It’s far and away the best panhandling sign on Broadway.
The Naked Cowboy, that is.
In the years since this muscled man showed up in Times Square, making what appears to be a good living allowing tourists to pose for pictures with him for a tip, other panhandlers seem to have learned a thing or two about street craft.
One young guy named Scott was sitting the other day on the sidewalk along Broadway, up near Columbus Circle, when he told me:
“I don’t understand. Sometimes you make nothing, then you move five feet and you start making money.”
In other words, Scott and a dozen or so other panhandlers I spoke with over the past week say there is little logic as to when and where people will give — very little “science,” if you will.
I am a sucker for a hard-luck story. I believe the guy who just needs a few more bucks for a bus ticket home; the young woman who has been thrown out of her Staten Island home because of a heroin addiction; the mother who wants to buy diapers for her infant; the old guy who is celebrating his birthday and the young man who starts crying because he missed his little daughter’s birthday and just wants to get back to Maine.
But there is an art to it — in the signs they prop up in front of themselves with simple marketing messages.
Photo: John Crudele
Scott, for instance, says he’s an atheist, but he makes sure the word “God” appears on his sign because he knows what’s effective.
Let’s say I believe them all despite the fact that two years ago I caught a scam artist pretending to be an Iraqi war veteran and claiming that he was being wronged by the Veterans Affairs. (He made me poorer by five bucks before I checked out his story with the VA.)
So this time I put fifty one-dollar bills in my pocket and went out to get the stories from panhandlers and take pictures of their signs.
Below are some of the signs in the post-Naked Cowboy era. And some thoughts about the art of panhandling:
Photo: John Crudele ; Gregory P. Mango ; David McGlynn
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