Criminal Song Requests Rampant

Last week, the P-I ran a story titled "Solutions sought at crime-plagued Steinbrueck Park". The story had a picture of a shirtless man bending forward talking to a woman holding a map. It looks like he's giving her directions, but the caption says he was a homeless man and was persistently yelling at the woman, who was a German tourist. It said he was demanding that she sing a song for him on his guitar.

The article also had a nice chart, which showed how the number of park notices handed out in the park have increased 1997. It said that according to the police there has been an increase in the total amount of crime, which has been mostly non-violent and similar to that of other cities!


[Above: Other charts that the P-I did NOT use tell a radically different story, however.]

The title says solutions are sought. Let's solve these problems in this column!

The problems: The yelling man. An increase in park notices, and in arrests for mostly nonviolent crime, similar to that of other cities! (Aren't Sodom and Gomorrah other cities?) Plus, homeless people coming back to the park, even after they've been told to leave and not come back! Plus, how does a homeless man get a guitar, when he should be saving every dime to move into a room? I'd like to be able to lie around all day shirtless, making Germans sing for me. Wouldn't we all?


[New Orleans: Yet another "other city" we don't want to be!]

We need to know a cause, and one look at the chart and I knew what the cause was. Me!

That's right. I stopped being homeless at the end of 1997, and thereby deprived the streets of my good example! None of this trouble ever happened when I was on the streets. People even wrote it on their backpacks. WWWD: What Would Wes Do? Would Wes take his shirt off and tell a lost German to sing for him on his guitar? Duhhh... No! No, he would not! So we won't either!

OK, that was today's irony quota. Ha, ha, no, that was just stupid.

Let's try to find some other "real" or "intelligent" explanations. I mean, this is serious business. "I want to hear 99 Luftballons! Now!"

My first clue as to what has been going on was to look back at when the Parks Exclusion law was passed. Hmm. It was passed in 1997. Aha! So the number of park notices has dramatically increased ever since there was a law to give them out! Damn those homeless people, getting laws written against them!

Then I remembered that Real Change, the people who print this crap, are putting on a book sale and that hundreds of books will be sold at Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard at the end of the month. As a result the office is packed with donated books. I cracked one open. It was a psych book by some Dr. Phil or Dr. Jesus. I opened it to a random page and it said if something someone does annoys you, you might think how their actions mirror yours.

So the idea is, we look at the yelling shirtless man, and ask if we ever did anything to him or people like him that was similar. That might be the key to his behavior.

And I had it! Throughout the 90s, we took almost away all the public benches downtown, and made it so he couldn't lie on the ones that were left. In 1994 we passed a law that prohibited people him from sitting or lying on downtown sidewalks, and by 1997 that law was out of litigation and began to be enforced, by armed men.

[Right: "Cease lying down, or I shall be compelled to take all appropriate measures!"]

So we want to create laws that use the police to yell at the homeless for us and drive them from "our" sidewalks and benches into parks. Then we want to moan that there's a homeless man at Steinbrueck Park who drives tourists from "his" end of the park to the other.

The solution: Arrest the mirror?

No One Likes A Pus-Filled Wonk

Writing for Real Change puts me in the hub of the whirlwind of the big swirly thing that is homeless people's services on this planet. OK, not really in the hub, but at one of places where the spokes stick in the rim.

I try to ignore it. If I were to reflect upon every little policy paper, service squabble, action plan, or the little controversies surrounding them, I would turn into one giant pus-filled wonk. No one likes a pus-filled wonk. Still, one cannot help but notice that there is a big push on to separate "chronic" homeless people from "temporary" homeless people, in order to tailor interventions in their chronic-hood-ness.

The theory is that "chronic" equates with "wants to be homeless". So if someone is homeless too long, they must be asking for it. That proves that they are sickos who need help to see the error of their ways.

You see why I try to stay out of stuff like this? Right from the start I am tempted to have a big wonky fit about the abuse of the word "chronic". But if I do, I just get sucked into their level. I become the same kind of loser as the clowns who come up with these warped theories in the first place.

