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[Asherdan]

Hobo...fuckit

[acoxcae]

There's no excuse necessary to use such an awesome phrase as "hobo grotto."  Examples:

Going to a friend's house:
"I'm going to my buddy's hobo grotto!"

On meeting a slob:
"Wow, this is some hobo grotto you've got here!"

On office politics:
"My cube has no view towards a window, yeah, it's kind of a hobo grotto."

See?  No excuses!

Now if you'll pardon me, I have to visit the little boys' hobo grotto.

[wombat]

There's a hobo grotto inside all of us, and it's a fantastical, magical place - which smells of booze and pee.

Thank you.  This made my otherwise lousy day.

[pmcd9]

For me, in my childhood, the hobo grotto was the equal of the fabled secret garden.  There's a hobo grotto inside all of us, and it's a fantastical, magical place - which smells of booze and pee.

Actually most hobo grotto's are public places in dire need of renewal.

Not exactly a grotto per se, but the side of a convenience store near my house.  Not a usual place for hobo's to hang out, but there was this one time...

This particular hobo, or bum as I like to refer to them, was parked alongside a convenience store I often pass and occasionally do business with.  On this particular day I pulled into the parking space which would be just to the left of the edge of the picture at the corner of the building.  I noticed something unusual that I was having trouble figuring out what it was.  What I was seeing it turns out was the pee stream from the above pictured bum (you can still see the little river running down the asphalt).  He was laying alongside the building between the pole and the wall behind the phones.  I continued inside the store and made my purchase and upon leaving I noticed the bum walking toward the street.  I could see that he had done more than just piss himself while laying in his crevice beside the store.  I don't believe I have ever seen a more degraded human being in my entire life.  He continued on walking toward the street, but failed to notice the curb at the edge of the parking lot.  He tripped and fell hard flat on his face.  Oh shit, what do I do now, this guy needs help, but there is no way in hell i'm going to lay a hand on him.  Fortunately he brought himself back to his feet and returned to the spot you see him sitting.  I did the only thing I could do for him, I went inside the store and bought him a 40.  He asked me if I knew of any place he could go for shelter.  I said yeah, just straight up this street is the Star of Hope, they can help you.  I would have offered him a ride, but hell the fuck no, he wasn't getting in my car.  If I had been in a truck maybe.  His response was something to the effect of yeah, the law's down that way too.  Well he is right about that, but I doubt they would want to touch him either.  Anyway, he stayed there for another week or so then disappeared never to be seen again.  I imagine he's dead.  I didn't catch his name.

~Paul

[pmcd9]

I'm not sure I would have bought him a 40 though.

I thought that in this case a little pain relief was actually called for.

~Paul

[side_show]

Wow Paul.  You can be sure that dude comes from circumstances, for sure.  Did you ask if it was okay to snap his picture, or did you just do it?  You seem to be pretty fearless when it comes to taking pictures.  He doesn't look posed, but then, how does one in such a situation pose anyway?  I've had a few facinating situations where, when I worked as a journalist anyway, I had my camera with me, but I always feel so rude taking people's pictures with out their agreement, mostly because I absolutely hate having my own picture taken.

For instance, I grew up down the street from a hobo grotto, hence why it is so near and dear to me.  Our street ended at a river, with a beautiful tangle of wooded paths that lead to all sorts of interesting things - a monk and nun cemetary, an abandoned mansion with kicked in doors were local teens did drugs, fornicated, etc., "Devils Dip" - a cliff-like bike ramp thing-y made of dirt, and of course, the hobo grotto.  The hobo grotto was a small encampment of make-shift shelters (some rather skillfully made) occasionally inhabited by hobo hitchhikers passing through my city (I lived on the last street before the perimiter of the city, a 10 min walk from the main highway that cuts across Canada from East to West, aka Highway 1).  I was forbiden from hanging out down by the river, but of course I did anyway.  The grotto was full of all sorts of interesting artifacts of another world I didn't know, like piles of empty liquor bottles, soiled ripped clothes, make-shift tools etc.  This was very interesting, as my area of suburbia was otherwise totally disconnected from the usual panhandlers, punks etc, you find in the downtown areas.  It was very much like growing up in a small town.  

