| Mess+Noise+StreetPeople |
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| Written by Wayne | ||||
| Friday, 13 April 2007 | ||||
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Is Street-People.com an island of bum love? The answer is no. Our friends at Mess+Noise Magazine, from the only country which is also a continent – Australia, gave us a hand collecting street people stories from down under. It seems that even on this big island that takes a long time to reach by plane, street people have migrated like geese during winter. It must be that damn Fosters beer which comes in the oilcan – I think that the street people felt all beer in Australia was served that way and they could get more for the money they panhandled. We asked readers at Mess+Noise to help us by sharing their street people encounters. It seems that street people in Australia do not panhandle you with "Got a quarter, mate?" or "I need a quarter cause I ain’t got no Barbie."
So the kind readers of Mess+Noise shared the following stories:
"I had this one guy approach me at a train station, asking me for money. He started to talk to me in broken english and then said: "I'm going to see my friend", then he proceeds to show me his track marks on his arms. By friend, I'm pretty sure he meant dealer." - submitted by deadflakes
"My boy and I were in Geelong one Saturday night (shoosh!) and came across a man around 50-60ish who was searching through bins for food. Then he was checking parking meters for uncollected change. I was really saddened watching him go from one bin to the next, so we decided to get out of the car and offer him a few bucks for a decent meal. He was ever so gracious and refused flatly to accept any money, insisting that he was doing okay. We could see that he wasn't get anything from either the bins or the ticket machines so we drove ahead a block and placed all our gold change, about $15 worth, into the change slot of a machine. This is not a significant story and I only note it because I think about that man every now and then and hope he got a decent meal that night and that kind hearted people still look out for him. AND I felt especially good for doing it." - submitted by Manhattan
"My favourite was at Tottenham court road tube station in London. The enterprising fellow had learned a song, Rule Britannia, and broadcast it via the traffic cone he smuggled into the tube stop. Unbelievably nobody stopped." -submitted by Horse
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I was personally hoping that someone would share a story of being panhandled by Paul Hogan from "Crocodile Dundee". I know that Australia used him as the spokesperson for travel commercials in the United States as we all just loved that movie and his cute Aussie phrases that I am sure people in Australia just want to kill him for introducing into popular culture. I think its just some state sponsored panhandling as they did not want stories ending up in People magazine of him getting arrested for being drunk and screaming at tourist on the streets of Sydney "I’m Crocodile Dundee give me a dollar" while waving that stupid big knife. 
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