?).

So one afternoon, when I passed him on the corner, calling out his chant, I handed him a dollar. He thanked me profusely, his voice full of bashful gratitude. He was so ashamed to have to be taking money from a stranger, but so thankful that I gave it to him. After so many years spent begging all day every day, and so many people passing him by, he still has enough kindness in his heart to be truly thankful for any donations. That’s a good guy.

Verdict: Give the nice guy money

Situation 3: Guy With A Story Stops To Talk

There’s not that many beggars in my neighborhood in West Philly. But when you do run into them, they catch you off guard, because they’re usually just walking down the street like any normal person, without any overt signs of homelessness. I think that’s how this guy essentially surprised me into agreeing to give him money one afternoon as I walked home from the trolley. He stopped me on the sidewalk- made me pull out my earphones and everything- to explain to me that he’d just gotten out of the hospital and he needed money to get home to Upper Darby. He showed me his hospital bracelet as he assured me he wasn’t homeless, he just needed to get home. I, caught off guard, gave the dude and his hospital bracelet the benefit of the doubt, and handed over a few quarters. Pleased, he thanked me repeatedly as I wished him luck and continued on my way.

A few weeks later, I had a very routine outpatient procedure done at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Upon checking in, they gave me a hospital bracelet that looked exactly like the one the beggar had shown me- the one I had taken as “proof” that he must be telling the truth. I realized that a hospital bracelet easily distracts from the fact that you have no other characteristics of someone who has recently required hospitalization. It’s a lot easier to fake hospitalization than I had originally thought.

Verdict: Consider all aspects before you believe a beggar’s story/ Don’t give money to a guy with a hospital bracelet

The Osage Nudist

…I think that might be me.

Here’s the background information:

- My apartment building is shaped like a backwards “E”. I drew you a picture for reference:

(click for a larger view)

As you can see, this places my apartment (on the bottom limb of the “E”) in very close proximity to the apartments next to me (on the middle limb of the “E”). Potentially, you can hear and see everything your neighbors say and do. And I can certainly hear a lot, from babies crying all night to toilets flushing in the morning.

- Everyone else has also realized the problems this proximity can create, and thus they have all invested in curtains. They keep these curtains closed at all times. This prevents me or anyone else from being able to see into my neighbors’ windows, and it also prevents my neighbors from being able to see out of their own windows and into mine.

- The “E”-ness of my apartment building, in addition to causing a close-quarters problem, also creates an air flow problem. The long front wall prevents any breeze from making its way down the narrow alleys that separate the “E” limbs. Thus, I keep my windows wide open for most of the year in an attempt to welcome any air that may successfully waft this way.

- Curtains, while effective at blocking the goings-on of the apartment from the wandering eye, also block potential small wafts of air.

- I have not invested in curtains for the reasons listed above.

- Finally, the only place I get cell phone service in my apartment (thank you, iPhone) is directly in front of my front window. This large window is also the only one that lets in a nice breeze. And, since I am on the second floor, it is also the furthest distance from any other apartment, leading me to believe that no one can see into it.

Here’s the situation (aka, “In My Defense”):

Despite the fact that I’m fairly certain no one can see into my windows, I am still cautious about what I put on display. I try not to walk around completely naked; usually, I’m at least wearing a bra. But I’ve had these itchy spots on my chest and stomach for the past few days, so I’ve been tending to forego the bra when at home.

I was in precisely this state of undress when I received a phone call from a friend last weekend. I took my phone, and my bralessness, to the front window so I wouldn’t lose service while talking. The thought that someone might catch a glimpse of my delicates certainly crossed my mind, but I figured that the combination of the distance to the houses across the street, the partially obscuring composition of my window, and my open laptop in front of me would surely hide my, um, “knockers” from view.

Apparently, I underestimated the effectiveness of these factors.

