by Vago Damitio
The sand can get everywhere. It will get in your food, your clothing, your car, your ears, your underwear, your butt crack. Rinse off well and don’t forget to wash your feet.
Shelter from the Sun. If you are going to be outside all day, every day, don’t forget to either use sunscreen or at least limit the amount of time you are in the sun. Schedule some time under a tree or in the library. Unless you want to be one of those ultra bronze old people with 28,000 liver spots all over your body.
Toilets and Bathrooms
Bathrooms are placed strategically throughout most urban and metropolitan areas so that normal folks don’t have to walk over the leavings of the homeless. That’s not the only reason the bathrooms are there, but it’s a good one. Use public restrooms. Nobody wants to see you taking a leak or find your wadded up toilet paper in the woods. Including me.
If you are in a place where there are no public restrooms look for a Walmart, Starbucks, or McDonald’s. They seem to be everywhere and they almost always have public restrooms. I think the best restrooms to use are the restrooms and stalls designed for handicapped people. They are bigger, cleaner, and generally the locks work.
I sometimes have people look at me funny when they come upon me shaving or brushing my teeth in the bathroom. No one has ever said anything about it. If they do, I have an answer ready. “Would you rather have bums with good hygiene or bad?” I don’t think there can be an answer of bad from anyone.
If you can’t find a toilet, the chances are pretty good that you can find a discrete place to do your business. Please though, use a stick or can to dig a hole and bury your shit and shit paper.
Never, ever, ever unless it’s a life or death situation should you attempt to sleep or camp in a restroom or public bathroom. This is what leads to locks, doors being removed, and worse. Be appreciative, show respect, and leave it better than you found it if you can.
Hostels and Guesthouses. A friend told me he no longer hangs out in bars because he has discovered if you drink at a hostel it is cheaper, more fun, and you meet more interesting people. I agree completely.
Hostels and guesthouses are also the poor traveler’s means of staying in exotic destinations the world over. A guesthouse in Laos can cost as little as $1 US per night for a private room with a king size bed.
A hostel in England will cost you about $20 US as opposed to spending a minimum of $50-$80 at a fleabag hotel. Hostels and guesthouses exist almost everywhere. The people who stay at hostels are usually more approachable than the people who stay at hotels. They don’t whine about inconveniences and you can usually find someone heading in your direction or who is willing to accompany you on whatever adventure you hanker. Hostels are great places to hook up with cheap tours, exciting adventures, cheap transport, and information about where you are heading next. Hostels and guest houses aren’t really rough living — they exist in a sort of middle space.
Most hostels provide communal kitchens you can store and cook your food in, activities, internet access, and more. In addition, if you come across as a somewhat normal person who is willing to work hard, you can usually find a bed at a hostel in exchange for your labor. The key to this is to be persistent and honest. Tell them what you want and offer your services in exchange.
Hammocks.
Hammocks are like a gift from the heavens for the houseless and bedless. I love my hammock. My buddy Jeremy gave it to me a couple of years ago and since then I’ve carted it with me everywhere I go. I’ve lived in it, I’ve relaxed in it, I’ve slept in it, I’ve eaten in it, I’ve made love in it, and I’ve hung it up all over the place.
My hammock is a “Ticket to the Moon” hammock. It folds up into a pouch about the size of a softball, is made out of parachute silk, and with two three foot loops of rope, I can hang it on any two trees, posts, hooks or beams, that I have found yet.
If I have a hard time sleeping at night. I take it to the park and sleep in the morning or afternoon. I always hear people murmur “Gee, that looks great!” as they walk by. It is. Get a hammock.
A hammock makes the difference between people seeing a bum on the ground or a guy practicing the fine art of leisure.
This little camp stayed hidden for almost two years in the woods behind Fairhaven Park. It might even still be there.
FILLING YOUR BELLY
There are plenty of ways to get food if you need it. This is especially true in the United States and other ‘Western’ countries. The following are a few ways to fill your belly in the USA.
