OK, if you followed the link for the "Homeless Manscaping How-to," you're a sick puppy, you have some serious issues to work out with yourself. Yeah, I reeled you in with a bit of clickbait, sucka. Whatcha gonna do? Heh, heh, heh.
This Street Tip is to show you how I shave on the streets, usually out in the open, without a mirror.
This, above, is me with a 3 or 4 week beard. I forgot how long it's been growing. Dark and a bit patchy up top, and white "old man" hairs down my neck. I used the last razor I had about a month ago, and money's been tight since. I'm simple when it comes to shaving, I've been using the basic Bic, single blade razors since I was about 20. Multi-blade razors always clogged up on my beard, and single blades just worked the best. But you can't by one razor, or even a three pack, anymore. You have to buy a ten pack or so, for about $6. My art income dropped off the last couple of months, I spent what I made on other expenses. I finally got a few bucks and bought razors yesterday. Since I'm doing this blog, I decided to start doing some "street tips." These are things I've learned to do in a homeless or street setting, that could also be helpful to average people, maybe on a road trip, or while camping, or something like that.
For over fifteen years now, this is what I've used for shaving, about half of the time, when I don't have a bathroom mirror ans sink handy. A disposable razor, a large drink cup from a fast food place, and either shampoo or bodywash as lube. That's it. I don't use a mirror most of the time when I shave, crazy as that sounds. I started doing this when I was driving a taxi in the early 2000's, and was spending all day in my cab, and often living in it. I would take the last couple ounces of my iced tea, and shave in my taxi, using the rearview mirror to see what I was doing. In most cases, I didn't even use lube, just a razor and iced tea, and I could get a halfway decent daily shave. But a little shampoo or bodywash does help a ton, though.
Step one- put a couple inches of water in the bottom of the cup. Step two- Dip your hands in the water, and rub it on your face (or whatever you're shaving). Step three- Put a dab of shampoo or bodywash in your hands, and rub it around your face (or whatever). Use the water in the cup to wash your the shampoo off your hands. Step four- grab the razor and start shaving. Go slow, and just do it by feel if you don't have a mirror. Apply more water and shampoo/bodywash to face as needed.
Shaving without a mirror seems crazy to most guys, but you can shave completely by feel if you really need to. I was sitting at an unused bus stop, on a major street, while I did this yesterday. It was a hot day, and the bus stop had shade. Here's my ugly mug, about 1/3 of the way shaved. Usually I start at my sideburns, work down to my chin, one side and then the other, then shave my neck. But for the sake of this how-to, I worked on one whole side, and then the other. It took a long time to thin out my thick beard, but I just kept rinsing out the razor in the cup, time after time. I did get a ton of whiskers on my shirt, which is pretty normal with street shaving. It's good to have a clean shirt to change into afterwards.
It took about half an hour, because my beard was thick. But here I am, clean shaven at the bus stop, with no sink, and no mirror. Still ugly, but ugly and clean shaven, which is a step up. I just thinned each part out. Then felt for remaining whiskers, section by section. I'm not really prone to razor burn, so I shave backwards, against the grain of my beard, which helps me get a smooth shave without being able to look in a mirror. All in all, that one, single blade, disposable razor cleaned off my whole month of beard.
Here's the nasty beard water in the cup, after shaving. The whiskers sink to the bottom. So I swirl the cup around to get them up into the water, then toss the water, and throw the cup away. That's it, clean shaving on the street, with minimal cost, minimal items needed, and no mirror. Once your hands are clean and dry, you can check with your phone to see if you missed anywhere, and do touch ups, if needed.
If you're a woman shaving your arm pits or bikini area outdoors, or a guy manscaping, you should probably find a more private place to do this, like in a tent, out in the woods, or in the back of a van or something. So that's it, street shaving, simple and easy, and just a bit more time consuming than normal shaving in a bathroom.
