Conversations with Tyler - Alexander the Grate on Life as an NFA

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Alexander the Grate has spent 40 years – more than half of his life – living on the streets (and heating grates) of Washington, DC. He prefers the label NFA (No Fixed Address) rather than "homeless," since in his view we're all a little bit homeless: even millionaires are just one catastrophe away from losing their mansions. It's a life that certainly comes with many challenges, but that hasn't stopped him from enjoying the immense cultural riches of the capital: he and his friends have probably attended more lectures, foreign films, concerts, talks, and tours at local museums than many of its wealthiest denizens. The result is a perspective as unique as the city itself. Alexander joined Tyler to discuss the little-recognized issue of "toilet insecurity," how COVID-19 affected his lifestyle, the hierarchy of local shelters, the origins of the cootie game, the difference between being NFA in DC versus other cities, how networking helped him navigate life as a new NFA, how the Capitol Hill Freebie Finders Fellowship got started, why he loves school field trip season, his most memorable freebie food experience, the reason he isn't enthusiastic about a Universal Basic Income, the economic sword of Damocles he sees hanging over America, how local development is changing DC, his design for a better community shelter, and more. Special thanks to James Deutsch for helping to arrange this interview. Read his profile of Alexander the Grate here. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded June 4th, 2021 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter  Email us: [e-mail] Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox. 

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at Mercadis.org. And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit Conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm here outside in southwest Washington, D.C., with Alexander the Great, G-R-A-T-E.

Alexander, welcome. Yeah, this is the pleasant sounds of the urban center we're getting here. My first name is enough syllables for first and last. So first time I tell him I'm Alexander, and more often than not, because it's not the most, now it's common, that's on the top, I don't know how many lists, but in my generation, it was not a common name. So the only Alexander people are familiar with is the great. So I'm sort of turning that towards a, yeah, but I spell it differently because of my living situation.

You'll have plenty of time to ask me questions, but if I start with the basic, if I were to live outside homeless, as you've done for over 40 years, in the first week. More than half my life. More than half your life. What is the most important thing I would learn? The lesson of hidden figures who had to go a half a mile around trip to find a restroom, especially now when all McDonald's and everything else, the metabolic necessities. That's harder than I would think, easier than I would think?

One thing about food insecurity, okay, everybody talks about that, but nobody mentions toilet insecurity, you know, whatever, what comes in, has got to go out, and that's not readily before the Eisenhower Memorial, with a free restroom here. That's a backup by the resources we needed, by the way. the closest one to the area was of the Washington monument, a mile away basically, you know? So you have to be, get resourceful and creative

and get back to your reptile reptilian brain roots. And all these things come naturally, whether we, how are we programming? So the question was, what? Well, what's the most important thing I would learn? But I would learn about the restrooms is what you're saying. Yeah, well, it depends on how you start. there's a stratigraphy to the so-called homeless population.

I rather refer to myself as an FAA, no fixed address, you know. I'll get to my rant in a bit, but I knew it was coming. I left some of my stuff at my aunt's house, and I had heard in those days there were a couple of rescue missions downtown. And I heard of those from, you ever heard of the radio program, which sort of a dramatized version of this, called out of Chicago called Unshattled. And they gave life stories of redemption of the Skidro population and stuff.

So I learned about the mission life from there. I knew there was one in, the gospel mission. That was the Hilton of the missions downtown, which is still there for, it's a program for women or something. there now. But for $2 a night, you get a double bunk, two sheets, a pillow, and a pillow case on a six-inch mattress, the hilton of the missions. The next, that's for two bucks. So I took about two or three nights with that and then found out about the free Central Union mission, which was right here on Pennsylvania Avenue back then and before they moved on.

They're free, but they only get four nights a month. No sheets, pillow, half the thickness of the mattress. So you finish your time there, and then you discover the city's shelters, which are mostly converted elementary schools. They don't need any more. The Baltic and Mediterranean, I call them. One was, so you get, this is a plain four-inch foam mattress with a FEMA disaster blanket. That's what they call it.

From FEMA. Right. Or made by prison inmates. And it's a disaster. Now they're FEMA, but I don't know who produced them then. And you provide your own pillow. That ain't the end of it. When they fill up, that was six and I in Northeast.