Food banks.
The food bank is a free service, privately funded in most communities to provide food to those who need it. Most of the food comes from grocery stores which would throw it away if the food bank didn’t take it or from farms who have damaged produce they can’t sell. Produce which isn’t beautiful enough to buy, dented canned goods, dairy products which reach their expiration date but are still good for a week or so, and stuff donated by local people, farms, and business.
The corporate stores rarely participate. Once a month the government provides “commodities,” usually sub-par, unhealthy foods like powdered milk, canned beef, and surplus applesauce. Food banks are a great way to eat if you don’t have money. The best thing about them is if people don’t use them, the food goes to waste, so you’re doing a good thing by taking free food. On most trips I’ve taken to the food bank, people are bitching about the wait for free food. I can never understand that. Don’t be one of those people.
Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs is a group born at the height of the Nuclear Protest Movement in 1980. It is organized collectively and relies on consensus decision-making. Food is donated or saved from dumpsters is prepared into healthy vegan (no animal products) meals.
Howard Zinn, the noted historian and author, gave this description in the forward to the Food Not Bombs Handbook by C.T. Lawrence Butler and Keith McHenry.
The message of Food Not Bombs is simple and powerful: no one should be without food in a world so richly provided with land, sun, and human ingenuity. No consideration of money, no demand for profit, should stand in the way of any hungry or malnourished child or any adult in need. Here are people who will not be bamboozled by “the laws of the market” which say only people who can afford to buy something can have it.
Zinn goes on… They point unerringly to the double challenge: to feed immediately people who are without adequate food, and to replace a system whose priorities are power and profit with one meeting the needs of all human beings.
I remember a plate of food at a Food Not Bombs event I went to in Seattle. It was served in a white plastic tofu container. I had salad and vegetable soup. There was guacamole made from ‘spoiled’ avocados and day old sourdough bread from a local bakery. Forty or fifty people were fed. Lots of hands helped the FNB folks unload and then pack back up. A couple of bags of clothing were handed around and shared throughout the meal. It was inspiring. Most of the people eating were the homeless people you don’t really notice when you’re downtown during business hours. There were also crackheads, bag ladies, and spare changers. They picked through the clothing occasionally making an exclamation of delight as they found something which would keep them warm or appealed to them.
People sat and ate while having discussions with the people they knew, meeting new people, and overall behaving like normal people at a picnic or barbecue. It was an atmosphere of respect and human dignity.
Churches
Many churches and missions have regularly scheduled free meals. People who volunteer their time to make the world a better place cook most of these meals. Most meals I’ve had at churches or missions were cooked and served with love. If you have one of these meals, please take the time to thank the people who serve you.
Food Stamps
Food stamps are as simple to get as having valid identification and an address and phone number in most states. To get food stamps, go to the office, jump through some administrative hoops, and claim to be
homeless (whether you are or not). I’ve heard numerous stories of people taking advantage of the generousness of food stamp programs. I’m all for it. I would rather see the money go there than to building new prisons or supporting the wars on drugs or terror (or anything else we’ve had a war against in my lifetime.)
A lot of people don’t like using food stamps. I’m one of them. I prefer to struggle a bit rather than have the state provide for me. After all, I’m a healthy, somewhat intelligent man, and it feels good to earn my keep. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve used food stamps to get me through tough times. I’ll do it again if I need to.
Dumpster Diving
Americans throw away enough material goods every day to feed, clothe, house, and educate everyone in this country. Most grocery stores throw away produce which is perfectly edible but not visibly appealing enough to sell. Dairy products are usually good well beyond the ‘sell by’ date on them but are thrown away to comply with safety rules.
If you get to know the restaurants in a certain area you can pull unsold hamburgers, donuts, or fried chicken out of the trash with the wrappers still on. I’ve had burgers from the dumpster which were completely wrapped and still hot. It’s all about knowing your dumpsters.