OK, suppose your Safe Oven or Brave New Haven or whatever you call it works like a charm, and you find out who all the chronic homeless people are, the nasty ones that cause all the trouble. You have a list.

And, suppose that these nasty chronic homeless buggers are to homelessness what anorexia is to starvation, in that they do it on purpose to themselves because there is something wrong with them.

Now you want to make them stop, so that they cease behaviors that negatively impact on society (eewww, I can't believe I just wrote that.) Since these are people who like being homeless, you can't help them until they recognize that they have a problem. In other words, you have to intervene.

What is that going to look like? Remember that while this intervention is going on, the 90% of non-chronic homeless are still going to be around and proof against any absurdity.

A man tries to sleep in a park after closing time of 11:30 PM. The police, recognizing a known chronic homeless man, send for a crack team of Chronic Homelessness Busters. The team leader, Jennifer, breaks the ice:

"Hey there, homeless man, what's your name?"

"They call me Bulldog, ma'am. Because once I bite you, I never let go."

"Well, that's a nice name, Bulldog. Now let me tell you why we're here. We're here because you should be in a shelter right now. Since you aren't in a shelter, it looks like you like sleeping in parks."

"I'm tired. When I'm tired, I like sleeping. Park seemed a good place."

"Well, that's wrong of you to think that way. Society doesn't want you to sleep in the park."

"So? Society's not here. The park is closed. So it's just me."

"Right, but the REASON the park is closed is because society doesn't want you sleeping here. Even though society isn't here to see it."

"OK. Where does society want me to sleep?"

"In a shelter."

"Take me to it."

See what I'm getting at? Point for Bulldog.

Beer, Not Guns

At the recent Urban Rest Stop Panel Discussion, it was asked, "How may we bring the homeless ... spiritually into the general community?" Being homeless myself this is a little out of my jurisdiction. But if you ask "How may we bring the NON-homeless spiritually into the general human community (including the homeless community) ?" I would have an answer. I could call upon all the homeless to take part in the `ADOPT A NIMBY!' program.

The idea of `ADOPT A NIMBY!' is simple but effective. As wayward NIMBYs are identified each becomes eligible for `adoption' by a volunteer homeless sponsor. The sponsor only commits to writing `their' NIMBY at least once a month. Personal visits are encouraged but not required; we at `ADOPT A NIMBY!' understand that not every homeless sponsor can comfortably meet with NIMBYs. But it has been shown that as little as one letter a month from a homeless person enables most NIMBYs to identify spiritually with the homeless, and thus rejoin the human race as a whole.

Due to high demand, certain eligible NIMBYs on our list can not be exclusively adopted. For example, everyone wants a piece of Norm Rice these days.

Speaking of NIMBYism:

Mark Sidran, Seattle's City Attorney of No-Sitting Ordinance notoriety, reportedly now wants 40-ouncers of beer banned from the shelves of some city stores. One morning, as I drank my 1st coffee of the day at the Counter Culture Cafe in Belltown, they were playing a Johnny Cash CD. This is the result:

So You'll Ban My 40-Ouncers, Mark?

(Look for it on Johnny Cash's next album!)

NOTE: I do not personally drink 40-ouncers in public nor do I endorse such
behavior. Like most people I drink 40-ouncers indoors.

So you'll ban my 40-ouncers, Mark?

So I can't drink them in the park?

Then you oughta get this into your head -

I know what I'll be doin' instead:

I'll just get me two 22's Mark

and I'll name them each after you.

I'll just buy me two 22's

that's what I'll do.

Before I go on, let me clarify, that that's BEER not GUNS - I don't want to be your next Jason Sprinkle, thank you.

So then you'd ban my 22's, Mark?

So I can't drink them in the park?

Well there's something you need to hear, Mark -

I'm not as helpless as I appear

I'll just get me a 6-pack of beer, Mark

that's 6 twelves for 72.

I'll just buy me a 6-pack of beer

that's what I'll do.

So you'd ban my 6-packs of beer, Mark?

So I can't drink them in the park?

Well there's something you need to get straight

- and next election'll be too late -

When the homeowners can't buy beer, Mark

they're gonna blame it all on you.

And they'll cheer as they vote you out

that's what they'll do.