I really like this song. The movie, "Streets on Fire," had an incredible cast of rising actors when it came out in 1984. And yet, almost no has heard of the movie. It bombed at the box office, and was never heard of again. Almost. A producer I worked with at Unreel Productions loved the movie, and we used "Nowhere Fast," and scenes from the movie, in some Vision Street Wear fashion videos that played at trade shows, in 1988-89. In my job as The Dub Guy at Unreel, I made many copies of those videos, which meant I heard this song over and over. I became a fan of this song. Personally, I think this movie was just ten years too late. In 1975, it might have been a great movie. In 1984, New Wave was dying, metal and hair bands were rising, and nobody really wanted to watch a 1950's movie. It's actually a decent movie, if you want something old school to watch between your Netflix and Prime binges.
What does this have to do with me? As I said in a previous post, I'm taking a break from doing my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings for a while. Not forever, I still love doing them. But for 6 1/2 years now, I've been going nowhere fast, trying to earn decent money with this form of art. I've become much better at it, and it helped me scrape by for a period when I couldn't get much else going in my life.
I sincerely appreciate everyone who bought a drawing, or gave me some props for one drawing or another on social media. But, it just takes too damn long to draw these pictures to earn enough money to get my life going again. Why don't I get a "real job?" After not being able to find any job while I was in North Carolina, I literally have no work history now. I was doing some kind of creative work pretty much the whole time, but my resume' is pretty much blank as "real" work goes now. And I'm really fat and old. Those pretty much keep me from a good enough paying job to turn things around.
Because of these factors, I've been trying to create my own job. I had no idea if anyone would buy a single one of my drawings when I started trying to sell them in late 2015. I've managed to become a "working artist" since, selling around 100 originals, but a homeless working artist. I now have one or more drawings on 6 of the 7 continents, so when I get going again, I need to get my work to Antarctica and on the International Space Station, so I can truly call myself "global." But those are goals for the future.
For the time being, I'm going to focus on some other forms of creative work for a while, and try to finally jumpstart my financial life. I just need to make a basic living again, get a stable place to live, and all that basic stuff. We're at a really weird time in the world economically, socially, and technologically, and I see a ton of opportunities in the coming months and years. I want to take advantage of some of those, if I can.
For those of you who bought one of more of my drawings, I'm standing by my guarantee that all my drawings will sell for at least double what you paid for them, by the year 2343, or one day after the Apocalypse, whichever comes first.
Early this morning I destroyed a couple of my unsold drawings, tossed (literally) all the Grey Trash alien drawings, and threw away all my Sharpies and art supplies. It's not that I didn't want the stuff around, I just got sick of having to carry it all everywhere I go. That's part of the whole homeless logistics thing that most people would never understand. There will be more #sharpiescribblestyle drawings, someday, I already have the next one lined up. I'm just not doing any more four at least a couple of months, maybe longer. We'll see how my other ideas go. I'll keep you updated on this blog.
Harley Quinn/Joker/Tainted Love drawing. This was my personal favorite, one I did for myself. Unfortunately I had to sell it, to get a motel room for a night, after a week in the hospital for an allergic reaction to a drug they gave me. Shit happens... #sharpiescribblestyle
If you've ever typed in "make extra money" into Google or YouTube, you've come across "flipping" posts or videos. Flipping is good, old fashioned, wheelin' and dealin', as they called it when I was a kid. You buy an item at a low price, and sell it at a higher price, and make a little (or big) profit. Here's a flea market flipping video I pulled off YouTube, to add a visual to this post. Nothing exciting, but a good look at a flipper in today's world of Craigslist, eBay, LetGo, Shopify stores, and Amazon resellers, all flipping merchandise to earn money.
Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of my dad's death. So I spent some time thinking about all his influences on me. At the same time, I've spent about four years telling people that this crazy, long, economic downturn is coming. Something like another Great Recession, but lasting longer, like the long recession of the early 1990's. I'm a futurist/economics geek, the kind of thing that even computer geeks call geeky.