Then they send you to 15th and Maryland North. East. That's the backup. That's Mediterranean Avenue on the Monopoly Board. And you don't wish you were back in these places, right? You prefer... Wait, wait, wait, no. Yeah, yeah, you tell me, you know. People ask them, why should go to, oh, really? You're aficionado of a shelter? Which one do you go to? No, I'm not saying. I'm asking. That's a common question, of course. So there's more freedom in your current lifestyle. People treat you better. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's shelter anecdote time. So from the foam mattresses and blankets and stuff, we get to an army cot.

So that's usually the progression down with progression. So that's where you start, you know. Okay. When you're in the shelter, you have bathroom access eventually. But that's more on when you're independent outside, especially than the shutdown now. What people were taking for granted, the restrooms at McDonald's, the holiday in, all that. It's a lot more problematic. But that great disaster blanket, if you see your blanket move by itself before you get under,

you know you're in trouble that night. That's the biggest revelation you get. What will happen? As children, they play in the yard. They say the cootie game. Oh, you got, this came out of the generation that saw World War I's and two. Oh, she got cooties. Throw the cooties.

So they had plush toys, look like cooties. Well, you know what that is? That is human body lice, pediculous, humanis corpus. That's the plague of the street. So maybe the blanket isn't moving before you get under it, but you feel like it's moving once you are under it.

And that's one of the plagues of Egypt. And that's a problem with shelters, not with living outside? Unfortunately, they start the shelters, but living outside, we tend to gravitate to the same quiet spots, bathrooms, day centers, stuff like that. So you can't get away from it.

I mean, it's always something that you have to deal with and contend with and fight against. Of the institutions you're interacting with, which are nicest or most sympathetic to the plight of the homeless? Is it McDonald's? Is it Smithsonian? Is it the homeless shelter? Who is it? Well, as I said in the Smithsonian interview, actually the mayor sets the tone. And because D.C. is in the eyes of the world,

every time a winter somebody is found dead of hypothermia, there's an outcry. It's worldwide news. The capital of presumably the richest nation on earth, people are dying from the cold in the streets. So they are, I think, an exception amongst the cities of America, of being solicitous and taking care of their homeless. I mean, housing is a big issue for the current mayor, you know, and she's doing a good job. And so they're very tolerant. That's because they have a vested interest in public image and compassion, when we think. but multiply like New York City.

I don't know how sympathetic they are. They have a 10 times D.C.'s population. But 10 times that, in Easy Rider country, Florida, California, that's where sunbombs go. And it's a problem. You increase the number of interlopers and there dwells enough. Like they say, a liberal is somebody with positive attitude towards neighbor until he gets mugged.

And you know, your charity gets over. It's a problem. That's why immigration is such a problem that that's why, one of the reasons is the previous president. Because the people on the actual border whose yards get trespassed through. I've heard horror stories like that, you know.

People banging on doors wanting water and saying, you know, demanding it basically because it's a human need, you know. In Africa, they say they don't deny you water. That's not withheld. but here, so you get overwhelmed. The municipality and the sunbelts are overwhelmed, and the mindset is, well, this, warm hands, cold hearts?

Yeah, whereas in Boston, cold hands, the empathy levels higher, or New England would say, cold hand warm hearts. So if you tried to move down to Miami and you moved into an area with other people living without fixed address, they would be more hostile to you or they wouldn't want you Or how would that work socially? No, no, you'd fit in.

This is just a personality thing at that point. Yeah. No, the municipalities, the police, I haven't. They get a hard way to go. Because we'd rather not have you here. It's no, there's no good Indian, but a dead Indian was, you know, we are the interlopers and the hostile conquerors in America, and we're trying to exterminate those that were,

usurping their reality from them. What's social stratification like amongst people in Washington, D.C., people without fixed addresses? Do they hang out by age or by race or... Or independence, really? By independence? Or paint that picture for me? Okay, I think it's time for a rant here. Let's give us the rant, please.

Yeah. And so hold that question. I say NFA, euphemistically also, but homelessness. All right. Are those experiencing homeless? Well, may I inform the world that everybody chronically experiencing homeless because you are just as homeless as you are naked, your essential condition as naked as you were born. Otherwise, why would you be wearing clothing? Desmond Morris, naked ape, you know, and the apes have built in covering. So someone says, are you homeless? And I said, well, aren't you? I don't see a turtle shell or a con shell on your back. That's your essential

nature. If you had your own shelter built in, you wouldn't need an external shelter. So everybody's home because any of you here, including myself, have some degree of shelter insecurity. That's my new narrative. Relative states of shelter and security, because none of you knows. The turkey in the apartment or the house next door was smoking in bed and burned his house down and spread to the whole block. So your apartment building might be ashes at this point or home or whatever, you know, or the plane out of the sky. That happened. You see that in the news. That's the irony or the paradox, at least, in especially California, after the wildfires. tens of thousands of people with million-dollar homes.

