How Panhandling Turned Into Performance Art

You've all seen poor people with cardboard signs asking for money.  Panhandlers.  Most are homeless.  Maybe you've even given these people a dollar or two.  I was one of those people (to see more of my funny panhandling signs, click here).  When I first did it I was unemployed and having trouble finding a job.  It was humiliating... until I got my first $20 bill.  After that, it didn't feel so bad.  The money helped me buy food and pay bills during a tough time.  Years later, when the taxi industry went downhill, I wound up on the streets of Orange County, California, and I had to panhandle to survive.  There simply was no other viable option at that point.  But like many other jobs I've had, I wasn't content to do it the way every other homeless person did.  In fact, at the time, I was toying with the idea of doing stand-up comedy to escape the floundering taxi industry.  I wrote pages and pages of comedy material while sitting in my cab, and worked those ideas into comedy bits.  But I never made it onstage at an open mic night.  I chickened out.  Before I got the comedy idea going, there came a point where I could no longer afford to keep driving a taxi.  I was also having severe health issues caused by my crazy taxi lifestyle at the time.  One evening I dropped off my taxi and walked out onto the streets with about $15 in my pocket.  I expected to die on the streets within two or three weeks.  Obviously, I didn't die.  I started "flying a sign," as we call it in the panhandling world.  I survived entirely on the gifts from strangers.  I hated relying on other people.  But the generosity I saw also rekindled my hope for humankind.  Then one night, things changed.

It started with Britney Spears

After a couple months of homelessness, literally sleeping at bus stops or in the bushes, I had enough money to get a really cheap motel room for the night.  I had a warm bed, a hot shower, and good meal from the Chinese restaurant across the street.  After two months of being continually cold and miserable, it felt amazing to be indoors.  It's amazing what most people take for granted every day.  But the motel was so cheap, that it didn't even have cable.  So I sat in the chair, my feet up on the bed, my take-out food in my lap, and I watched TMZ.  As it happened, that was the time when Britney Spears had her famous meltdown, shaved her head, and acted completely nuts for a while.  On that particular night, the paparazzi caught her coming out of a court appearance and swarmed around her car.  For some reason, Britney was talking with a bad British accent.  In the midst of that chaos, a homeless man walked up to her car and asked Britney for money.  "You're probably better off than I am," she replied in the accent.  I just started laughing.  Then, on a whim, I pulled my panhandling sign out of my backpack, grabbed my marker, and wrote on the back of it, "Better off than Britney."  I put the sign back in my pack, and didn't think much of it.

The next day, I left the motel, and went back out on the streets.  I went to one of my favorite panhandling spots, and took my position with my sign.  When people driving ignored my "Homeless and Hungry" sign, I flipped it over and showed them the "Better off than Britney" side.  The second time I did this, a big, burly, tattooed guy in the second lane motioned me over.  He handed me a $5 bill and said, "I saw her on TMZ last night, your sign is hilarious."  After that guy, other people responded to the sign as well.  A group of college girls, probably from nearby Cal State Fullerton, hung out their car windows, laughed, and tried to take my photo.  That same group of girls went around a really big block, and drove by me three more times, saying they wanted a pic for Facebook, they, too, thought my sign was hilarious.

I realized something that night when I thought about it.  There was a way I could give back to the people in all those cars driving by me while I was panhandling.  With a few words on a cardboard sign, I could make complete strangers laugh.  Think about that.  In a sense, I was no longer just begging for money to survive, I was performing for these people.  People who tried to ignore me.  Most people simply don't want to see the homeless.  Most people want to think those people are there for a reason.  Just for the record, I didn't drink while I was homeless.  After years of being a taxi driver where random drug and alcohol tests could happen at any time, I just stopped drinking.  I didn't have a drug addiction either.  I became homeless by working 80 to 100 hours a week as a taxi driver.  The industry started to change drastically because of technology (sound familiar to anyone?), and it became harder and harder to just survive.  Finally there came a point where I had to walk away.  Every homeless person has a back story, and a lot of those stories would surprise you.

Panhandling in North Carolina

After almost a year on the streets, trying several different legal ways to make money or get a job, I knew it just wasn't going to happen.  I called my family, who had wound up in North Carolina, a place I'd never lived.  I hadn't talked to my family much, and at one point, they reported me missing because I didn't call them during the Christmas holiday season.  After my call, they rallied together and flew me to North Carolina.  I stayed in the spare bedroom in my parents' small apartment.  After a couple weeks of decompressing, I started looking for a job.  I knew no one in NC.  The two well paying industries I'd worked in the most, BMX/skateboarding and the TV industry, didn't really exist in NC.  Even worse, I landed in North Carolina in November of 2008.  The Great Recession, as it would later be called, was in its early stages, and nobody knew what was going to happen.  And nobody was hiring in this small town.

Ultimately, I took off, and went to nearby Winston-Salem, a larger city that I hoped had better job prospects.  I landed in a homeless shelter, and tried to look for work.  Over the next couple of years, I panhandled some more.  I even got a permit to panhandle legally when that became necessary.  But panhandling in The South was a whole different ball game.  It may sound counter-intuitive, but people here in the Bible Belt actually gave a lot less to homeless panhandlers than people in California did.  There are many reasons for this, which I won't go into here.  But  I soon learned that I made about the same amount of money (usually $6 or $7 an hour) no matter what my sign said.  So I started  using funny signs exclusively.  It actually got to the point where I had fans.  I literally had people who would drive by day after day and thank me for making them laugh.  For me, I was no longer a beggar, I was a performance artist. Very few people can relate to that idea.  But I eventually found one person who experienced similar interactions while working as a human statue.  You can hear her story here, in Amanda Palmer's TED Talk.

What's my point in all of this?  It's this.  In one of the lamest situations, I was able to reframe the way I looked at my situation, and actually give something to the people I was begging money from.  It wasn't a huge thing, but several people actually told me that making them laugh during their daily commute helped them.  I suspect there were many more who felt the same way, but didn't tell me.  Even in the worst of situations, there are ways to make something positive out of it.  It just takes a little creativity.  And a sense of humor.