Thread: Ask me about being homeless

Originally Posted by Original Poster

Sleep depends on where you are. In Portland, for example, you can sleep on the sidewalk without too much trouble so long as you're up by six. In San Francisco you can either go deep into Golden Gate park or go to a smaller park and just get up early enough. In other places, such as Austin, Texas, you have to either go to a shelter or get out of downtown and find a patch of woods or some other stealthy spot where you won't be noticed. Even downtown where it's illegal to sleep, most cities have plenty a cutty spot where cops won't see you.

During my travels, I grew fond of sleeping under bridges. Sure, there's a couple spiders but if you lay down a tarp they don't bother you much. I've also heard rooftops are ideal because no one bothers you, you just can't be seen entering or leaving.

I tend to avoid shelters at all costs. They're rampant with thieves and junkies. When possibly, I like to be in the woods and just hike into town. If it's a national park you got to be off the beaten path so the rangers don't find you. Some smaller towns leave it up to the local police to watch the woods which is ideal cause cops are too lazy to find you.

As far as food goes, there are multiple options. If you take advantage of all of them, they can supplement each other. People throw away a lot of good food so dumpsters and trash cans are great places to scout. Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts make for fantastic dumpster diving because they throw out their day olds even though the donuts remain good for weeks.

One can also offer work or ask if there's any left overs at any food establishment. Even if you get turned down, perhaps a customer will decide to buy you a meal. It never hurts to ask.

Food stamps don't usually provide enough to survive off by themselves, but they add a good supplement.

And finally, most places have bumfeeds pretty regularly. Check your local churches or ask the homebums (stationary homeless) to get the scoop on where food gets handed out.

In short, and I'm kind of fucking over a lot of bums by saying this, but if you don't give a bum money chances are they won't starve. Their dog might though.

Wow man, you really amaze me. You're pretty much able to survive without using modern day technology, I imagine you must feel in touch with nature. Do you care what people think about you? Where do you clean/wash yourself?

And how did you ever learn all of this?

You don't mind me asking all these questions right? I'm intrigued by your lifestyle, and I would definitely love to give it a try sometime when I feel I am prepared and willing. I will be volunteering in Africa or Asia this summer holiday if I can gather up enough money, my motivation partly lies in gettting a feeling of how it'd be to live in such a different environment with minimal technology. As well as selflessly helping other people who don't have it as good (as most people would call it) as we do in western civilisation survival wise. Sorry, don't mean to be hijacking here. Just sharing my motivation and origin of interest.