A New Look at the Hobo | Hacker News Reader

A New Look at the Hobo

lareviewofbooks.org

55 pointsseventyhorses10 comments

I have been attending Grateful Dead, Phish, Rainbow and other festivals for 35 years. I have known a lot of road dawgs. Many damaged from military service use there monthly retirement or disability to live a nomadic life. I have spent summers when I wasn't teaching traveling from festival to festival. Another summer in the woods of Oregon living in a teepee, no electricity, running water, cell service, etc.. I always had the income and backup options so it wasn't as difficult as those who have no choice, I could always go home. I have found some of the most interesting, intelligent and genuinely good people in these circles, also the most dangerous and mentally ill. I have Lupus and can't live any of that life anymore. I am so glad I did though, the experience made me a better less judgmental person. If I could tell young people one thing, before you settle down, have kids, buy a house, spend at least 3 months living on/with the fringe of society. Be careful, it's not a safe life, especially being a woman but common sense and good judgement kept me safe. I look at these folks as people who fit the quote “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

There is something absolutely magical and enchanting about Dead-related shows. I went to dead & Company at Citi Field last week and seeing a parking filled with tents, converted buses, hybrid structures, and all sorts of creative mayhem was so refreshing and rejuvenating - it has the same electricity as a carnival. You meet folks from all walks of life, some are selling t-shirts or glass or prints they made, others just having a little stand set up to play singing bowls...I lived the road lifestyle and know its certainly no rose garden, with a not-insignificant amount of people falling into the ditch of drugs and debasement, but it's certainly presents a compelling and inspiring alternative to the world many inhabit.

Interesting. What are the dangers (as a non-woman)? Any safety tips?

I thought about living with gypsies at some point. They are probably not dangerous.

I started busking cause it's been hard to find enough gigs to keep me happy and practicing the accordion is both more fun on a street corner and less grating for the neighbors in my apartment.

It's been kind of interested to meet some of the other folks who are on the street for various reasons. I did sound for a music festival a couple weeks ago and there were a bunch of folks who had just been at Rainbow... now that same little crew is camping out near the town where I live. I see them sometimes and they join up and play music with me on the street. Or if I see them, I guess I am joining them.

It's really hard to make tips... when these folks are with me, I don't get the bigger bills any more.

While it's true that a lot of folks who are living rough are doing it because they have no choice, between the dirtbag climbers I climb with sometimes, the crusty punks I grew up around, and the itinerant musicians I've been hanging out with, there is a large segment of folks who choose to be outside.

For all that, it's -still- a really bad idea to romanticize living rough.

Where I live, I get the idea that most folks don't think people who don't own property are actual humans-- much less the folks who won't or can't pay rent. And the systems of power around us treat folks consistently with that outlook. People get beat down really fast, and it can be really hard for folks to get back into some place or other once they've been living in a car or on the street for more than a couple years.

A fellow I know from downtown, a busker, had a camp by a bridge. He disappeared for a week, and I got concerned. Met him again in a coffee shop. The local enforcers had cleaned out under the bridges and taken it all to the dump, leaving him truly homeless.

They had 'put up signs' - small, on a wall a block away, down by the sidewalk. So as to make sure folks like him didn't see them, so they could terrorize them by destroying their camps.

He had gone to the police station to request his valuables back - everything had been neatly filed in boxes - and they made him sit outside on the ground for an hour and ignored him. He never got anything back.

His pictures of his grandmother, his guitar, his skateboard, his camp stove - all destroyed.

So yeah, people get beat down, and its systematic.

We spend an enormous amount of money keeping people homeless.

If we didn't spent that money to keep them homeless, those little encampments would slowly turn into villages. It's not that hard to build a house from scavenged materials over time.

Not sure if the hobo really is vanishing, maybe they just changed their ways and patterns? Being simply less visible because of that?

This man here for example, living sustainably and very creatively with his sheep is very inspiring: https://faircompanies.com/videos/went-homeless-done-guerrill...

https://123homefree.org/

I think you are right. The hobo movement depended on a certain kind of social fabric and infrastructure and, as society changes, so will these kinds of movements.

Thanks for the link. Kirsten Dirksen makes amazing videos about all sorts of alternative living and sustainability projects that people are engaging with. It's so great that they are being documented, I find them really inspiring.

The post 9/11 environment made freight train riding vastly more legally risky than it had been prior to that point, when people were pretty casual and relaxed about it all. It's a shame because there is nothing like it.

I volunteered at my local food bank. The best part was hearing people’s stories. There is a fairly large class of young people who share a vehicle and camp out, permanently. Many of them moved around to different places and would show up again months later. They seemed happy.

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