No one cared much about my ideas on the economy, until 2020 happened. But now we are heading into what I think will be the longest and gnarliest part of the three "recessionary waves" I see us having in this decade. Basically, the 2020 depression* was the warm-up, and now we are heading into the recession where things will really get gnarly, stocks and crypto appear to have just hit a false bottom in July 2022, and real estate and the car/truck markets are beginning to really tank. Recessions lead to great deals, and it's a great time to do some flipping.
Recessions are when the whole world goes on sale, and almost nobody wants to buy
This is my dad, Tom Emig, with my little sister Cheri on the left, and me on the right. This is about 1972, when I was 6 or 7. A couple of years later, my dad started taking me to gun shows once in a while, teaching me how to wheel and deal, or flip, as we call it now. His $30 purchase, that I'm writing about in this post, happened about a year before this photo was taken.
My dad loved "wheeling and dealing," or flipping, his whole life. As a young single guy, he bought and sold about 40 cars, including three classic Ford Thunderbirds (two 1955's and one 1957), a couple of Chevy Corvairs, and a dragster, among them. He also bought and sold motorcycles, motorscooters (like Vespas), as well as guns, and anything mechanical that caught his eye at a garage sale or flea market. He was a long time target shooter, and responsible gun owner. In fact the local police showed up at his house one morning, when they needed to borrow some ammo to demonstrate a Thompson submachine gun they just aquired. The ammo for it didn't show up, so they hit up my dad, knowing he could help them out. My dad was friends with a couple of the officers, and they knew had a .45 auto or two, which used the same ammo.
I grew up waching him negotiate and barter for items at garage sales flea markets, and gun shows. In those days when I was a kid in the 1970's, family economics was a lot different. Most men had jobs that paid pretty well, families usually lived off the man's income in most cases, and a large percentage of women were housewives, staying home with the kids. I'm not saying this is how life should be, ladies, or that women shouldn't work, so hold off the hate comments. That's just how things were back then. Most families could live fairly well off one income.
Because of the different economics of those days, where it wasn't two income households straining to pay all the bills, flipping items was more of a hobby for extra money, than a necessity. You didn't really see full time mechandise flippers, like we do today.
After getting married, my mom shut down the buying and selling of cars pretty quick, and my dad focused more on supporting his family. Most of his wheeling and dealing then turned to things he bought at gun shows. Those were also much different back then. Most familes had guns then, a lot of men, and a few women, went hunting each fall. Many others, like my dad, were avid target shooters. Shooting was a popular hobby, like bowling, golf, or softball.
So my dad would go off to gun shows every couple of months, on a Saturday afternoon. Since my mom didn't really like guns, she never asked much about what he bought, only how much he spent. Usually he would buy pistols, or pieces of them, to rebuild guns, with the boxes of gun parts he had in the basement. He also reloaded his own bullets, so my dad also bought reloading supplies and equipment. Later on, he started collecting American military items, thinking of maybe opening a small museum some day. He bought most of the uniforms and other military gear at gun shows as well.
After one gun show, when I was 5 years old, my dad came home with this ugly brown case, like a beat up, small suitcase. My mom didn't like it from the start, just because it was ugly. She liked it a lot less when my dad said it was full of 30,000 gun oriented bumper stickers, which he paid $30 for. Mom gave him a hard time for wasting so much money on it. One of the bumper stickers was the classic, "I will give up my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers," which I thought was really cool.
My dad made his case. A guy he met had made thousands of bumper stickers, which were popular in those days, when cars still had actual chromed steel bumpers. The stickers were all text, black lettering on white, pretty simple looking. But even back then, when no one had computers or printers, bumper stickers sold for $1 each. The guy had made 40,000 stickers or something, sold a bunch, then just got in a financial bind, and needed to sell them cheap to pay some bills. So my dad was happy to buy the case of them for $30.
From my dad's point of view, he got $30,000 worth of stickers for $30, a great deal. He paid 1/10th of a penny per sticker. Every sticker he sold for $1, worked out to 1,000X return. Not bad. From my mom's point of view, he spent $30 ($219 in today's dollars) on stupid stickers in a really ugly case. My dad took the case into the basement, and tucked it away with his gun stuff, near his work bench.