One of my favorite local hobos (indeed not a hitchhiker passing through) is "Crazy Jesus" - now most everybody in downtown Winnipeg knows "Crazy Jesus" as he's one of those sorts that is quite hard to miss.  He liked to mostly incoherantly yell at passing pedestrians, but also had pretty strong delusions that he is Jesus.  "Crazy Jesus" lived at the end of my street for quite a while when I was little.  I guess he got tired of the downtown area where he usually lived and later returned to.  He walked up to my sister when we were on our way to buy slurpies, told her that he would give her salvation, made the sign of the cross, then rolled up his sleave and said "Look I burned my arm" while exposing a shockingly large burn.  My sister said the smell of burnt flesh was so strong she nearly gagged.  

Much later, I was with a group of friends in the area where Crazy Jesus usually hangs out downtown, and one of my friends, who's mother works in criminal justice and sister works as a doctor, told me that both her mom and sister had either defended or treated Crazy Jesus, actual name Trent, at one point or other in the past few years.  Apprently he lives a pretty normal, functional life inspite of his schizophrenia, except when he decides to go off his meds and ends up on the streets.  Which explains why I only see him every few years.  

I had this idea to make a documentry called "Finding Jesus" about the people who had encountered "Crazy Jesus" and about the man himself.  I had a friend who ran a rechord store where Crazy Jesus had to be escorted out by two police officers who he urinated on.  He also bit one of the officers on the arm, and my friend had to make a statement about the whole incident.  I asked this friend to b  my first interview.  In the end though, I felt like it would be too exploitative, and since the guy was pretty scary, I thought it a little too dangerous anyway.

It turns out that Trent's finally gotten the right sort of treatment, and now I see him all the time hanging out at the local coffee shop, picking up litter, occasionally buming cigarrettes, and looking a lot more balanced.  My bestfriend actually worked at that cafe for a while, and she made no connection , until I pointed it out, between the Crazy Jesus of our youths and the old guy with long light brown hair, now turning grey, who helps keep things in order at the Java Junction.

[pmcd9]

Wow Paul.  You can be sure that dude comes from circumstances, for sure.  Did you ask if it was okay to snap his picture, or did you just do it?  You seem to be pretty fearless when it comes to taking pictures.  He doesn't look posed, but then, how does one in such a situation pose anyway?  I've had a few facinating situations where, when I worked as a journalist anyway, I had my camera with me, but I always feel so rude taking people's pictures with out their agreement, mostly because I absolutely hate having my own picture taken.

For instance, I grew up down the street from a hobo grotto, hence why it is so near and dear to me.  Our street ended at a river, with a beautiful tangle of wooded paths that lead to all sorts of interesting things - a monk and nun cemetary, an abandoned mansion with kicked in doors were local teens did drugs, fornicated, etc., "Devils Dip" - a cliff-like bike ramp thing-y made of dirt, and of course, the hobo grotto.  The hobo grotto was a small encampment of make-shift shelters (some rather skillfully made) occasionally inhabited by hobo hitchhikers passing through my city (I lived on the last street before the perimiter of the city, a 10 min walk from the main highway that cuts across Canada from East to West, aka Highway 1).  I was forbiden from hanging out down by the river, but of course I did anyway.  The grotto was full of all sorts of interesting artifacts of another world I didn't know, like piles of empty liquor bottles, soiled ripped clothes, make-shift tools etc.  This was very interesting, as my area of suburbia was otherwise totally disconnected from the usual panhandlers, punks etc, you find in the downtown areas.  It was very much like growing up in a small town.  

One of my favorite local hobos (indeed not a hitchhiker passing through) is "Crazy Jesus" - now most everybody in downtown Winnipeg knows "Crazy Jesus" as he's one of those sorts that is quite hard to miss.  He liked to mostly incoherantly yell at passing pedestrians, but also had pretty strong delusions that he is Jesus.  "Crazy Jesus" lived at the end of my street for quite a while when I was little.  I guess he got tired of the downtown area where he usually lived and later returned to.  He walked up to my sister when we were on our way to buy slurpies, told her that he would give her salvation, made the sign of the cross, then rolled up his sleave and said "Look I burned my arm" while exposing a shockingly large burn.  My sister said the smell of burnt flesh was so strong she nearly gagged.  