As I chatted away merrily, I noticed a gentleman on the porch across the street unlocking his bike. Very distinctly and deliberately, he looked up, made eye contact with me, waved, and shook his head as though to say “how could you think that I can’t see you?” Which, at that point, was a question to which I had no answer, because my view of this waving man across the street was so clear and unobscured that I could see his pupils boring into mine. I could see his “you’ve got to be kidding me” smirk. If he’d had a boner in his pants, I could have seen that too, but he was clearly more ashamed for me than turned on.

I think that fact more than anything was what made the situation so awkward: that he wasn’t enjoying what he was seeing. He just felt embarrassed for me.

As I slowly sank down to the floor and out of sight of the roaming eyes of West Philly, I tried to explain what had just happened to my friend on the phone without making it sound like I was an exhibitionist. I found I could not do it.

I began to realize that I’d been living in this apartment for nearly a year, and this was decidedly not the first time I’d been naked at my front window. The logical part of my brain (I don’t know where it had been before this) began to kick in, and I noticed the clarity with which I could see not just this man on this porch, but everyone else that happened to be out on their porches or walking down the sidewalk. I wondered how many others had caught a glimpse of my lady parts over the past year. I wondered if my neighbors talked to each other about me; if I may even be their main topic of conversation. “The Osage Nudist was at it again last night, did you see her?” “Of course I saw her. How could I miss her?” “I had to put a blindfold on my kid to keep him from looking at her.” “All right, now she’s corrupting our children. Somebody has to put a stop to this.”

Most of all, I wondered why I had been so opposed to curtains before now.

Now, I’ve taken to sitting at my front window with a shirt on for excessive amounts of time, hoping that some of the regular viewers that I undoubtedly have will see my clothedness and spread the word to the others. I don’t know if this kind of reputation is the sort of thing you can undo, though. At this point, I’m just waiting for my doorbell to ring.

Stories From The Sex Shop: The Prologue

So, I used to have a somewhat, um, “unconventional” job.

No, I wasn’t a stripper. But strippers were our primary clientele.

A few years ago, when “flat broke” was an understatement of my financial status, my definition of a good job was one that offered to hire me on the spot and that paid its employees in cash. That was how I stumbled upon “Erogenous Zone,” a gem of a store on South Street (South Philly’s block of cheesy, tourist trap-y stores) that dealt primarily in adult novelties and exotic dancewear.

That’s a delicate way of saying that I worked in a sex shop.

You know your job is going to be interesting when, at the end of your first day, you’re sent home with a reference book of all the sex toys you can imagine, and some you can’t. I knew nothing about this industry upon starting out (I never thought that my lack of knowledge about kinky sex would be a bad thing, but there you go). But I was going to have to learn the intricacies of all things phallic and tingly, because it was now my job to convince people that they needed this stuff. This is more difficult than it sounds, because I have never and will never believe that anyone, at any time, needs a vibrating rubber fist.

And that was only half of it. They kept all those, um, “playthings” in the back of the store. The front housed the outfits marketed to strippers, dancers, and middle-aged women trying to keep their husbands from leaving them. I say “outfits” because “clothes” is a gross exaggeration. Think full body fishnet suits. Think assless chaps. Think crotchless panties. The list goes on.

This was how I came to spend my nights and weekends surrounded by lime green double-sided penises and strawberry flavored edible underpants. At first I didn’t really understand why store employees would play a significant role in the whole process of buying sex toys. I had always thought that if a person has enough willpower and drive to enter a sex shop at all, he/she should already have adequate knowledge of the product he/she seeks. But products of this nature are sold in somewhat surprising abundance on South Street, so once I got over the shock of unfailingly catching a glance of some sort of representation of a genital every time I looked anywhere in the store, I realized that as long as there is a demand for these products, there will be a niche for people to supply them.

Since the store was located in an area popular with tourists, we had plenty of people come in just to giggle their way around the store. My role was to bother these people until they stopped finding the merchandise funny and began to think of the ways their lives could be improved by it. Because of this, it was essential that I develop nothing short of a breadth of knowledge on the subject. Customers in a store of that nature have trouble trusting your opinion if you don’t sound like you know what you’re talking about. So, realizing that I had no choice but to embrace my new profession, I schooled myself until I could recite, describe, and demonstrate all the tricks and treats of even the most complex rubber penis.