Successful dumpster divers usually have rounds and sometimes if you hit a dumpster which is on someone’s established rounds they can react as if you are robbing them. If this happens to you, my advice is to simply apologize and offer to give back what you’ve taken from that dumpster.
You never know, that diver might end up a friend that can show you where the best dumpsters for clothes, food, and other things are.
Cafeteria Grazing
I’ve done this a few times when I was desperate. It works if you’re hungry and have no other option. If you go to a self-cleanup kind of restaurant, the kind of place where you put your dishes in a bin before you leave, you can usually find large uneaten portions sitting on plates. It’s unsavory, to say the least, but if you hang out for a bit and watch you can usually find someone who eats nearly nothing from their plate and looks clean enough to alleviate any fears of catching a rare disease. You might even catch them when they are getting up and say “I’ll take care of that for you, Sir,” as if you work there. Cleanliness and good hygiene are essential to pull that particular stunt off, but it means you can sit down and enjoy the meal
Shoplifting
As a youngster I shoplifted. I don’t recommend it. The risks are too high. If you’re going to shoplift there are a few ways to minimize the risk involved, though. One method is to have a baggy coat with big pockets and to slyly slip a few items in while you shop. I used to buy something trivial with my pockets loaded to alleviate any suspicion. Another method is to buy a few items you use regularly and then go back for more with the receipt in your pocket. If you get caught, you can say you were coming to return the item (s). The problem with shoplifting goes beyond morality to the fact that in all likelihood, you will get caught.
My good friend George Hush was an expert shoplifter for years. He had taken literally thousands of dollars in food and clothing without ever getting caught. One day he was in the grocery store and saw a 99-cent package of fresh herbs that he thought would go well with some pasta he was going to cook. With a casualness born from years of lifting he dropped them in his pocket.
Seconds later a hand clamped down on his shoulder and he was escorted to the managers office where he was made to wait until a police officer arrived before being told anything. He was charged with theft, banned from that store for a year, (it was the store with the best deals on beer too!) and had to pay a hefty fine. All in all, it would have been a lot better for George if he had bought those herbs.
Natural Resources
If you are familiar with the plants that grow in your area, you can probably survive. In the Pacific Northwest you can get by eating dandelions, nettles, and blackberries. In Hawaii you can live on coconuts, guavas, mangoes, and taro. In other places you can go to the library or a bookstore (you don’t have to buy the book!) and usually find books on what grows wild and is edible. It’s amazing how many ‘weeds’ are actually nutritious and delicious.
Shopping Smart
Shopping smart is the best way to make sure you have enough to eat. There are some simple things you can do to save lots of money wherever you are.
1) Pick the store that has the lowest prices for what you want to buy. In these times of fancy yuppie grocery stores you can pay double or triple the price for the same item at grocery stores a few miles apart. Sometimes Safeway has better prices on meat, Foodland has better prices on potatoes, and The Grocery Outlet has the best prices on canned goods. Know your grocery stores.
2) Asian markets. Most major cities have a Chinatown or Asian Grocery store. Check them out. I can buy a pineapple for $6 at Foodland or $1.50 in Chinatown. I can pay $3 for a can of sweetened condensed milk or $.75 Asian immigrants generally eat well on a low income. Follow their lead, learn to eat the cheap foods you can get in Chinatown and Asian Groceries.
3) Food choices. It’s been said plenty, but obviously, if you eat a pound of meat, three times a day, you are not only spending a lot, you’re probably pretty unhealthy. Rice, noodles, and potatoes are cheap, nutritious, and filling. I don’t care what Dr. Atkins said.
4) Bakery Thrift Shop. This is the leftover and damaged bread from local bakeries. I can pay $2 for a loaf at the grocery store or $.20 for a loaf at the bakery thrift shop. If I want to get day old good bread, I can get that at a bakery for half price or less.
