Archive for the 'homelessness' Category
April 19, 2009
TONY
“Got myself another ticket this morning.”
PHILIP
“No.”
TONY
“Yup. Cop comes up to me, gives me a ticket for panhandling near a transit vehicle. You what the transit vehicle is? The streetcar; how am I gonna be on the side walk and not be near a street car. If you can figure that out, you could probably win the Nobel Prize.
“So as soon as the cop comes up to me and starts writing me up a ticket, six people come out of Timothy’s and start giving him hell but he says he’s’just doing my job. So he gives me the ticket and he feels so bad, he comes back and offers to buy me a coffee. So he bought me a tea.”
Posted in homelessness | 2 Comments »
Tags: cop, Margaret Preston, Nobel Prize, streetcar, sympathy, tea, teapot, ticket, ticket cop
April 11, 2009
PHILIP
“I saw a young guy playing guitar just on the next block. Do you know who I mean?”
TONY
“Yup. He’s a great guy. You know, he only made 11 bucks the other day. You know what, even though he only made 11 bucks, he came over and dropped some change in my hat.”
You’ll never believe what he said. He said that he’s always reading my blog, and after he got to know me through the blog, he said he felt comfortable enough on the street that he could come out and play his guitar. He even said he admired me, which I haven’t heard in a while.”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: admiration, guitar, Matisse, music, troubador
April 9, 2009
PHILIP
“Do you remember when that Chevy over there was a totally modern car model?”
TONY
“I’ll tell you, those were the days, my friend.”
Posted in homelessness | Leave a Comment »
Tags: 1950s, 1957, automobile, car, Chevy, days, decades, Levittown, Mary Hopkins, meaning, memory, model, months, old, recall
April 6, 2009
TONY (leaving a voice message for Philip)
“Phil, if you’re around, how about coming down to Timothy’s and buying an old man a coffee …”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: Alexander Graham Bell, coffee, McLuhan, medium, message, old, telephone, timothy's, voice mail
March 24, 2009
PHILIP
“You always seem to have some cigarettes on you. How does that work?”
TONY
“Well, there’s lots of ways I get ’em. Mostly, people give ’em to me. Like, there’s this woman — one of my regulars — she’s trying to quit. So she buys herself a pack, she takes out six cigarettes and then she gives me the rest. So when I find a pack with 14 cigarettes in my hat, I know she’s been by.”
Posted in homelessness | 4 Comments »
Tags: cigarettes, quit, Tony
March 18, 2009
TONY
“You see that lady over there? Just the other day, she was waving like crazy at this taxi but the guy didn’t even notice her. So I yelled at him real loud and he turned around and he picked her up. You know, the driver said thanks, even though I’m just a homeless guy … some of those cab drivers are pretty decent guys.”
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Tags: 1939, cab, decency, homelessness, just, London Transport Museum, shouting, taxi, thank you, thanks
March 16, 2009
TONY
“OK, so you know the guy who ratted me out the other day, I mean with those tickets I got?”
So I forgot to tell you that he’d already come and told me he was going to report me to the cops. So you know what I did? I gave him a quarter! Man, was he surprised. He called the cops anyway, you know.”
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Tags: 25 cents, cops, financial help, help, pedestrian, quarter, telegraph
March 13, 2009
TONY
“It’s a bit disgusting but you should really hear this for the blog. The other day, this woman comes out of Alternative Grounds, she’s got a nice hot coffee. It’s the first time I’d seen her and we got chatting about all the birds around, especially the pigeons when you know what happens to her coffee which didn’t even have a plastic top on it.”Well you don’t need much imagination to figure what came next.”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: bird droppings, birds, coffee, Takao Sakai, top
March 9, 2009
TONY
“Well now I owe the government $150.”
PHILIP
“OK, I’ll take the bait. What happened?”
TONY
“I got three tickets from the cops yesterday.”
PHILIP
“How come?”
TONY
“Get this; I got one for asking someone if I could hit them up for a buck and then I got one for panhandling near a vehicle and then I got this other one. But you gotta know the best thing … you know the one for panhandling near a vehicle … you know what the vehicle was? I’ll tell you. It was the cop car that the cop who gave me the ticket was riding in. Top that, if you know what I mean.
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Tags: bait, begging, catch-22, complain, cops, infraction, panhandling, police, rule of 3, three, tickets
March 2, 2009
TONY
“Hey Phil. Do you like my new jeans. I got them for myself for my birthday. My figuring is I look a little sexier, don’t you think?”
PHILIP
“Sexier wasn’t the word that came to mind, actually.”
TONY
“You could at least say something nice. It’s my birthday you know.”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: birthday, indigo, jeans, present, von Baeyer
February 24, 2009
TONY
“One of my regulars, she’s a nice lady, she said she’d bake me a cake for my birthday. Then I had to whisper to her husband afterwards that I really didn’t want to have 60 candles on the cake, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he said he’d make sure about the candles.”
Posted in homelessness | 3 Comments »
Tags: birthday cake, candles, Van Gogh
February 18, 2009
PHILIP
“When are you going to Vancouver?”
TONY
“Well I’ve got to make some money first. The bus is pretty expensive, but I think it’s less expensive than the plane.
“Anyway, my nephew says he can get some work for me so I can make some extra money for the trip.”
PHILIP
“So when are you going?”
TONY
“Depends. I’ve got to get the money first. But I can tell you I need a holiday — haven’t had one in ten years. Plus I’ve never seen the ocean.”
PHILIP
“Never in your whole life?”
TONY
“Nope. Never have; always wanted to. This is my chance; I’ve gotta do it.”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: bus, holiday, JMW Turner, job, money, nephew, Turner, vacation, Vancouver, work
February 17, 2009
PHILIP
“Hey, where’d your chair go?”
TONY
“The city took it. They cut the lock off the light post and took my chair away. I don’t know, maybe someone complained. Anyway, I’m back to sitting on on one of those milk cases.
“You know what they say: ‘You win a few, you a lose few. Well,this time I lost my seat.”
Posted in homelessness | Leave a Comment »
Tags: chair, funeral procession, lose, milk case, Queen Victoria, seat, win
February 15, 2009
PHILIP
“You know it’s a holiday on Monday?”
TONY
“Yeah, that’s that new holiday, Family Day, isn’t it?
PHILIP
“Ooops. Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
TONY
“Don’t worry. It’s not like I don’t think about it.”
Posted in homelessness | 1 Comment »
Tags: apologies, family, Family Day, holiday, memories, The Railway Station, thinking, William Powell Frith, worry
Homeless Man Speaks 