NevBlog

Ever see someone (most likely a homeless person) take a peek inside a garbage dumpster and pull something out? That’s called dumpster diving.

Even all the bums I met during my Homeless Experiment call it that. I personally think that’s a gross name, I’d preferably euphemize the name and call it “Alley Fishing” or “Refuse Rumbling” to give it a more appetizing sound.

Anyhow, it’s a more common practice than I expected amongst the chronically homeless. I thought this was a practice relegated to only the bummiest of bums, but it’s not, and I see why.

Let’s say there’s a Dominoe’s Pizza store somewhere. A person never picks up their pizza and now the pizza doesn’t have a customer to eat it. What do you think happens to that pizza? Well 99% of the time it gets thrown out.

Later on around 10pm the pizza shop is getting ready to shut down. What do you think happens to all the left over pizzas? Employees may take some home, but the majority gets thrown out (enforced by health code laws) into the dumpster behind the store.

Now let’s say you’re REALLY HUNGRY and had no other food, and you see an employee dump four hot pizzas (still fully boxed) into the top of the dumpster. The pizzas are resting neatly on top of a stack of discarded cardboard, and they’re right within your reach. Would you reach in and grab the pizzas?

I believe most humans would depending on their hunger level.

Now think about a busy fast food restaurant such as Wendy’s. Literally hundreds of burgers, fries, orders of mashed potatoes, chicken nuggets etc. get thrown out every day. Whenever an order is wrong, a person got ketchup and didn’t want it or if they just made too many cheeseburgers for lunch, this all must legally be thrown out. Where does it go? Usually into a big food bag then later thrown into the dumpster behind the store.

Imagine you’re hungry and find a giant bag full of food (most of which is still hot) resting in a dumpster. I hate to say it, but that’s pretty tempting.

I actually very much sympathize with George in this clip:

I learned in my short time pretending to be homeless that dumpster diving is one of the most lucrative forms of scavenging for food.

You can either panhandle or fly a sign for hours and make between $5 and $20 to buy food or simply take a quick peek into several dumpsters and hit the jackpot (then you can use the money to buy beer). In the Riverside area where I stayed under a bridge, there are about 20+ eating establishments (most of them fast food) within less than a 5 minute walk away. Most of them are literally 50 paces away.

At the right times you can find large quantities of still hot, still wrapped food floating near the top of the dumpster…”Like an angel” as George Costanza described it. There is so much food from this type of scavenging that a lot of the bums have preferences of what types of food they go for! One guy told me he loves Chinese food so he rummages through those restaurants most often. Another guy loves the pizza, so he goes behind CiCi’s Pizza Buffet and Pizza Hut (buffet places throw out HELLA food).

So did I do it during this experiment? No.
However when I was eating Ritz crackers with packaged tuna for dinner and Mike was eating a medley of Wendy’s burgers, mashed potatoes and Popeye’s Chicken, it makes me wonder.

From ALL my dealings with homeless people (especially the ones you see flying signs on the road), there’s always some element of alcohol involved. I was further confirmed in this “fact” during this homeless experiment.

From hanging out with the Riverside bums (which is comprised entirely of people who have been homeless for long periods of time) you quickly learn that LIFE IS ABOUT BEER.

It almost sounds funny, but it’s absolutely true. Nearly every action they take is geared towards scoring money to buy beer, getting people to buy them beer, or just flat out stealing it.

Certain people definitely also use other drugs, but I’ve not seen enough of that evidence with my own two eyes to know (nor would I want to be present when it’s taking place). However by far the prevailing intoxicant of choice is beer (or malt liquor which is like strong beer).

If you ever want to COMPLETELY MAKE A BUM’S DAY….give him a 6, 12 or 24 pack of beer. I’ve already proved food in easy to come by if you ask for it or know where to go, so when you see a bum asking for money, it’s usually going to something such as beer, cigarettes or drugs. Sure some of it goes to buy food, but I’d say a larger portion goes directly to the brew master.

NOTE: This is pretty true at least in Austin from what I’ve seen.

Now most “normal” homeless people are not asking for money on the street. These people are not necessarily categorized into this hardcore drinking group. The chronically homeless are what I’m talking about.

———-

I already figured alcohol was a good escape and way to pass the day by if you’re homeless, and I wanted to test this by my homeless drinking experiment. The experiment consisted of me having a full day of nothing to do and a full bottle of straight bourbon. I was trying to see why alcohol is such an attractive commodity when living on the streets….and well, it just sounded like a lot of fun :-)

Here is some of what I wrote in the experiment:

SO imagine you’re one of the homeless people living Downtown or on Riverside. Your food needs are taken care of by either grifting for a few hours or going to a homeless shelter and getting food. You don’t work, you don’t do much of anything….so what can help pass all that time?

Drinking and drugs of course!

On any given day a homeless person whose food/water/shelter are taken care of probably has about 10-12 free hours of the day. That’s a lot of time when you’re doing NOTHING….and doing nothing can be excruciating if you do NOTHING all day long, everyday.

Did it help pass the day? ABSOLUTELY! Were there repercussions? Yes. I explain them in my Drinking Experiment Results.

———————

SO CAN YOU BLAME THEM? I mean, billions of people on this planet enjoy a good drink now and then, so what’s the harm? I think what’s socially acceptable is going out, having a good time and using alcohol to enhance your good time….it shouldn’t be needed. What’s not socially acceptable is to escape your boredom and problems in life through alcohol. That’s where it starts to get dangerous.

