How to be a successful bumb

List tips in how to be a success at being a bumb. This should be fun. And you never know if one day you'll be out on the streets. So do heed always, and guard against ever becoming a non-successful bumb if you were to become a bumb by your own will or not. Let me start this off. What is an important thing to do is scope out spots: like scope out public restrooms at places where you can (at ease of restriction) take full wash ups to be clean as apart of your success as a bumb. Yep, nothing worse than not avoiding restrictions from places when you're a successful bumb. Got to be on your Ps and Qs, you know?

Any other tips that will fly? Add on.

[edit on 17-2-2010 by Tormentations]

Scope out busy restaurant dumpsters. Dumpster diving for food is a key skill to successful bumb life. Also, learn the train yards, bc the trains are the bumbs way to travel. Enjoy cramped, cold, smelly, dirty, box cars for the limited price of one half-smoked cigerette.

Learn how to scream at buses.

Get a dammm good pair of shoes as you will be walking a lot and know exactly where you are going to sleep at night.

If your going to sleep on the street make sure its out of the weather and safe as other bumbs will want to steal your stuff. Ohh and learn to sleep in those good shoes.

Become a Senator seems to be the obvious tactic.

Alternatively, you can become a lobbiest.

I always said that if I were to become homeless/bum(b) I would save up enough cash to fly to kauai and get myself a sleeping bag and some survival supplies. Hike up the napali coast and live there.

In order to get the cash and supplies I would go door to door and over my services for any odd jobs of just random donations from people.

If one finds themselves as a bumb they should learn to still be positive despite the circumstances. Because when one is positive then they are able to be open to situations where they can easily access food and shelter. As people will see that you are trying to better yourself despite the predictment you have encountered.
One sure thing that will get you staying indefinitely as a bumb is being;- pissed off and blaming everyone, and just all out negative and angry etc. Wants done is done, build a bridge and get over it.

reply to post by Tormentations

How to be a successful bumb

The 1st thing to do is enter a free literacy class hosted by the local library. There they will teach you how to spell your chosen profession correctly.

The only place I can find the word bumB is in an "urban dictionary". Come to think of it, bumBing will probably take place in an urban area so you may be well ahead of the rest of us.

Lastly, the best place to be a BUM would be at a friend's or relative's house. Kind of like the movie "You, Me, and Dupree." Now that guy had the art of Bumming down to a science.

Becker

[edit on 17-2-2010 by Becker44]

busking is the best way to get money. I once had a mate who was homeless and we helped him out, but around xmas time when we busked together we was getting close to £30 p/h! thats £15 an hour between us, pays for beer money and better paid than most other jobs. However, after xmas you useualy get round £5 an hour, still not bad but it gets very hard to play the guitar with frozen fingures,lol

Also if one finds themselves in a situation as a BumB then one should move immediately to a City with a temperate and warm climate all year round. Also the City should be at least BumB friendly with a lot of amenities etc. Nothing more depressing as not being able to sleep anywhere outside because the weather is too cold and extreme etc. And not being able to wash etc because the local county as anti-BumB policies etc

Really successful bumbs live in houses and have wifes that work.

Location, location, location is more important than real estate axium...
Trains and buses for mobility.
Finding the rich women 30ish going into the market was successful for one bumb I watched near the pet store.

reply to post by Tormentations

How to be a successful bumb

Bumb?

A bumb? What in the name of all that is paltry... is a bumb?

Now, a 'bum' I know... I have one as a neighbor as he is always 'bumming' my lawnmower and he never replaces the gas or sharpens the blade! (That's right Rick Stacy, I am talking about you on the web!)

Not to confuse bums with beggars, but I know more about beggars.

It's funny the most effective beggars always have an interesting look. Necklaces, dreads maybe, worn boots, natural jewelry like hemp or seashells, extremely positive attitude. Maybe by carrying something interesting that would raise interest.

They perform a lot better than the guy who has no style, no cheap jewelry, who actually looks like he is broke. It's all about image and appealing to the common folk. The best beggar I ever met was a preacher who "Thanked" everyone who looked at him, "For their smile."

I ended up buying that guy breakfast, before I even saw most of his style. Yes I am a sucker, but it doesn't cost me too much overall!

Great topic for a thread!