They were essentially personally shelterless at that point, but they had a low level of shelter and security because they had backup resources. It amazes me that no, they say you can't understand until you walked them out. Empathy grows with experience in the situation. But they haven't learned. They're still, they're caloric about this smelly, grungy, infestrian.

station of their nice, manicured water-guzzling green spaces and stuff. So it's not just the shelter or the home. As long as you can replace it. So I have a high degree of shelter and security. And I don't say shelter security. Everybody's shelter insecure because ultimately our most basic shelter, the body we're in, we're going to lose that too. So everybody's ultimately shelter and secure to some degree. You can have the most basal-style mansions in this world, but everybody loses that if you subscribe to the personhood in a separate soul notions, and this is a temporary dwelling that you're in in the flesh, everybody loses. Now, you're lucky if the soul is just an immersion phenomenon and after it, the body dies, that's kaput. That's wishful thinking. I wish that were true,

but I've been exposed to too much theology and Christian aspect and stuff to, I'm hedging my bets and taking what they say literally just in case, it sounds pretty convincing. And we've had 2,000 years of people maintaining this point of view. But tell me about stratification amongst the homeless. There's higher class, lower class homeless, or who thinks who is not good enough for whom? How does that all work? But has it sunk in that you're ultimately shelter and secure.

Absolutely. I've read Heidegger. I completely agree with you. All right. All right. So that's cumbersome to say, so I'll tolerate homeless or whatever. NFA is easier. I also have no fixed address, by the way. I travel pre-COVID at least, maybe a third of the year or more.

I'm in hotels a lot. That's another version of no fixed address. But that's high shelter security or low shelter insecurity. Sure. Yeah. You don't have to worry about where you're going to stay the night. Yeah. But who looks down on whom?

Oh, you're making a presumption here. Well, tell me, if it's egalitarian, tell me, I'm curious. Yeah, even though there is some of that, because what we need is a good favela, a barrio, around circling the inner city, you know? I mean, if it weren't for more need for heat, you can make your own tin roof shanty there or hut or something until somebody gets burned, the police clear you around and burn everything down, you know. So some of them work their way out, become domestics or something like that. And as soon as they get a little better means and live in a become poor as opposed to destitute, I say, you can quote me, poverty is the pipe dream of the destitute. I'm not at the bottom of the barrel, I'm not under the barrel.

It's what I call it the underclass. So when they become poor, at least they have potential for and saving and getting a better life. So I've heard stories of they look down on the people that they laugh down in the bar or the rest of it, you know. So I stick to my own little, my pattern even since high school. I had a few close friends or intimates that I socialized with, a lunch hour and stuff like that. But I wasn't the athletic, most popular on campus kind of person, you know, that live for their coterie, their social,

that these days with the social networks and all that, the local social network. So I just had a couple friends during lunch hour and maybe after hours. So I reprised that on the street. Now, okay, when I found the soup kitchen on Capitol Hill, which it lasted about 30 years, they've gone about five years, they're offline now. Church of the Brethren. Okay, it's an Anabaptist Peace Church, basically.

I even went to their peace lectureships and stuff. So, you see, if you're a peace activist, you're activists in other areas that are prescribed in the Beatitudes and stuff. it's there doors open in 11th, 30, you get a classical soup kitchen, you know, and whatever else they would get donated. A bowl of soup and whatever sides. So that became my mainstay.

After a couple of years, I discovered this place. I sat at a table, and there was a guy there. We're talking about 83 or something. It started then. As it was, I only talked with a couple of people I knew at the shelter. And I knew their names because they call your, you have a name tag on your bag. They take your shoes, by the waist.

off in the middle of the night, you know. You bag everything, and in the morning they call your name to recover your bag. So you can't keep your name a secret. The couple of people I met there was, we went to that soup kitchen. And so another guy at the table, I heard him, he had discovered the free pages in like the city paper and weekend section in the post. And I contributed. I said, oh, did you know about there's a community council?

in a local living section for DC. He said, no. So I got his interest. So I was able to contribute to his knowledge of free things to do. This would be like concerts, movies. Stand by. That was the beginning of the Capitol Hill

Free Be Finders Fellowship. All right. Where it's free, there will be. Why? Because we were all sober. We had some to occupy our time. If we had some substance habit to take that's where your focus is.