I’ll soon discuss if I think giving money to homeless people is acceptable.

Well the Homeless Experiment is finally done, I’m back home where I fully showered, shaved and got a haircut.

Here’s what I looked like right before I entered the house:

(Look how disgusting my shirt got)

Feels pretty good to get out of those old, stinky clothes! Some recent observations:

Viewed humans as more of a species than people:
Typically you view humans as much different than animals because of how we live, but when homeless it became more and more apparent that we are strikingly similar.

For example, when staying under the bridge all I could really do was watch several families of birds that nested under the bridge.

As I watched them I realized they’re not much different than I was at the moment. The birds would scrounge around for food for a little while, stop when they had their fill, then go back to their little nests they built out of whatever they could find.

During the time I was (pretending to be) homeless I would do…..well, basically the exact same thing as the birds and all the other animals. Instead of small branches as a nest, I used cardboard and a sleeping bag.

—————————————–

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
This ties in with the above. I noticed when homeless my mind thought about completely different things as opposed to a normal member of society. I realized I wasn’t really thinking about anything. My mind was for the most part devoid of deep or interesting thoughts.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs popped up in my head and I realized how much further down the scale I had placed myself by living this homeless experience.

Normally I think of ways to improve myself, have fun, short/medium/long goals and ways to overall improve my life for myself and others that will depend on me in the future.

When I was homeless I thought about where my next meal was coming from, if I had enough water to last through the night and where I would sleep. The thought process rarely got beyond those simple questions.

This was a true testament to the validity Maslow’s theory. I didn’t particularly care about anything above that first rung because that first rung wasn’t completely fulfilled at all times.

—————————————–

Day to Day Living and lack of long-term thinking:
This ties in with the Maslow observation….that since my priorities were set on the basic necessities of life, hardly any head was paid to long-term thoughts. I could see this in the people who are truly homeless…they had no goal or long-term plan for themselves.

I’m not saying everyone needs a step-by-step plan…but at least a vague map of where you want to end up is important (well, actually we all invariably end up at the same destination)!

This observation may play one of the many small factors that keeps some people in a perpetual state of homelessness.

Got back home, immediately through everything I was wearing (shoes and
all) into the trash. Took two showers and am enjoying my newly shaven
face. I was starting to forget what I looked like!

So tonight is the last night of my Homeless Exeriment. I'm sleeping
under the same bridge I did the first night.

Tomorrow morning when the sun rises (which is generally what wakes me
up) I'll pack up and head back home. All my clothes, shoes and
backpack will go straight in the trash. A shower will immediately
follow.

I will leave Black Mike my sleeping bag, hoodie jacket, jeans and my
extra pair of socks. I really didn't use those much this trip, and I
was going to throw them away soon as I got home.

Mike's out grifting right now, and is supposedly bringing back a pizza
later tonight.

This will be my last goodnight as Homeless Nev! GOODNIGHT!

Sent from my iPhone

Just got boxing lessons from Black Mike (my under the bridge mate who
is apparently an ex-boxer). Would YOU mess with THIS guy now??

Bored under a bridge reading some free magazine. Look at my Scorpio
horoscope. How accurate right now!!

I made the 5 mile trek from Downtown to Riverside this morning.

Just got back under the bridge. Homeless Mike is here, he's working
off a hangover from last night, he went out drinking.

Weather is excellent right now, nice cool breeze under the bridge and
I'm cooling off on my cardboard floor:

Written on Saturday 06-06-2009 at 9pm from a park.

So the results of the Drinking While Homeless Experiment went good and bad:

I started drinking around 12:30pm, and soon the time after that passed quickly. I slowly started becoming less aware about my degenerating appearance and social status, I spoke with more people than I usually would (even had a long conversation with Crazy Cat Lady in the park) and the time in general was more tolerable than simply doing nothing.

I laid my head down around 4pm I believe (once again, I still don’t have much sense of time unless I turn on my phone or netbook) and took a nap. Some loud noise woke me up at 6pm and I had a pounding headache. Newton said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Yea, the opposite reaction is called a HANGOVER.

I woke up by a tree laying in the dirt. So far I’ve managed to stay “relatively” clean, but now my one and only shirt is completely covered in a permanent layer of dirt. The whole thing is brown now instead of white.

I downed an entire 375ML bottle of cheap, strong bourbon. For those that don’t know, think of a normal sized alcohol bottle: it’s half of that. Needless to say I got buzzed (I wasn’t completely ass-drunk, but more of a very heavy buzz). If I was driving and gave a breathalyzer test I definitely would’ve been hauled off to jail.

This is also the day I am supposed to sleep Downtown at a non-shelter location (because that was obviously WAY too easy), I brushed off as much dirt as I could and started the journey.

For the first time in this experiment I TRULY FELT HOMELESS when I woke up in the dirt by a tree with a pounding head. I struggled to open my eyes, clumsily got up and started to gather my dusty backpack and garbage bag. To the outside observer I must’ve truly fit the homeless stereotype.

I walked through a charming neighborhood area for a while, noting places I could possibly sleep for the night. I’ve ended up in a park somewhere around 9th St. I found a large slap of concrete, brushed it off and laid down to work off this hangover. It’s now 9:00pm, sort of dark and I think I’ll sleep here for the night. It’s hot as hell and there’s no way I’m pulling out a sleeping bag in the heat.

I’m just goind to sleep on this slab of concrete and hope there’s not too many bugs biting.

Laid out in the park last night. very nice waking up this morning to
birds chirping.

Wish I had a hammock!