Five Ways to Deal with Street Walkers, Vagabonds, Riff-Raff, Rough-Riff, White Water Rafts, and other Members of the Banu-Sasan

My new apartments in the market have made me acutely aware of certain types of people which the standard suburbanite will be at pains to admit exist at all; indeed would, with a faux-allergenic cough to the elbow, be much more comfortable dismissing along with the various mythological creatures of his undergraduate degree (viz. fairies, hobgoblins, lesbians etc).

I must assure him that they do exist. Nay, are quite prevalent. He will be shocked to learn that within less than a week of appropriating my spaces, I have been confronted with: 

• panhandlers
• buskers
• gangsters
• men in angled hats
• cronies
• men without hats in the least (mark this, Rufus!)
• women who hold hands 
• prostitutes or sad clowns, 
• various vermin: dogs, pigeons, babies etc.
• foreigners, politicians, 
• foreign politicians 
• and, most curious of all, a type of coffee-bearing, brief-cased marsupial called a “government employee”.

Should homo sapiens suburbanus ever feel the Wanderlust of his tribal ancestors drawing him to the “big city”, he ought to apprise himself of the following rules-five:

The Top Five Ways to Deal with Street Walkers, Vagabonds, Riff-Raff, Rough-Riff, White Water Rafts, and other Members of the Banu-Sasan

1) Pay them to go away. This method works wonders. I am surprised it has not been already adopted universally by the happily be-homed among you. It is a little known fact that the jingly bits which have accrued in your pocket, though worth very little to your personal economy, are treated like some kind of currency among credit-cardless men of the alleyways. Should you toss some of this worthless stuff in their direction, they will not only cease accosting you, but might, insofar as their brute facial mechanisms allow, show a sort of sub-suburbanite gratitude. Darwin, and your afternoon, shall be vindicated.

Should you be in a position of coinlessness, however, and discover that your person of the night does not accept debit, I suggest you;

2) Offer them gainful employment. What cannot be paid on the spot can be more readily assured in the future by means of contractual obligation. The fact of the matter is, that any encounter on the street is a potential job interview. As a suburban man of means, no one understands more readily than yourself the benefits of a good work-ethic applied diligently.

 Need some work done? Well, here’s your man! Able-bodied, ready to work, and full of initiative (among other liqueurs). Why not offer that lady a crack at your lawn and bushes, or, if sporting the proper equipage, you can take a crack at hers. In either case, there is no better way to benefit society and your geraniums at the same time.

3) Commiserate. This is a word that, like many others, has a meaning. When applied to gutter-urchins, it refers to a certain type of deflated trumpet sound emitted from your naso-aural region approximately spelled “aaaAAAAAoowwwwWWW,” followed by a nod, and finally, a hefty bite from your lukewarm Arby’s dumpster-roll. 

4) Communiserate. As a tax-paying tax payer who has voted in many a Hooray Harry times a’past, you are entitled to hold opinionated opinions that are your right to hold flim-flam but buggeranto who voted him in anyway glargen mcflargh.

As such, you will have earned enough frequent voter points to become a communist for a specified period of time. A communist is someone who is entitled to his or her opinions thank you very much. 

If, as a communist, you are approached by a salamander of the byways, and are broached for change, a cigarette, or the time, not only are you expected NOT to comply, but have the additional benefit of recommending that the unfortunate creature read the yellow-pages backwards after dunking it in a puddle of urine, or, as this combination is more generally known, a “zine”.

5) If you can’t feed ‘em, join ‘em. The younger middle class “he or she” who has run out of options will be happy to know that the economy is in a downward spiral. Consequently, if none of the preceding advice has been applicable to your situation, you may yourself be in a position to join the ranks of the great unwashed.

To qualify, you must have or shortly be obtaining:

• An honours University degree
• Supportive friends
• At least one bright eye, bushy tail
• Some kind of “hope” for the “future”

If you have all of these pre-requisites, you can cheerfully set-off towards a career path in the misery industry. While the slow grind of the economy cannot assure your immediate demotion from aspirant youth to tap-dancing hobo, we can confidently say that several years of hustling by your erstwhile employers, parents, and respectable elders will leave you with a nice enough picture of civilization to drive you to baked beans and jungles as fast as you can trundle.