Almost envy them. You want to get a couple of bugs to get your thunderbird for the day or a hit of something, you know. But we had to do something to fill the spaces of our sobriety to satisfy our mind as well as entertainment

and keep our mind alive besides the soup stuff, you know. So here's a segue. That's the time we discovered four to five free movie classic international movies a week at the Mary Pickford Theatre Library of Congress, which is three blocks from the soup kitchen. And that's where Jim comes into this. We're with James Deutsch, just to make that clear, he's a scholar of NFAs and renowned for his

work with the Smithsonian and has done other things as well. And he was one of the first people to write about Alexander the Great. Yeah, and with other interviews that he's used in presentations he's done. So I'm worked with Jim for a while, you know. Coming down the lobby and stuff, We make some points about the movie, and I said, Jim, well, five more minutes, unless it's an Amtrak. Let's see what it is. How many minutes does the Amtrak take? It's only, at most, 13 cars. Can anybody see the train?

Can you tell from the sound if it's an Amtrak? Well, no, in a minute. It sounds like it's leaving. It was short train. Yeah. Seven to eight cars. Great. Yeah.

So, by the way, we're in the wrong side of the tracks here, and the next hundred car freight train come. The trash coming down from New Jersey. No offense, New Jersey. That's where I'm from, so I understand this very well. But D.C. has got to be there, too. We're not trashed last year. What's your favorite movie, by the way? Good grief. One that's free and have subtitles if I need them. We're getting to the list, the litany of goodies. So I said, why don't you come and join the Bums banquet?

Well, that's another, when we're not doing soup kitchen or even afterwards, that's a whole issue right there, food collection, free food. I love to be in America. The food is free in America. If you know where the tourists are, where there's people, there's going to be food, you know. Sure. The guy, the charter member with me of Capital Triple F, his name was Lawrence. when we got settling the routine during the summertime,

we go down to the mall. This is about springtime, actually, when every school group in the area is coming to D.C. for a nation's capital tour. School bus is loaded with kids carrying bag lunches and excited on the trip, eating maybe one of their Oreos and a bite out of their sandwich, and what happens to the rest of the lunch,

Summertime, and the living is easy. Folks are luncheon, and the food is piled high. I mean, overflowing every can. And this is fresh stuff. It's always disgusting. Who would eat that? It was mother's love in her kitchen that morning, you know? Fresh, clean stuff.

Trash lineers ordinarily change, too. That's antiseptic right there. So be sure if you're hungry enough and you see some, what looks like edible food, your hand will go out and hit your mouth before your brain knows what it's doing, all right? We haven't seen real famine. Well, not in this generation anyway, the other place of the world. So we'd spend the afternoon there and come back what Lauren used to call two hands heavy. That means three plastic grocery bags in each hand. We had enough food to feed a dozen people. And so you've partaking with them.

there for the more, the less acclimatized in this lifestyle. But no, you fit right in. You're a homeless immigrant, basically, food-wise. I'm not even a digital immigrant. I'm an alien altogether, but he's fit in, fits in well. He's adopted well. He's an honorary home, as I call it. What's the best food you end up with? Like, where is it from? What's an A-plus for a food day? Oh, have you, you into my classification system? Let's hear it. Absolutely. I'm a food-y- Okay, you're jumping around, too. Let me try one train. of the podcast. This is the Jump Around podcast. Yeah, but at least let's consummate one thought or time. There's some cool stuff here. I mean, at least fun stuff. So, all right, that's the

beginning of the Bumps Banquet, and for those that are not fully acclimatized, we had a classification system. This is a Class A, hasn't been taken out of its wrapper. Class B, maybe there's one bite, T.Y. O. Trim your own, you know, we found a submarine still in its wrapper. Double A would be, from the hand of the person donating it to us. AAA would be still hot. What to D? C-minus? Oh, and the rats know that.

A lot of forks here. They have a heavy one, but we'll keep it to the general stuff first. After hours at the picnic tables of the Madison building. That's what this happened. Eight foot diameter tables, okay? So we could fit 10 people around there.

So that was a continuation of the Freebie Finders and the Bums Banquet and all that. But one more thing about the lunches, you know, the overfed population, the affluent society, are you really hungry three times a day, you know? It's a luxury to have that means. I mean, when people have to hesitate, boy, what am I going to eat now? Truth to tell, I don't mean needed. It's become a tradition, a tradition of the affluent. So we don't need to eat as much as we do. It's more habit than anything.