Much later, I was with a group of friends in the area where Crazy Jesus usually hangs out downtown, and one of my friends, who's mother works in criminal justice and sister works as a doctor, told me that both her mom and sister had either defended or treated Crazy Jesus, actual name Trent, at one point or other in the past few years.  Apprently he lives a pretty normal, functional life inspite of his schizophrenia, except when he decides to go off his meds and ends up on the streets.  Which explains why I only see him every few years.  

I had this idea to make a documentry called "Finding Jesus" about the people who had encountered "Crazy Jesus" and about the man himself.  I had a friend who ran a rechord store where Crazy Jesus had to be escorted out by two police officers who he urinated on.  He also bit one of the officers on the arm, and my friend had to make a statement about the whole incident.  I asked this friend to b  my first interview.  In the end though, I felt like it would be too exploitative, and since the guy was pretty scary, I thought it a little too dangerous anyway.

It turns out that Trent's finally gotten the right sort of treatment, and now I see him all the time hanging out at the local coffee shop, picking up litter, occasionally buming cigarrettes, and looking a lot more balanced.  My bestfriend actually worked at that cafe for a while, and she made no connection , until I pointed it out, between the Crazy Jesus of our youths and the old guy with long light brown hair, now turning grey, who helps keep things in order at the Java Junction.

I've no doubt that dude comes from circumstances.  If not, well he's sure got 'em now.  But I guess there actually is a distinction between a bum and a hobo.  As far as I can gather from your stories, the hobos aren't completely worthless stains on the asphalt like the guy in my picture and I know the difference between the two.  We did have a hobo grotto as it were in my city some years back.  I have to admit here that I am responsible for the death of at least one hobo.  Once upon a time we had an area right at the edge of downtown where hobos, more commonly known these days as the homeless, made a makeshift subdivision of various materials, though mainly cardboard and plastic.  It was underneath the elevated freeway that skirts the downtown area.  We had been doing a cleanup project at my work and had accumulated a large pile of unusable lumber and broken pallets.  We were going to have a great bonfire with it, but it crossed my mind that they had been talking on the news a lot about the homeless living under the freeway because we were experiencing severe cold weather at the time.  The usual agencies were asking for donations of warm clothing and blankets.  Well I got the idea that what these people really needed was a big pile of wood.  That'll keep 'em warm I thought.  So we piled the back of my truck with wood and we drove down to where the homeless city was and started throwing out the wood.  They all converged on the truck, which was quite unnerving at first, but mostly they seemed like gentle people.  But you would have thought we were throwing smoked turkeys and t-bone steaks out of the truck the way they were acting.  Some people started carrying the wood off immediately and others were begging, please can we have some of the wood.  Tears in their eyes, seriously crying for the wood.  I said, the wood is for anyone that wants it and then everybody started grabbing wood.  Everyone was saying thank you a hundred times.  Ok, I really felt like I had done a good deed.  I could have just burned the wood back at the shop.  I didn't really need to load the wood in the truck and drive 45 minutes to downtown and give it to these people, but it seemed like a good thing to do so I did it.  Boy was I proud of myself.  The next morning I heard a disturbing story on the news.  Apparently some of the folks down at the homeless city started fires in their makeshift dwellings.  THEY STARTED FIRES WITH OAK PALLETS IN A CARBOARD HOUSE PEOPLE!!! You can figure out what happened next.  Apparently one man was burned to death when his dwelling caught on fire.  It wasn't too very much after that the city cleared the homeless off of that land and cleared their dwellings away.  There was a marker for the man that died for several years, but now it's gone because that area is being used as a storage area for the highway construction that's going on.

~Paul

[AlohaDawg]

I've no doubt that dude comes from circumstances.  If not, well he's sure got 'em now.

I figure that there's people who started in circumstances and people who created their own circumstances. Homeless people with mental illness I have some compassion for because before the ACLU in their do-gooding glory forced the release of marginally capable patients from state hospitals, a lot of those folks were being taken care of professionally and in a custodial way. For the few that left the hospitals and got their freedom and were able to either self-caretake or had support, it was great. For the rest it was a terrible injustice. Unfortunately these folks often  wind up with substance abuse issues, being exploited, etc. to go along with their mental illness. As a society, our inability to take care of the most vulnerable among us is damned disgraceful.

Now, people who were doing just fine until they started smoking crack or whatever and wound up in circumstances, them I have far less sympathy for. There is clearly a lack of treatment and support (in most parts of the US at least) for people with addiction.