For the next ten years or so, I watched my dad take some of those stickers from the ugly case to gun show after gun show, and also show them to friends who visited. He was a draftsman/engineer, a guy who designed machines, and thought of a machine's entire working life, as he was desiging it. He thought long term by nature. The bumper stickers were never meant to be a quick flip.
When he took them to gun shows, he would keep them hidden, in a bag or case, when negotiating on one thing or another. When the seller would get close to the price my dad wanted to pay for something, my dad would pull out the stickers. "You know, I have these bumper stickers, you can easily sell them for $1.00 each. Since we're $10 off on our price, how about if I throw in 10 bumper stickers?" The seller would usually say something like, "Well, it'll take me a while to sell all those stickers, how about 20 bumper stickers, and we'll call it a deal." My dad would hesitate a moment for emphasis, and then say, "OK, 20 stickers and we'll call it a deal." He got $10 in trade off of 20 stickers, which cost him 2 cents total. Not bad ROI in trade. I watched him do that time after time after time as I grew up. He also sold some to people for $1 each, and sold quite a few to dealers for 20 cents or so each, for them to resell.
I think I was in high school, over ten years later, when dad came back from a gun show, and told me he finally sold the case of bumper stickers, and he still had something like 28,000 stickers left. He sat down and figured it out. He made over $300 cash selling those bumper stickers, and got well over $700 in trade as well, over 11 or 12 years. Then he sold that ugly case, with more than 28,000 "vintage" bumper stickers, for $50. So, by jumping on a good deal by a motivated seller, on a weird item for that time, my dad made over 11 times his money back in cash, and well over 20 times his money back in trade as well, and saved himself a ton of cash in deals on guns, knives, military gear, and other things.
The point of this post is that when you're looking for items to resell to make money, it's smart to keep your mind open, and think about more than just the quick flip for a 50%, 100%, or 200% return. Sometimes an odd item, like the bumper stickers my dad bought, can lead to more money, or a great trade item, over time. So thanks to my dad, for showing me another trick of old school wheelin' and dealin'. Now, 50 years after he bought that ugly case, and endured my mom's unhappiness at his buy, I'm telling a new generation of flippers another technique to keep in mind when trying to flip items for some extra cash, or even to earn a living.
*Yes, the economic downturn in the Spring and early summer of 2020 was an economic depression. There is a definition, The traditional definition of a recession is an economic contraction for two consecutive quarters. Basically, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the measure of economic growth in a country, goes down for six months straight. That has been the agreed upon definition of a recession for 100 years or more. Right now politicians and economists are trying to change that definition, to avoid saying we're actually in a recession, right now, in August of 2022.
An economic depression, if you read the traditional definition linked, is a recession for two or more years, OR a drop of 10% or more in GDP. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the mandatory business shutdowns, the U.S. GDP dropped 31.7% in the second quarter of 2020. 31.7% is more than 10%, three times as much, and yes, that qualifies 2020 as an economic depression. Just because economists and politicians are afraid to say it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. If you're reading this, you have survived an economic depression. It wasn't fun, be we made it through. So we can all handle another gnarly recession, right? Sure we can.
Since I've now lived about 15 years in some form of homeless, over the last 23 years in and out of homelessness, the Street Life blog idea seemed to make sense. Trying to overcome crazy circumstances while broke has been the main theme of my life for a couple of decades. This makes 75 posts into this new idea, and I still feel like I'm just getting started. This blog is actually starting out just a bit slower than my last main blog, which is cool. I'll keep plugging away at this. Every time I sit down to write a post, I have about 20 different ideas in my head, and pick one to go with that day. I've got tons more to write about along these lines. I'll try to keep it interesting. Thanks for reading and checking it out!
In the small town of Willard, Ohio, in about 1979, my 8th grade music teacher, Mrs. Essex, introduced us kids to the rock opera "Tommy," by The Who. I loved it, even though I wasn't really into hard rock then. That was a brave act by Mrs Essex at the time, in conservative, small town Ohio, and I appluad her for it. It opened me, and others, up to a lot of great music. This is the best known single from that 1969 double album, "Pinball Wizard." "Homeless Pinball" is what I call it when homeless people are forced out of a spot, and bounce around from one place ot another.