But the kids, the junior high kids, and throwing their lunch away, they didn't know that at the bottom of the bag, their mama left the napkin with a stick figure on it saying, I hope you're having a good time in D.C. love mom. Mother's love comes along with a peanut butter sandwich. But under the napkin is up to $2 in change or bills for drink money. So he gets cash is left behind there too, you know. All right, let's go back up a few tangents here. The most thing, oh, man, you have a lot of things out on the floor here. A lot of things going.

Ball's being juggled. Yeah, juggled. You're juggling them, not me, right? Yeah, I hope you're keeping track in case I lose a ball. Most favorite. Well, that's quick eating stuff. We're talking about around here, food trucks, hot stuff, direct donations. Jose Andres, it's World Central Kitchen.

Those are marginal means and street people and stuff. How are they going to eat? They took care of us. You know, they've just been distributing. I haven't seen much around now. For most of the year, they were distributing hot lunches and dinners to whoever they can find as well as to schools and shelters and stuff like that. So this is real food.

But sometimes you get, I think the most memorable time I've had in the past years, a guy that worked a late shift at Popeyes at 2 o'clock in the morning. He said, I can't let all this stuff go to waste. I'm going to see if I can find somebody downtown. So for a couple of weeks anyway, he and another guy, well, that was mentioned. All right, the guy under the bridge, we call him. He stopped there first, and then I go to see what was happening and put me in on this distribution. And vegetarian stuff.

Well, the other guy got the box. I'm going to mention you at some point. ultimate disposition resource here. So Jim's partake into this, too. The box of two dozen breasts or something, chicken parts and things, you know. But I got all the sides. Every side dish, macaroni and cheese,

mashed potatoes and gravy, spiced rice. So I was eating all night. That's the most memorable freebie food experience I remember, you know. That's why I cut to my little click here, the freebie finders. Yeah. The freebie finders.

Befinders was an answer to social hierarchies. Correct. That's all I, I stick with my primary coterie, basically. This all happened after I graduated from the elementary school shelters, okay? I was 15 months at those places. How did I join the Great Society? Input screening is you put all your clothes away. They give you a leftover hospital gown from Howard University's surgical department waiting

for dinner. everybody's dressed in white surgical gowns and the homeless. So I said, wow, one astute party of the doctors and professionals here, you know. Some economists I know have promoted the idea. It's called universal basic income. And it's something like every person would get $10,000, including NFAs. It's a good idea. Save that for that.

Because I'm going to ask you, okay. You can ask me your question now. But also just indicate if you think that's a good idea, bad idea. I want to ask you, oh, but just the answer. National debt. This is before all the multi-trillion dollar relief bills have been signed into law by the president, all right. A progressive algorithm, no doubt. But I don't know if they'll factor in the five-year plan for the $5 trillion,

and it'll add a trillion dollars automatically to this amount. But it's pushing $30 trillion, which is, what, 80? So you can scan this quick. $84,000. dollars for every man-woman child in America. So you're a fiscal conservative. I'm just an observer at this point. The point is, I see this number.

I see a sword of Damocles hanging over the economic head of America. A lot of it's built in and so forth. But theoretically, if all this came due catastrophically, overnight, do we have a plan? We couldn't pay it. We have no plan. We're all homeless, as someone I know. would say. So I agree with you, right? What's the GDP? What if everybody grows domestic value beyond the product? What is everybody worth if you tie it all up from zero to Bezos? Just as a guess,

total national wealth, I would estimate 120, 130 trillion, but that's a very rough guess. It's hard to find market prices to value these items. GDP is about a half of that, right? Think of national wealth of six to eight times GDP on average. But we have a lot of durable structures in this country. So maybe I was a little on the low side. But you can't just grab it all to pay off the debt overnight. It's like stuff being used. That's the problem. So have a fire sale to China or something, you know?

We already did that. We're like after that fire sale, right? Oh, really? Oh, that's another. Okay. So taxes will go up. I got away from the podcast on that one. We'll have to cut back our consumption.

At some point in the future, we may or may not be around to see it, but there will be a serious economic problem, I think, from this day. Yeah. So I think you're right to be concerned. I don't think our world will fall apart tomorrow, but we have spent beyond our means. But do we have a plan B, at least probably several, in the works, for a restruction of the global economy, which your basic allotment is built into that, you know, a C change, a radical change in the world economy, to make for a little more stability.

