why lie? i need milk and cookies

Our good friend Keith is back to his panhandling ways. But in order to be more in line with the Christmas Holiday Spirit, Keith begged for money dressed as Santa Claus, rather than his traditional banana costume.

Keith claims to be making a documentary film on panhandling. I still maintain that he simply likes to dress up. I’m pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a Little Bo Peep costume in his closet one time. His previous efforts at panhandling (in the banana suit) can be found here.

I went out as Santa today using the signs that visitors to my web site (http://rockass.net/panhandling/) suggested plus a couple of my own. I got out there and right away got a few bucks. People were laughing, but people were also giving me dirty looks. In fact I got more pissed off looks as Santa than I have in any other costume, but also more laughs?

I handed candy canes to folks as they gave me money. Again, mostly women, alone in their cars gave money. Exceptions were: A car full of Mexican guys who seemed pretty wasted gave me some change, a van full of young black kids gave me a buck and the dude in the back kept asking for more canes leading the girl who gave me the buck to give me another buck, a mother daughter and I think a couple of husband wife teams. One woman gave me a gift certificate for a POUND of See’s Candy. YAY!

One couple stared emotionless despite their four year old ROARING with laughter. This kid just laughed and laughed and laughed. I’ve never seen a kid laugh for so long. And if the laughter died down, I’d wave and he’d laugh again!

Two women in a van looked sour and then the driver gave me the little L sign for “loser”. I did it back and pointed at me with a questioning expression as if to say “Me? I’m a loser?”

She said yes and did it again, so I told her SHE was a loser. She shook her head and drove way having failed (or lost as in loser) at enjoying life.

The candy cane in my beard just sort of happened. The beard grabbed it out of my cup and it stayed there. I thought it added to the disheveled appearance. The pants are my girlfriends. Again, I think it added to the look to have pants that didn’t match the costume.

Most of the signs went pretty well. I think “Why Lie I Need Milk and Cookies” did the best. I must admit to not keeping good track. I’ll get better numbers when we edit our video footage. That sign was by Robert at RetroCrush as was “Wal-Mart put me out of business”. The Wal-Mart sign seemed to confuse folks. I think they thought I was seriously there making a statement because Wal-Mart had indeed killed my business.

I figured we’d make CRAZY money after clearing thirty bucks at the post office but we only made $17.24. Mind you this still breaks the old record set by Uncle Sam on the Fourth of July, and I’m definately happy with it. Add in the POUND of chocolate and we blew away Uncle Sam, but we still did better as non-descript guy in front of post office.

Strange that people seemed more pissed at seeing Santa’s image messed with than they were when I dressed as Uncle Sam, our nation’s symbol! Pretty funny. I had planned to give the thirty bucks from the post office to a homeless friend named Brother Jay but I can’t find him. A homeless man who had a great Santa style beard was really enjoying my panhandling. I talked to him and he told me how funny he thought it was. I gave him the thirty and wished him a Merry Christmas. I hope he’s having a nice night with it. I won’t keep money if I think the people really thought they were giving it to the homeless.