I like the idea of hiking somewhere too if you have the money to start. Is food and water particularly easy to come by in that area, warm climate?

I guess a serious post should follow:

ok, Urban Survivalist 101.

1) Know where the soup kitchens are. Almost every city in the US has free food lunches and dinners. Quite often these places serve nice spreads..

2) Find a living environment close to a highway offramp (preferrably with a traffic light)...make sure it is wind resistant and secure..

3) scout around for a small old grill...this will provide a place to cook stuff and heat.

4) Invest in paper and markers. Make signs not for money, but for things you need, like a blanket, or a 2 liter of coke...people tend to ignore pleas for money, but if you are asking for something specific, you will find you will get it in record time. (with the exception of Alcohol)...This also works for cigarettes "Homeless smoker praying for a cigarette, keep the money, but please donate a Marlboro". You will have every 10th car tossing a smoke at you.. Be creative, ask for a sandwich, french fries, bottled water. Hey, your homeless, who cares if theres a few sips out of it.

5)Collect coupons...(also ask for good coupons with the trick from number number 4...and use them. Read the fine print...if you can use more than 1 coupon for a product, do it...you can end up getting tons of free or nearly free stuff that way

6) Squirrels, Snakes, and Pigeons are delicious.

7) Save seeds...if you suspect your going to be living rough for awhile, find a out of the way place to grow a garden.

8) Learn the city/town well...theres plenty of help out there, from free clothing for homeless, to free places to sleep, etc.

9) Keep dry. You dont want to have a weakened immune system or foot rot while homeless. If you become soaking, find a way to dry your clothes quickly, especially if cold.

10) Brush your teeth. This is not just a practical suggestion, but it also will improve your general mood...things are already the pits, but a clean and fresh tasting mouth will allow you to be more confident when talking to people....also quit drinking...especially if it got you to where you are now....You will have a beer once you have become stable once again.

And finally, always keep the hope alive...not a wish...but hope...and hope is something that you work towards. Nobody is going to come rescue you, you must rescue yourself step by step...spend a few hours a day looking for work (you dont have anything else to do anyhow).

Originally posted by SaturnFX

6) Squirrels, Snakes, and Pigeons are delicious.

7) Save seeds...if you suspect your going to be living rough for awhile, find a out of the way place to grow a garden.

8) Learn the city/town well...theres plenty of help out there, from free clothing for homeless, to free places to sleep, etc.

A library card, if you can get one, if you can't, still spend time there. Ive never been to a cold library. If you don't know how to save seeds or garden, may as well learn. You might also find information on wild food in your area in the library. You would be amazed at how nutritious and delicious cat-tail spikes or fairy spuds are. There is a cornucopia of food all around you year round. Look for those forgotten over grown "green" spaces. Even in the middle of a hard prairie winter food and shelter are there, they are just harder to see. Trust in nature and she shall provide for you.

Nobody has said it yet so DRESS IN LAYERS! keeps you warm when its cold, take off layers to stay cool when its warm! plus if your top layer iss a lightweight jacket when its really cold outside people will be more willing to help, they dont have to know youve got three layers under it!

Originally posted by stephinrazin
Also, learn the train yards, bc the trains are the bumbs way to travel. Enjoy cramped, cold, smelly, dirty, box cars for the limited price of one half-smoked cigerette.

I dunno, man, from what I hear rail-riding can be a pretty grim experience;

When you think of hoboes, do you picture harmless, crusty old characters, like Boxcar Willie, who carry their worldly goods wrapped in bandannas and dispense gentle wisdom by rail-yard campfires? Well, meet Mississippi Bones, aka Marvin Moore, age 56. Meet him just before he unloads a bunch of .22-caliber bullets into his old pal, fellow hobo F-Trooper.

The first slug hits F-Trooper in the head, slapping him back against the wall of an empty boxcar. Buzzing on 14 Percodans and too much booze, Mississippi keeps pulling the trigger of the pistol—five times in all.

Best take-out weapon there is, he thinks to himself. He remembers how F-Trooper had stabbed him about a year back in a fight over a woman, and how F-Trooper had later apologized—as if saying he was sorry would make everything fine between them. "I'm gonna make you feel sorrier," he had vowed before getting his revenge and hopping a freight headed the other way.