I consider my nearly-yearlong experience working in the adult industry to have been worthwhile. I took away from it a body of knowledge that most people can’t say they have: I am a sex toy expert. Curious and adventurous friends of mine now have someone to approach with questions of that nature. It also makes a fantastic conversation piece, particularly with people I’m just meeting for the first time. And, most importantly, it made for some of the best people-watching I’ve ever done. You can’t even imagine some of the characters I encountered there.

But those stories are to come at later dates.

Look for more installments in the “Stories from the Sex Shop” series!

Me + Pandora = ?

Pandora and I have a love-hate relationship.

When I first discovered this Internet radio that plays you songs it thinks you’ll like, I was intrigued. I liked being able to enter the name of a favorite artist of mine, and, no matter how obscure, Pandora could pull from its depths a song by that artist. I liked that it also played songs by other artists I enjoyed, and that it could even play some new music that I hadn’t heard before but was akin to my tastes. I liked that I could skip over songs I didn’t want to hear, and that by “liking” and “disliking” certain songs, Pandora would learn over time exactly what my tastes were.

But I quickly became annoyed with it. After Pandora’s initial novelty wore off, I realized what most music listeners realize about themselves but don’t really want to admit: I don’t want to hear new music. I want my music. I mean, sometimes I’m open to new music if someone who knows my tastes really well suggests a band. But Pandora and I weren’t at this stage in our relationship yet. Pandora was just beginning to learn my tastes, and it often guessed wrong.

Which was okay, at first. If it played a song I didn’t like, I’d just press the thumbs down button, and Pandora would be very polite and apologetic. “Sorry about that,” it would say to me, “We’ll skip that song and we’ll never play it on this station again.” Pandora knew it had fucked up, and it clearly felt guilty about misjudging my personality and my musical tastes so grossly. But I accepted its apology: after all, it had been kind enough to skip the song for me.

Pandora had good days and bad days. Sometimes it would be on a roll, playing song after song that I enjoyed, with very few that I had to skip over. But there were other times when it just couldn’t seem to get it right. I would have to skip a few songs in a row, and it would feel so bad about being wrong that it would just fall back on its safety net and play a song by the original artist for which my station was named. But then after that song, it would play a few more bombs, and I’d have to skip over so many that I would max out my “skip” allowance.

This is Pandora’s worst feature, and it knows it. If you “dislike” or skip over too many songs per hour, it thinks you’re insulting its ability to guess your tastes, and it gets uppity and passive-aggressive. It refuses to skip the song, and displays some message that places the blame on someone else. “Our music licenses only allow you to skip over a certain number of songs per hour,” it tells you, trying to rid itself of all responsibility. And then it gets an attitude. Onto the bottom of the message, Pandora throws in, “If you want to listen to something else, try another station.” Like it’s your fault Pandora can’t come up with enough likable songs per hour. Like it isn’t Pandora’s fault it can’t get its shit together and just do its job.

Nevertheless, as rude as Pandora was, I tended to let it go in the beginning, because its nasty attitude was clearly just stemming from the fact that it felt bad about doing so poorly, and it was worried that I’d give up on it and start another station instead of continuing to hone this one. Besides, we still had good moments together. It got so happy and proud of itself when I “thumbs upped” a song. “We’re glad you like it,” Pandora announced. “We’ll try to play more songs like this one.”

Time went on, and Pandora began to understand me a little better. It was getting a much better feel of what was and was not okay to play for me. But sometimes we would still get into standoffs. When I would skip a few songs in a row but manage to stay inside my skip limit, it would get frustrated at me and throw me into the care of a commercial so it could go cool off a little. And then it would come back, feeling a little better, and it would play a string of marginally acceptable songs that I would have liked to skip, but allowed to play so I could save my skips for really terrible songs. I knew what it was doing, so I would go an hour or so without paying any attention to it, simply allowing it to play song after song with no feedback on my part. Pandora didn’t like this. It can’t stand being neglected. So when I ignored it, it would eventually tuck its tail between its legs and beg for attention by shutting off and displaying a message that pathetically asked me, “Are you still listening?” It would stay like this until I had to come back and press “I’m still listening” begrudgingly, forced to acknowledge its existence. Pandora then got so excited I was back that it would take things a step too far, ejaculating out a video commercial that I had to sit and watch before my music came back.