Don't you hate it when a complete stranger walks into your house and says, "Hey, we're demolishing this place tomorrow, so you have to get your shit out." No, you don't hate it, because that doesn't happen to average people. "This is America!" you shout, "they can't do that here!" OK, I won't get into eminent domain, that's not the point of this post. The point is, if you live in a house or apartment, whether you own it or rent it, strangers don't come in a tell you to get out with a few hours, or a day's notice.
Even if you are behind on rent, or haven't paid your property taxes in years, a government official doesn't just walk in one day and say, "You gotta get out." There's a process, we have a reasonably functional rule of law in this country, even now. Yes, there is institutional racism, sexism, and other "isms" at work in our legal system. But compared to most of the world, we have a functional rule of law, and there is a process for evicting a person, foreclosing on a mortgage, and getting people out of houses they aren't paying for. That process has many steps, and it can take months or years to get someone out. That's one of the securities of living in the United States of America.
But not when you're homeless. It doesn't matter of you are homeless because your house burned down a month ago, or because you're a lifelong, degenerate crackhead. When you are homeless, you make your "home" on somebody else's property, either private property, or government property. That's because every single piece of land is someone else's property.
At some point, when a homeless person camps out- ANYWHERE- someone in the area, or the property owner, gets sick of you being there. You could be on a vacant, overgrown lot that no one ever paid attention to, but as soon as homeless people camp there, it's suddenly a national monument in that neighborhood. It's like George Washington took a leak there in 1783 or something, the land is suddenly sacred, once a bum pitches a tent there. "They need to leave!" some neighbor shouts, then they try to rally others.
This is happening, right now, as I type this, at the place I've been sleeping at, for the last six months. I started sleeping there when I spent 5 days with Covid-19 in January, so I could be close to a restroom and a mini mart, to buy water and Gatorade to get through that illness. For the record, I got both Pfizer vaccines, and I think it helped me get over Covid quicker.
There were two of us sleeping along the side of this building then. Then three. Then five. That number has gone up and down since, as a handful of neighbors have pulled every string they could to get us out. Recently friends of one of the people started hanging out, smoking meth (which I don't do, see my last post). Someone even hired a regional gangbanger to phyiscally threaten us a couple of weeks ago. This kind of stuff happens on a regular basis, all over, in cities everywhere.
Yesterday a guy I'd never seen before walked up to us and said that they would be powerwashing the sidewalk, on both sides of the street, this morning, and that we had to move everything. I said, "I'll be gone." I moved to another spot last night. The others will do the same. I call this "Homeless Pinball." Nobody will go very far. They just wind up in another spot nearby, but out of sight of one group of local renters.
A couple people might get taken to "housing," which your tax dollars pay for, by the way. Just for the record, housing, eventually, puts homeless people in long term places, usually ghetto apartments, and your tax dollars go to a bunch of ghetto landlords to pay their rent. Maybe you're cool with that. Personally, I'm not. Almost no one who goes into homeless "housing" gets a good paying job and rents their own apartment again. Ever. "Housing" is your tax dollars (and inflation dollars) paying the rent for thousands of homeless people, indefinitely. Keep that in mind.
But most of the people moving from my old spot today, and the others getting moved out of other spots, simply move to another piece of land, usually within a few hundred yards. Sometimes people just move across a city line into the next town, which is what I did. There is no legal process, we have no recourse about getting forced out of a spot with little or no notice. We repeatedly lost much or all of what little we own. No one cares. Homeless people get "bounced" around areas like pinballs in a pinball game. That's why I call it Homeless Pinball. It's a short term solution to a long term problem, which keeps getting bigger.
As a society, we don't want ot actually house all the down and out people, that's obvious with a trip through any major city. As this blog goes on, I'll look at some of the ideas for dealing with homeless people, and give my thoughts on what works and doesn't work with the various programs. I'll even write about my best ideas on how to deal with homelessness, at some point. Meanwhile, the homeless population will keep growing, because it's not just an addiction or mental health issue, it's a long term demographics issue in the U.S. and Western society, at this point.
