Yup, I've done it. Sat on the street corner for pretty much everything you can imagine probably <img src="/images/boards/smilies/tongue.gif" alt="" align="absmiddle" border="0" /><br /><br />Success, it's varied. I did it when I was younger. You need to be clean enough that people aren't afraid to be near you, but dirty enough that you look pretty homeless. It's sort of a fine line. Usually I would just go down to the river and take a swim, clothes and all. By the time I got up to the freeway entrance, or the big street corner, I'd be mostly dry, clean enough and people could be pretty generous. <br /><br />Some times you can make loads of money, other times you can make pennies. My friend once had a lady give him a super nice guitar (he was a musician) he thought it was worth 6 or $800. But he never sold it or anything. He played that thing for a long time, until someone finally stole it from him. One time a guy gave me $100.<br /><br />As for what would I actually say..... Usually I wouldn't say anything, just kinda sit there, and let the ones that wanted to approach me approach me. In smaller towns this works pretty well. In big cities, this works like crap, and you have to be more aggressive, and actually interact and talk with the people. Usually I'd try to have an actual conversation with them, about the weather, or whatever and make it pretty clear I'm living out here on this corner. (as if they couldn't tell... LOL ). Anyways I normally let them offer money, I learned that this works really well. All tho I may only get 2 to 5 people a day give me money in this method, I'd generally get between 5 and $20 from each one.. If I tried the normal method(s) you see from your average pan handler, You'd make maybe 5 or 10 dollars in a day. I normally didn't have to beg for food, as food is usually fairly easy to come by (or it was for me, thru food banks, shelters, soup kitchens, and in honor of the.punk.hippie, diving <img src="/images/boards/smilies/smile.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle"> ... etc). When I needed food, I'd just ask for leftovers from people that clearly had them in their hand. They almost always gave them to me.<br /><br />My worst day panhandling was a bunch of bruised ribs, and trash thrown on me. My best day, I cleared around $500.<br /><br />In my town where I did almost all of my panhandling for food or money, The cops generally were not a big problem. Sometimes they would get bored and move us along with a heavy hand... The main problem was Friday and Saturday nights when the marines (we had a marine base in our town) would get drunk and come beat us senseless. Most all of us with any clue only let that happen once, and then we knew to HIDE fri and sat nights. Now, before some of you decide I hate marines or something.... I'm not saying all marines are bad, I know quite a few that are AWESOME people. I don't hate the Marines, but I definitely have feelings against the ones who decided it was fun to come beat on the homeless.
