By Larry "Stretchnuts" Johnson

Every night, when I read myself to sleep with the newspaper that I sleep under as a blanket, I see the same complaints: Everybody bitching about the recession, high gas prices, failing economy…

And I’m like, are you serious? You think you have it tough? Try being homeless these days; it’s a real sonofabitch!

Number 1 Reason Why it Sucks to Be Homeless These Days: ATM cards

Up until the mid/late nineties, people used to carry this green stuff called cash with them everywhere they went. Credit cards had been around for awhile already, and ATM cards were becoming more and more prevalent, but at that time ATM cards weren't good for anything other than getting more cash out when the bank was closed. Almost every bar, liquor store and restaurant in the city was "cash only." It was like a smorgasbord!

Panhandling was at its peak in those days. Why, back in ’93, I must’ve been pulling in anywhere from five to six hundred dollars a day on my lunch break alone! I was at the height of homeless fashion, washed up in the finest restrooms, had teeth made out of diamonds, a solid gold shopping cart, a thoroughbred feral street Chihuahua, and all the rock I could smoke! Nowadays I’m lucky to scrape up enough money for a nickel bag of paint fumes!


This is like, my dream right here!

Number 2 Reason Why it Sucks to Be Homeless These Days: Bottled water

Remember back before you could buy a bottle of water for two dollars at the supermarket? You used to be able to drink it for free on every street corner in America back when we used to have these things called “drinking fountains”. I don’t know if the bottled water companies asked to have them removed or if they just got taken away because of disuse, but just you try finding some clean water to drink in the city these days! The only upside to it is that you people generally throw away half drank bottles, which we can then finish and also recycle the bottle. So I guess it’s not a total loss, but once again, your convenience is our inconvenience, you pricks.

Number 3 Reason Why it Sucks to Be Homeless These Days: Cell Phones

Cell phones are a two-part problem for the homeless. For one, nobody uses pay phones anymore, which always used to be the best place to find handfuls of leftover change. For two, since the advent of Bluetooth earpieces, it’s impossible to tell a businessperson apart from a genuine crazy-ass nut job. Especially when all these goddamn hipsters go around dressed like they too, are homeless. Hey assholes! Stop taking all the good shit from the Salvation Army, already! Some of us have to shop there un-ironically!


That there is one fine motor coach!

Number 4 Reason Why it Sucks to Be Homeless These Days: Gas Prices

Used to be you could have a pretty nice little home in your car, a mobile crash pad that suited the nomadic lifestyle. Nowadays it’d be cheaper to rent an apartment! For starters, you can’t park any goddamn place, and there’s so much traffic, you may as well just walk everywhere, it takes about the same amount of time. And five bucks a gallon? Five mother f**king dollars?! My ’73 Lincoln Continental burns a gallon of gas every ten minutes, so I’m pretty much boned there. Maybe twenty years from now you’ll be able to buy a (very) used hybrid for three hundred dollars, but until then, it’s back to the bicycle for me. On the upside: I’ve never been in better shape! (Although I have been hit by a car like three times this week alone…)

Number 5 Reason Why it Sucks to Be Homeless These Days: Global Warming

It’s so hot! Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket! And sunblock is expensive. People always see me relaxing in the shade, and they’re all like “Hey, you, why don’t you get a job, buddy!” And I’m like “Because I’ll get skin cancer if I go out in the sun, asshole, its like three hundred degrees out!”

I swear. You people are perfectly willing to destroy the environment just so you can drive an SUV and then you act like I’m the problem. If I didn’t already know that morons driving in SUVs were already broke from the gas pump, I’d mug every last one of them just out of spite!

Next time you see me on the street, don’t be such a cheap ass and give me a dollar for chrissakes!