… that’s the word on the street about Downtown Memphis. The word on other cities’ streets.
I’ve been told that other cities are shipping their panhandlers/vagrants/bums here because Memphis is known to be a city that is soft on panhandling. Little Rock in particular I’m told does this. They had a major Tae Kwon Do convention two weeks ago, and right before the city was mysteriously “cleaned out.”
I took the camera out this weekend. Let’s see what we’ve got:
I spent about half an hour watching this dude sitting at the trolley stop Saturday afternoon at Madison and Main. He’d wait for tourists to stop to wait on the trolley, engage them, and then ask for a “donation.” Isn’t panhandling at trolley stops illegal? Why can’t MATA install cameras at their trolley stops to put an end to this? In this day and age it couldn’t be that expensive. Did I mention that the Madison/Main trolley stop is steps away from CeCe’s Liquor’s, which caters to the $2 and under crowd? Wonder if that could have had anything to do with his choice of location.
Next up we have this guy sitting on Beale Street: “How you doin’, sir? You aight?” Bum-to-English translation: “Give me money,” as was seen once he started talking to people who were more interested in conversation with him than I was.
This afternoon friends and I went to the Flying Saucer and sat on their patio… while we were there, no less than SIX bums came up to the window and hit up the people sitting there. If you’ve spent any amount of time on Second Street downtown, you’ve met the sad sack pictured above. For the entire five years I’ve lived downtown, he’s walked Second between Union and Beale, looking as forlorn and destitute as possible and asking for help. I’m almost positive he’s NOT homeless. One of these days I’m going to follow him and see where he goes when he gets off “work.”
Here’s another one at the Saucer’s window.
“Hey man, look here. I ain’t had nothin’ to eat in about 3 days, can you help me out?”
This is the guy who comes up to you and sings… and then expects a tip. Fellow Sunday bruncher John D wanted to be mentioned in the blog, so here ya go, John… this guy came up to the window about 4 PM, his second time to do so Sunday afternoon. He noticed that “Humpty Dumpty” was still there.
Another longtime resident of Downtown Memphis stops at the Saucer’s window to ask for “assistance.” The Saucer’s landlord is Belz/Peabody Place, don’t they have security that are supposed to keep these people from bothering the customers? Sure didn’t see them.
This guy was all over Peabody Place and Second Street looking for handouts.
Here’s the same guy again, having come up to the Saucer’s window to ask for money. Why is he looking up? Because one of the patrons hit the switch to lower the window, to put a shield between him and us. He wasn’t happy about that at all.
Hey, you remember the guy who was begging at the Madison trolley stop Saturday afternoon? Well, here he is again. The liquor store isn’t open on Sunday so there was no need for him to stick close to it. Here he is on Second in front of Jillian’s, using one of the oldest gimmicks in the book, picking flowers from a public display and then giving them to people in exchange for “tips.”
Other cities have made it clear that panhandling will not be tolerated… why can’t we? I’m sick of hearing about their “rights.” What about our right to sit outside and enjoy a beautiful Sunday afternoon without being bothered time and time again?