5) Reduced meat section. Most grocery stores have a reduced price meat section. The meat that doesn’t sell while it still looks pretty gets the price cut drastically. Don’t be scared, they won’t sell you diseased or spoiled meat.
Cooking and Storing Food
I spend a lot of time talking about food and cooking in this book. The reason is food is one of the great pleasures in life. You don’t have to have a gourmet kitchen to make a meal that satisfies your soul. Hell, you don’t even have to have a kitchen. In this section, I’ll give some of the options available to people that don’t have stoves, ovens, refrigerators, or cooking pots.
Hobo packets and rice in the park on a homemade BBQ
Refrigerators. I lived without a refrigerator for three years. There are people all over the world that have never had one. There are folks that have lived on sailboats for years on end without having a reefer. It seems impossible to most people in the US that have never been without one.
The refrigerator is part of a massive conspiracy by General Electric to enslave us all by making us need electricity. The labels of far too many things say “Refrigerate after Opening”. Is it really necessary?
People existed on this planet without refrigerators until about 100 years ago. At that point some whiz kid came up with a pretty cool way to extend the shelf life of perishables without having a cool well, root cellar, or ice room. Pretty cool. I’m not knocking refrigeration as a concept. I think it’s good.
The thing that bothers me is when the big production companies didn’t have anything to produce following the Second World War, they decided that everyone in America should have a refrigerator. They took a page form the car companies and began making new models, having showrooms, and lobbying the government to require ‘safe food handling’. They lobbied the food companies to put those ‘refrigerate after opening’ tags on the food.
Most fruits and vegetables don’t need to be refrigerated. Refrigeration can extend the shelf life of them, but it’s not necessary.
Eggs can be cracked open and put in a plastic container. If you use one with a spout the eggs will generally pour out one at a time. This is usually good for about four days barring too much heat. Eggs in the shell can last anywhere from a week to six months without spoiling. To test them, drop the egg in a cup of water. If it floats, it is no good. To extend the life of eggs in the shell coat them with Vaseline or shortening. This seals the porous shells and pr
events air from getting inside. Store them in a box on soft material.
Meat lasts for quite a while without spoiling. When I was a kid and lived on a farm, anytime we butchered something we hung the carcass up in the barn for several days with bag over it to keep the flys out to ‘season’ . If I buy a steak, I feel fine waiting twenty four hours to cook it with no refrigeration.
Cheese has a long life. Wrap hard cheeses in vinegar soaked cheesecloth or rags to keep them from molding. Soft cheese should be thrown out once it begins to mold.
Dairy products like butter are fine left out of refrigeration. Milk has a shorter shelf life. I’m not sure why this is. On the farm we would put milk in those big canisters and let it sit for a day or two and it would be just fine. I’m told that it’s the fat that keeps milk good longer. That’s why half and half or whole cream lasts longer than skim milk. Sometimes I’ll buy a quart of half and half and it’s good for a couple of days. I thin it with water when I use it on my cereal.
I’m not recommending that anyone test the limits of how far you can let something go before it spoils. For goodness sake, don’t poison yourself. What I do is buy perishables as I need them. I visit the grocery store every day or two. I enjoy it.
If you want to have refrigeration or an icebox, there are options even if you are house-less. There are 12-volt DC ice chest/reefers available for fairly cheap. You can also get a standard ice chest and put block ice in the bottom, with perishables on top. In the Sahara, they put a small clay pot inside a large clay pot and pack sand between the two. Pour water on the sand and put a wet cloth over the top and it creates a natural refrigerator in the smaller pot. Pretty cool, huh?
Stoves. There are a lot of options available if you want to use a stove. You can find Coleman two-burner camp-stoves that run on propane or white gas at any outdoor stores, most box stores, some thrift stores, and garage sales. You can get them for anywhere from $5 to $100 and they work every bit as good as a kitchen stove. They are legal in most parks and easy to use.