I mean, as if we didn't learn from it. We don't have a plan, A, B, or C. Really? It would do it the hard way, like we did with this virus. As we've done everything else since humans have been on this earth. What was it, Mike Tyson, who said, like, everyone has a plan until someone punches them in the face, right? Right. It reminds me of the Lucy episode. Remember where she's pregnant?

Yes. That's a perfect example. Ricky says, this plan is calm, everybody, practicing, you know? Honey, I think it really is time. And they go into a Cuban friend. I mean, after. I don't know what it be. You know, my daughter's pregnant.

There's even some chance. She's having her baby today. I don't think so. But look, it could be any time, right? Yeah. So I understand this logic. What else do you want to ask me? That was the main thing that would it be easier to rework the global.

Well, you've got to get consensus, of course. We can play with our economy all we want, I suppose. But is there a scenario for global system of equilibrium that everybody can tie into? These governments don't agree on much of anything, right? Only the most trivial points. Yeah. But you're on the forefront of theoretical financing and so forth, you know. I'm sure a lot of scenarios being bandied about, right?

Of course. Okay. But they remain on paper, I would say. Yeah, until you're punch in the face. Okay. Now, you're NFA buddies. When you're with them, you're all chatting. What is it you talk about mostly?

I got used to where your mind works, first of all. I'm pretty maniacal, but you're called a polymath. Well, all this polys got to come in and assert itself at some point, I suppose. Well, which brings back the question, what are the freebies that you do? Movies, lectures, concerts, talks, tours. Okay, Lawrence, it's time for the reading of the list. So he's compiled. He spends most of his day compiling everything that's possibly free within a 15-mile radius of D.C.

Okay. Do you remember this after the Bum's Banquet? I'd say it's time for the reading of the list. And he would go on for several minutes and sing the National Gallery of Art, has a movie tomorrow. The Pick for Theater has won on Thursday. There's a free concert at the Library of Congress. There's a talking head lecture, he would call it.

That's boring to him, you know. He liked the music in any movie. In its heyday, is it possible to get stress syndrome from too many freebies available? I mean, before the- It's both the Internet. Yeah, right. Well, I got enough just on foot. I'm glad two years ago I took advantage as much as possible.

The mainstays, the trifecta of freebies, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, oh, make it four, actually, the archives and the Library of Congress. They all have independent programs. So on a good day, and especially a weekend, oh, just the National Gallery Film Program had the weekend. You could start with a kitty matinee at 10.30 in the morning and go to a five o'clock Romanian film in the afternoon, about four or five movies altogether. But here's where the stress comes in. The Environmental Film Festival, yes. But they're doing packed movies every day for a week at the Natural History Museum.

And then there's a Nani May festival at the Freer Gallery of Asian Art. this takes some serious traveling salesman paradigm. You know, how do I get to here, to there, running times? You have to keep all these jockey all these times and stuff. So you get a good workout, not just one venue, but several simultaneous pregnant venues on the weekend. Otherwise, if you can catch a freebie in the evening, the primary reason for this cultural event, in rare exceptions,

is this is some classy, comfortable show. shelter, right? Okay. Or winter all day at the National Gallery, plush seats and some kind of, there's something for everybody, entertainment, you know. But you said in that interview that you keep busy during the day and once in a while you might catch you an evening, though that's the focus, the evening freebie. That's what's critical, you know. What am I going to do between bedtime, such as it might be, whatever it turns out to be, and the last church closing or soup kitchen or something like that, you know, a film from Korea or Hong Kong or something at the Freer Gallery, it's an education, it's also a basic shelter at the same, and luxurious

shelter at the time. So I'm operating at 10%, 5% of the before time, you know. So this whole thing, so the one four-letter word for this is laws. Everybody, you know, all the comfort counselors are in on that. Ten topics removed. That's the answer to the... To the categories. For those that, and there are a couple, not more than a handful of other obvious homeless people at these venues, you know. And you know them all when you see them? By side. By side, so one of the ladies, after the shutdown, the one I'd seen on a regular basis, I think it's she.