Those damn commercials. They are Pandora’s greatest weapon. Or, at least, I thought they were its greatest weapon. That was before December.

December was a particularly tense month for Pandora and I. Due to final projects and papers, I spent a lot of time in front of a computer, which greatly increased my Pandora usage. I was stressed and on edge, and I’m sure I was sending mixed messages to Pandora, changing “likes” to “dislikes” and skipping over songs I usually didn’t. It must have sensed my unease, and it reacted negatively. I reached my skip limit several times a day. Pandora was throwing video commercials in my face left and right. And it refused to display anything on the side of the screen but that giant pink cupcake and that really gorgeous, $20,000 engagement ring, both of which I would have given an arm for. Our relationship was at its lowest point yet, and I didn’t think it could get any worse.

Until Pandora dropped me a little email.

It was worded very diplomatically. In the kindest terms possible, Pandora explained to me that its free version allowed listeners 40 hours of music a month, and warned me that I was approaching this limit. It gave me an ultimatum: I could either pay 99 cents to have “unlimited” listening for the rest of the month, or I could just continue to listen until my 40 hours were up, Pandora shut off, and I would have to go without it until January.

I was outraged. After all these months, this was how Pandora was thanking me? I had endured its attitude, watched its countless commercials, and gritted my teeth through the sporadic Kenny G song on my Mozart station, only to be told that my business was only appreciated up to a certain point? Pandora had dealt a low blow, a low blow indeed.

But the email was symbolic of the crucial truth we had both come to realize: over the months, Pandora had changed my music tastes. I had spent so much time listening to happy country music that I no longer had much of a desire to listen to the depressing, pretentious indie rock that filled my iTunes library. But, as I wasn’t ready to come to terms with this somewhat embarrassing change in my personality just yet, I refused to actually download any country music. No, I needed Pandora if I wanted my country fix.

And there it was. Pandora had the upper hand on me. It always would. I grappled with this fact until I reached my 40 hour limit, at which point I did what Pandora and I had both known I would: I paid the 99 cents. And I got back the same rude, ad-filled, skip-resistant Pandora that I’d always had. Except I’d always put up with it because it was free. Now I had paid for it. It was dirty money. And it was simultaneously the best and worst 99 cents I’d ever spent.

Pandora and I haven’t reached this low point again. For my birthday in February, Brad bought me a year’s subscription to Pandora One, the ad-free, high quality audio version of Pandora. This means that Pandora has lost its commercials weapon, and as a result, I think we get along better. I’ve noticed an increase in songs I’ve “thumbs-upped,” although I’m not sure if that’s an official perk of Pandora One or if it’s just being nicer to me because I’m paying it. Either way, I consequently reach my “skip limit” less often, which makes Pandora feel better about itself. The “Are you still listening?” timeout has increased from one hour to five hours, so it’s less whiny and pathetic. All around, we have a better relationship. But every once in a while, Pandora will still toss in a Sean Kingston song (I don’t even know who that is, but he’s a rapper, and he just came on my country station) when I’ve already reached my skip limit, and I have to listen to the terrible song like I enjoy it while Pandora watches me suffer, and it laughs.

It’s also begun to manifest its occasional frustration with me in a new way: when I’m listening to Pandora on my phone, every once in a while it will stop playing in the middle of a song and just skip to the next one. I can’t figure out why it does this, but its lack of a back/rewind button forces me to give up on trying to enjoy the rest of Gary Allan’s “Watching Airplanes” and endure “The Way You Love Me” by Faith Hill- a song I’m not really fond of, but I don’t resent it enough to waste a “skip” on it. As it is with so many other songs Pandora chooses to play.

That’s where it really gets you.