Today I attended the Center City Commission Board of Directors meeting and gave a 5-minute presentation as a “Downtown Stakeholder,” designed to give the board a reality check on what goes on down here. It was a very unique opportunity and I appreciated the invitation. I think the speech was well received and I saw looks of surprise on some of the attendees’ faces when I told them stories of the aggressive, intimidating panhandling that I see every day.
I also learned of a couple of opportunities for Downtowners, one to interact with the CCC yourselves, and another to support a measure to get panhandling cases moved to a special environmental court. More details on those coming soon.
I’ve pasted the approximate text of my speech below. Whew! Glad that’s over. I actually had to put on a dress shirt and nice slacks (no tie, though) on a 100-degree day – not fun, how do people do that every day? I’ve decided to torture myself and keep it on for the rest of the day, too. Luckily, the work I have to do this afternoon is mostly busy work (copy, paste, save, upload) so I’m done thinking for a while. So I’ve decided to visit my waitresses this afternoon and work from the Saucer.
Don’t forget, Crash Kole CD release party at Pearl’s Oyster House tonight, 7:30.
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First of all, I want to thank you all for having me here today. My name is Paul Ryburn, and I’ve been a Downtown resident for five and a half years. I’m also lucky enough to be able to work wherever there’s wireless Internet, so I’m out and about a lot, working from restaurants and coffee shops down here. And I have to tell you, based on what I’ve seen, panhandling in Downtown Memphis has never been worse than it is right now, both in terms of the numbers of panhandlers, and their aggressive, intimidating nature. I want to tell you a few quick stories to illustrate.
A few Sundays ago, I was walking up Beale Street between Second and Main. This is a block that’s open to vehicle traffic, with the Elvis statue right there. There were three panhandlers who had taken over this block and were running it like their own private business. One was working the statue itself, chasing down tourists who had come to take a picture and aggressively hitting them up for money. Another was literally stopping moving traffic on Beale, walking up to car windows and panhandling right there. A third was illegally charging to park, both at the metered spaces on Beale – which are free on Sunday – and in the Premier Systems Parking lot at Main and Beale, which was unattended that day. No one was stopping these guys, they had total control of the street. And this was not an isolated incident, either. This kind of thing goes on all the time on that block.
Let me tell you about a particular panhandler down here, named Tommie [note: that’s Sharp Dressed Bum’s real name]. He likes to hang out by the Peabody, the Rendezvous, Second Street, Peabody Place, where there are a lot of tourists. He’ll approach them and act like a “tour guide” – except, at the end of the tour, “gimme some money.” And if you say no, Tommie gets nasty. He’ll follow you down the street and cuss you out. If you’re a woman he’ll make obscene sexual comments. Sometimes he’ll even do this (quick threatening motion) like he’s going to jump you. Very intimidating, and it makes a horrible impression of Downtown Memphis.
CeCe’s Liquors at Main and Madison sells one-shot bottles of cheap booze, and $2-3 bottles of cheap wine. As a result, panhandlers hang out nearby in Court Square, and also in front of the Walgreens at Main and Madison. They’ll beg passersby, saying they’re homeless and need money to get something to eat. What they actually do, though, is gather up enough money and walk over to CeCe’s to buy a bottle. They drink it and then repeat the process, going back out to beg some more… except this time, they’re drunk.
That last story illustrates a point I want to make. Many of these guys you see out here begging month after month, year after year are not homeless. This is a business for them, they’re out here hustling. They make good money and have places to go at night. But what it does do is take money away from legitimate organizations who have programs in place to help those in need.
Not only that, but it takes money away from businesses Downtown. How do I know that? Well, I write a blog about my life in Downtown Memphis. It’s pretty popular, getting about 700 hits a day on weekdays. As a result, people send me e-mail – people from out of town, and from other parts of Memphis. They say things like, “Hey Paul, I visited your neighborhood last weekend. I agree with you, there’s tons of stuff to do Downtown, but every time I went out on the sidewalks these people approached me for money. It was very scary. I’ll be honest, I’m not going to come back.” I’ve also had friends who considered buying condos down here, then changed their minds. They told me, “I don’t want to deal with that [panhandling] every time I walk out my front door.”
Now, there is a group of citizens that is trying to turn the problem around. About a month ago my friend Mike King and I formed Handling-Panhandling, an online Internet forum where citizens discuss the problem. We’ve posted pictures of panhandlers, and in many cases identified them by name and whether they have outstanding warrants. We’ve also identified the hotspot locations Downtown. When we created the forum we expected it to have a limited appeal; we expected about 30-40 members to join. We were wrong. After only a month in existence, we’ve had almost 200 people sign up, many with messages to the effect of, “I’m fed up. If something isn’t done about this, I’m out of here.”
There has been progress. The Memphis Police now monitor the forum, and we’ve seen them applying manpower to the problem hotspots we’ve identified. However, this can’t be a quick fix, where we see cops for a couple of weeks and then things return to business as usual. We need a long-term solution. We need a plan.
In conclusion: I live Downtown. I absolutely love my neighborhood and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I want to see it grow and prosper. When people visit my neighborhood, I want them to leave with a great impression. That’s not happening right now due to the panhandling. Thanks again for your time.