So what does the 22-year-old ‘screw the system’ parasite carry with them to ease their travels and accommodate their worthless existence? Glad you asked:
Lets start with the basic package…the backpack.
My wife, who has dealt with the kinds of people in her worklife, tells me that there are two classes of critter: ‘rubber tramp’ and ‘leather tramp’. The difference is that one lives outta their car, the other lives on foot. After that, there is a subspecies of ‘hippie homeless’ which are the younger crowd who are just, like, y’know, doing their own thing, man. A separate subset of the usual Sterno-guzzling, brushed-their-teeth-with-a-hammer, career homeless you see laying in puddles of urine.
Open the top flap of the pack and we get:
Lets see..a couple space blankets, nail clippers, tickets for being in the park after hours, orange pack cover, elastic bowtie (???), ziploc bags, playing cards, packet of oatmeal, a note from another hipster who crashed at his place before he got evicted (name.Facebook redacted), and a few other small items. Interesting to note that there’s some signs of thinking ahead here…some food, matches, waterproofing, etc.
Lets move on to the side pockets…..
A rather extensive sewing kit, a plastic box full of safety pins and dental floss (the only personal hygiene item found. Probably used as extra-tough seewing thread), a cheap multitool, some paracord, river shoes, and markers for the ubiquitous “Need food. Anything will help. God bless” career enhancer.
In the body of the main pack:
Dog treats, a burner phone instruction book, a very cheesey but sharp sheath knife, some electrical tape, toilet paper, and a stunning collection of summonses/tickets and court proceedings that tell the story of our missing waste of skin. Apparently, at the tender age of 22, the lad was sacked from his job. In a fit of rage, he proceeded to trash a hotel room to the tune of $2800. While that would be enough for most people, he also acquired tickets for drug paraphernalia (wow, that was not spelled the way I thought), sleeping in the park, and a whole bunch of failures to appear. Sadly, it caught up to him and he spent a week or two as a guest of the county. He lamented that no one would take his calls from jail and that all his friends and family didnt seem to care 🙁 Boo hoo, right?
After early January, he falls off the radar. Im guessing he split town in a hurry to avoid restitution of re-arrest for his chronic failures to appear. Nonetheless, whats interesting about all this is the things that this wretch carried in his pseudo-post-apocalyptic travels. There are a few more items that I have to cart off to the dumpster, like his sleeping bag and some clothes, but this is the most ‘gear’ portion of this stuff. Apparently, being able to sticth together clothing was very important as well as keeping warm. There was absolutely no first aid gear of any kind, nor any kind of personal hygiene gear…no soap, no toothbrush, no razor, nothing.
Of course, I suppose your needs are easily met when you freeload by crashing in peoples apartment buildings uninvited.
Do I have sympathy for this guy? Nope. If he were homeless and it was five below zero out, and he said “Dude, I’ll shovel out your sidewalk around the building if you’ll let me sleep in your basement for the night” that would have been one thing. If he had left a note apologizing for his trespass and acknowledging his crime that woulda been another. But instead, he’s a drug-using hipster who crashes in the basement, drops a deuce in a nonfunctioning toilet, and leaves his gear and food waste behind. So..no sympathy.