As it turns out, Bones' outgoing train wasn't fast enough to outrun the law, and he's now serving 13 years in a federal pen in Atlanta. Which is where I caught up with him, and where I got a glimpse into the life of America's new-style, media-savvy hoboes. Driven by their anger at the government and society, they've formed the Freight Train Riders of America (FTRA), as if they were a consumer activist group trying to make the country a better place. But they aren't civic do-gooders at all. They're Crips on rails, a dangerous brotherhood of outlaws and crazy, cold-blooded killers.

Tramps, addicts and yuppies
An estimated 30,000 train-hoppers "catch out"—the phrase used for jumping on a freight train—every year on the nation's 170,000 miles of rail. They come in every shape: old-school tramps, carny workers, rail buffs, punk teenagers and Mexican migrants hauling entire families. A small but growing portion are college students and professionals, toting cell phones and PowerBars, the kind of yuppie thrill-seekers who are especially despised—and targeted—by authentic hoboes. The real deals are down-and-outers—they're homeless, mentally ill, drug-addled, alcoholic losers, surviving on petty theft and food stamps. If this sounds like yet another Democratic-party constituency group, just visit their neighborhoods—the warrens of tents and cardboard boxes next to switchyards, mostly in the open expanses of the American West. Nobody's out jogging and listening to NPR on their Walkman. Hobo camps are what the world would look like if there were no landlords; they resemble makeshift ghettos where the residents are not just poor, but often violently insane. It was in one of these hobo jungles that the FTRA took shape in the early '80s as a loose organization of Vietnam vets, white supremacists and bikeless bikers who pledged to watch one another's backs and share beer, food and women. Anyone else riding the rails should consider himself prey. "If you're not FTRA, they'll grab you, roll you and throw you off a train," says Officer Robert Grandinetti, a Spokane detective who has been tracking the group for more than a decade. "And then maybe the train cuts you in half." Grandinetti has compiled rap sheets on 800 FTRA members, files that document assault, robbery, rape and manslaughter. There were at least 300 unsolved murders on the rails in the 1990s. Most of these homicides, he believes, are the handiwork of the FTRA, and all of them are hard cases to crack. "The problem is," he says, "the suspects and all the witnesses disappear."

A serial killer rides the rails
Although Grandinetti claims that FTRA membership may run as high as 3,000 nationwide, most hoboes will tell you the real number is more like 200 to 800. What everyone agrees on is that the gang rules the rails of the Northwest, concentrated largely along the 1,500-mile High Line, which runs from Seattle to Minneapolis. Splinter factions ride the Southern and Midwestern lines, like the CSX, out of Georgia, or the Kansas City Southern, snaking through Oklahoma and Texas. Riders recognize one another by neckerchief bandannas fixed with silver conchos, shell-shaped metal disks. Like urban drug gangs, the FTRA factions sport colors: black bandannas for the High Line, red for the Southern corridor and blue for the central U.S.

Perhaps the most notorious FTRA member was a rider known as Sidetrack, aka Robert Silveria, presumably the world's first railroad serial murderer. A scrawny guy with freedom tattooed on his throat, he was dubbed the Boxcar Killer after he was arrested in 1996 and confessed to a bloody, five-year killing spree that left at least 14 bodies strewn from Florida to Montana. Silveria usually killed homeless transients ("I preyed on the weak," he told one cellmate), but his victims also included college students, such as weekend rider Michael Garfinkle, who was found clubbed to death in a switching yard outside Emeryville, California. Police say Garfinkle was camping in the Emeryville jungle when he encountered Silveria, who said he didn't belong there. When Garfinkle was away for a moment, Silveria took over the 20-year-old's camping spot. Garfinkle protested, to which Silveria reportedly replied, "I go anywhere, and this is the last day you've spent." And, indeed, it was. Silveria hit Garfinkle at least 13 times with an ax handle. "Silveria had a very distinct way that he killed," recalls Grandinetti. "He would bash his victim's head in, but then he couldn't stand to look at what he'd done. So he'd cover the head with whatever he could find: dirt, cardboard, clothing." Many of Silveria's victims, says Grandinetti, were found with their shirts pulled up over their heads.

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How to be a successful bum ?

Get elected into Congress.

"Successful bum" is an oxymoron.