Please Homeless Anything Helps God Bless

• I have mixed feelings about giving handouts like this. I have had good experiences and really bad ones. The best was when I was an undergraduate in Ann Arbor, MI. A guy was asking for money to buy some food. I had a strange feeling he wasn't going to buy food, so I offered to take him to a quick service restaurant and buy him food. After I bought him food, I sat and talked with him. (I'm an introvert by nature, so this is not usual for me.) I heard him tell quite a few interesting stories. A bunch of them involved drug and alcohol abuse. If I had just given him money and walked away, I don't know what he truly would have done with the money. Given his past history, he very well could have bought drugs or alcohol. I have a hard time giving someone money when the money will only be used to harm them. (Yes, it is my viewpoint - and that of many others - that drug and alcohol abuse harms a person.) I was happy that I chose to take the time to buy this man a meal and share some conversation with him. I felt that was a very humanizing and caring act. Then there are other situations which after giving money have made me feel like I was lied to or in which I didn't trust the person enough to just give money.

• No feel good story here. I don't give money or eye contact--and I'm not even a republican. I just don't see how freeway entrance begging is a productive use of time, and I choose to discourage it by not giving into it. I guess if I'm ever homeless, I'll have to deal with the bad karma.

• I believe it is the best way to teach our children to talk to strangers. ?

• Me and my friend have one guy that we call "Excuse Me." He always has the same line about saving up for the shelter. I let him use my cell phone once when I was standing outside smoking. After about a 1 minute conversation about somebody being at Augie's, he asked me how to get there and mentioned that he was going to get $300. The next day, he hit me up with the "Excuse me..." line again. I've also lived in Chicago and New York and I've seen people who basically make no bones about being professional beggars. They're in the same spot, day in and day out all year, working morning and afternoon rush hours. Seeing that made me stop giving.

• Signing on the corner is a lousy job. Crews (groups of individuals that hang together) work the corners in shifts. One guy (looks particularly pitiful) makes up to $1000 a week for a "camp" of six to eight people. I've known these guys to drink five 1/2 gallons of vodka in a day, plus beer and pot. One crew got a drunk friend to stand on the corner with a cut-out socker ball stuck on his head ... and he got a hundreds in a few minutes! The funniest I saw was a guy who was drunk and somebody else had to draw his sign for him. The sign said "Homely (sic) Please Help God Bless." I knew the guy, and the sign fit him perfect! I heard he did pretty good on the corner as well. I know many of these people. I usually give them "spin" (rolling tobbacco) and a bag lunch (a sandwich, a snack and a pop - sometimes, a beer). That usually gets them off the corner. Trouble is, they have no place to go. The old library used to be a great place to sit all day, but it's been closed for (how many?) years. Ha! I bet the homeless can't wait for the new library to open.

• About a month ago I was having a smoke outside the Fine Line and a guy walked up and asked for five bucks. I said, "Five bucks?". And he said, "Yeah, I'll give you this", and he offered a roach. Then he said he needed the money for bus fare. I replied that the bus is only $1.50...and with that we closed the deal.

• BHP: That's a great suggestion. I'm going to start doing that.

• I usally carry a case of bottled water in my car. Lately, I've been offering water and have not been refused. For some reason, I'm more likely to give cash to women. They tug on different heartstrings I guess.

• I've got one rule; don't hit me with the same story twice. There was Thomas - who used to work the Warehouse District and St. Anthony Main - great story, "Just got off the bus from Chicago, all the shelters are full..." First time, I gave cash and a bag of M&Ms. Heard that story more than four times. Got hit up Thursday night while on the back step of The Vintage on Selby, "Hey, I'm a truck driver, my wife's in the truck, right now, it's broke down, can you tell my how far it is to Bobby and Steve's on Washinton?" Elaborate tale - he even has a drawing of a map in a notebook. Problem is, he hit me with the exact same story in December on University and Albert, near my home in Midway. Ther eare no rules, though, for the guys standing on the Grand Ave. exit ramp off 35E - right by Burger King - they've got no time for a story and none has ever turned down a two cheeseburger meal with fries and a Coke. Put five, ten bucks in with it and you would have thought he'd won the lottery. You want to feel like you make a difference in someone's life? There it is.

• There are no rules for me. All I know is that I feel like shit when I don't have cash and/or food in my car. Thus, I think it's good for the asker, good for my kids, and good for me if I keep non-perishable, easily openable food in my car. The asker gets a bit of nutrition; my kids get to see giving in action; and I get to feel like I've . . . helped, somehow. There is a wheelchaired dude who haunts Arby's in Uptown, though, about whom I'm curious. I fill his basket with regular roast beefs that he obviously isn't eating because he's too busy hitting up the next guy in the drive thru . . . . What does he do with the sandwiches we give him???? If anyone feels a great need to give, try making 100 sandwiches for Simpson Housing (simpsonhousing.org), which is a homeless shelter in Minneapolis. It's easy. Make 100 sandwiches in your own home. Bring them to the shelter for the residents to bring out onto the street with them each morning.

• Believe it or not, I keep a small stack of Cub gift cards worth $5 and $10 in my car. This makes me less concerned that they'll blow cash on drugs/booze and on something to actually eat instead. These are always appreciated, sometimes they're really surprised though. Around last holidays I had a big box of mini-bottles of assorted kinds of booze (I make little gift baskets of mini-everything for my friends) in my car, and I saw this one guy standing at Snelling and 94, looking fat but cold. It was about 10 degrees with a below zero windchill. I rolled down the window and offered him a tiny bottle of Jack and he was pretty happy. He goes "hell, it's noon somewhere!" I don't think it's a big deal to share what we all have, and I think it's a waste of energy to get all bent out of shape about these people having jobs, or being chemically dependent, or whatever. The one thing I hate the most is when people offer these folks a bag of half-eaten food from a fast food joint. There's something so degrading about that, judging by the way they hang their heads when they accept it. Shit, the parking meter change in your cup holder is better than that.

• Thank you for witnessing humanity and bringing it back to our consciousness. It happens more often than what we are aware of but once you witness it, you can never turn your back on it. You are awake now and that is what counts. God Bless You.

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