Wave of ‘Why lie? Need a beer’ signs hit Florida
by Alex Pickett
Oh, those enterprising homeless.
Every day in St. Petersburg, I see at least a dozen panhandlers on area roads with various signs asking for help and money. They may not be creative — “Hungry,” “Jobless,” “Laid Off” — but they know a good sign when they see it.
The latest is the “Why Lie? Need a beer/drink” sign. It’s making rounds of the state this month. I’ll tell you: It was funny the first time I saw it. Now it hardly elicits a chuckle from me. Can our local bums come up with something better?
Anyway, the latest sign maker is a flagrant vagrant from Fort Walton Beach, who was recently arrested with the sign.
(Photo Credit: Steve Isaacs/Flickr)
Yeah, bums! Be clever! Ditch the signs and just walk to the bar where you can ask the passing drunks to give you a buck. I promise people will be more sympathetic to your cause if they’ve already got booze pumping through their veins.
I used to gypsy all over the country, and I may have seen one or two “I need a beer” signs in all the years I traveled (most likely held by the same S.F. gutterpunk on both occasions) … Now I see them every day… WTF people?! Honesty is appreciated and all, but what ever happened to the creative signs, like “Homeless Star Wars Fan” or “My mom told me to wait right here… That was 11 years ago” or “Will code HTML for food” or “Double Jointed,,, Will fit in trunk” Or my personal favorite:
P assing through
O n the road <— which can have a double meaning when folded properly ;P
T raveling
?
I believe that the poor fellow is need of a pillow. The ground is very hard and sometimes prevents sleep. I fell down once and hurt my head very badly. Now when I close my eyes sometimes I feel as if they are open a little bit. Sleeping on the sidewalk is dangerous because during the night you can roll in the street and get hit by a bus
And this is the reason I read alexpickett.com. Insightful posts.
[...] Frankly, I’m upset. Mostly because I had a really cool blog video I was going to do focusing on panhandlers and their really uninspired signs. [...]