The powerwashing today will move the 7 or 8 people out of that 50 foot stretch of sidewalk. Within a week, they will start being replaced by even sketchier homeless people, the full blown, hardcore tweeker and crackhead, walking zombie types. And the people of this neighborhood will be pissed off again. Bing-bing-bing... us bums just keep bouncing around. Inflation and this recession we're sliding into will add to the numbers. Anybody up for actual solutions yet? No? I didn't think so. Maybe someday...
Blogger's note- 8/9/2022- The sidewalk I wrote about above did get a much needed powerwashing, and most of the people moved across the street. No one went to housing. Most of the people who have been frequenting this area are still there. Meanwhile, L.A. city council just passed ordinance 41.18 last week, which outlaws "sitting, sleeping, or camping" in many of the places homeless people traditionally camp to keep out of the way. The ordinance is incredibly vague in some of its language. More on that later. The drama continues. But, the sidewalk is much cleaner. If any city people are reading this, the bus stop around the corner could really use a powerwashing.
The sidewalk I mentioned, right after the powerwashing, much cleaner now. My photo.
This is one of my all time favorite BMX street sections. There had been years of street videos which seemed to be 47 rail grinds per section in each video. Sliding rails is nuts, but Steven Hamilton's section was this whole different take on street riding when this came out, about 2003 or 2004, I believe.
When I made my first self-produced BMX video in 1990, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the point of a BMX video was. At that time, videos were mostly to promote bike companies. We hadn't morphed into the time when good video parts are what put riders on the map, or made their career. When I got down to the point of it, I came to the conclusion that the point of a BMX video is to make you want to go out and ride. This was one of those video parts for me.
I just went to BMX movie database to see what year this video came out, and I got a "This site can't be reached" page. Anybody know why?
Great song. I don't drink any alcohol... bourbon Scotch, beer, Mike's Hard Gatorade, and definitely not White Claw. I also don't smoke cigarettes, weed, meth, heroin, or crack. I did try to smoke a Funyun, those snack onion rings, a while back, to prove to another homeless guy I wasn't a cop. It's our inside joke now.
I used to smoke salmon, but it always clogged up the pipe. I did smoke weed for about a year after high school, but quit to get more serious about BMX freestyle. That's probably why I could never get any air on vert. I took a couple hits off a joint at a Cirque du Soleil crew party in like '97, but that was it.
I don't take any drugs, legal or illegal. Once every 8 months or so, I may get a toothache, and take a couple Tylenols. That's it. I'm not Straight Edge, and I'm definitely pro marijuana/cannabis/weed legalization. I think the last beer I had was at my sister's house, Back East, in like 2009. I'm not a good drinker, and I don't need beer muscles these days. I can talk to women sober, and I'm too fat to get laid anyhow, so it's not really an issue anymore.
I don't care if you do any of these things, and appreciate if you don't care if I don't. All of these things have their pitfalls, and we all have our bad habits that help us get through the day. Some people drink a few beers, some people smoke weed, some smoke meth, some people hook up with a one-legged, transgender, contortionist, pygmy hooker to take the edge off. Different strokes for different folks.
Personally, I drink to damn much Diet Coke (aka Bubbly Brown Fluid of Death), and eat too much 7-11 pepperoni pizza, because I can buy a whole pizza with EBT (food stamps). Those are my bad habits.
Many, many years ago, a great line popped out while I was writing a poem. That line was:
"Death that lasts a lifetime is what gets us through the day."
Of the 500 or so poems I've written (and since lost), that's one of my better lines. Nearly everyone does something every day that will help kill them in the long run. Beer, cigs, unprotected sex with aardvarks, whatever. So I hate to break your ingrained stereotypes of homeless people, but no drugs or alcohol here. Just wanted to make that point clear, since this blog's theme is my "street life." Now back to my regularly scheduled nonsense.