It's in the front row there that had a climb over, you know, sit on the end. I don't know why people do that. That's universal, I suppose. So there are a lot of people that I had not seen before roaming the streets. A lot of competition between the rats and other bums, I'm scraping. Now, more than usual. When the tourists see me foraging and the lady gave me from Ohio, so I gave me the sandwich from the food truck they didn't eat,

I said, welcome back to D.C. America, you know, good to see you. Putting aside COVID, over the last 40 years that you've been living here, for you, what's been the most important change in Washington, D.C.? I can only quote what's in the paper, the re gentrification. How does that affect you, though? Better for you, worse for you, easier, harder? Yeah. The wharf is killing me.

I have to be careful now, not to be too specific, all right, in my whereabouts and locations and stuff, because remember Alex from Target, the supermarket clerk in Florida? He was sitting getting so much good vibes. psychopaths in the country were sending him death threats. All right. Why is he getting the attention, not me? He was actually getting, did you read that? Hey, male and death threats? Because he's such a nice guy.

So I don't know what kind of reactions we might get. Comet ping pong come across the country. The power of deception, delusion, conspiracy. Well, there's a lot more traffic since the wharf has opened up. But now since the spy museum is at the plaza, people are on their phones and there's a sidewalk on the far south end here before the freeway which is full of parking meters and you can hardly get one and a half people side by side. I see people going to that way on their phone, on their Google map.

And I'm saying, hold it. You're not going to be able to walk side by side before breast, of course. You know, if they're 10 in a group, they're going to take up the whole sidewalk. That way it's a constricted sidewalk. Some people thank me. But most Google's telling me this, I'm going to have to, I'm going to go this way. But I think more, it's because they used to be the quietest spot around for me. And now I have an evasion of the location grubbing hordes trying to find the tourists, trying to find something.

Is there no feedback to Alexa? Google has not been here. It doesn't know how, you know, take it from a native and don't deserve my piece, essentially, unspoken, you know. So that's how it affects me. As far as the large scale, look at the news, you know. Southwest, especially. Every square foot is accounted for. Every church has been propositioned.

Tell you what? I think you need help paying the bills. Tell you what, we'll give you out. You have a lot of maintenance and stuff. The infrastructure, your old building is breaking down. We'll give you a brand new church. Just sell us your property. One church after another is doing that, you know?

You can see it everywhere. The church on Ice Street, the Jazz Street. church actually. I won't mention, but everyone Southwest knows that. People are saying they're selling out, but it's tough in a post-Christian, some people say America, to keep attendance up, you know?

So they've got to find some schick. I mean, every square foot, they recently built a building between HUD and L'Enfant Plaza over the freeway. You know, I mean, that's a land assessor really on steroids that finds every square foot, and everything is up for grabs

or at least they have a mind for everything. I have two final questions for you in our last five minutes. Oh, really? Yes. First one. If you had a lot more money. Yeah, it's actually been 55 minutes. Whoa.

Yeah, time flies when you're having fun. That's why you're, okay. That's why you're jumping around at light speed. Correct. So the first question, let's say you had a lot more money than you have now. Maybe you won the lottery. Would you give that money to other NFA people when they ask for money? Oh, I do that.

They don't have to ask. Because I'm totally impugnious, totally out of the monetaries, I tell people I've been disabused from the monetary system. Well, you know, I mean, when I say foraging, I do what the squirrels do. I just follow them, I tell people, and people's mirror neurons kick in. They say, well, your brain is fooling you into thinking that you're doing foraging and the overflowing receptacle to euphemize everything here. So automatically, your higher functions are saying there's no need for this. I don't have to do this through my mirror neurons. What do I do?

Obviously, I take the money out of my pocket and go to the nearest shop to buy. So that's what they do with me. They say, hey, buddy, a lot of people command me. Go get you a lunch. I have this beautiful platter, more or less vegetarian, you know, rice and aros, con frivolous, the construction workers. They're in the middle of the shutdown. They were the only business around.

Four big construction projects, a memorial there in Space Museum, these buildings here. So the 100 construction workers, and most of them Hispanic, beautiful, I mean, they eat their shish kebabo off their platter and leave the beans, the rice, the salad. And say, what is that? That looks like, I sniff it. I say, that's green rag-based paper. I'm not a goat. I don't eat paper. Look, this is real food here.

Don't you recognize real food? It's like, we eat by concept, you know, until we learned otherwise. So what was the original question on this one? If you had more money. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. So you would. But the whole thing.

I do it automatically. If they insist, they stuff it in my, I'm not going to rest it when they're stuffing the 20 in my pocket. But if I see the 20 and I say, oh, sorry, but my minimum donation, except, I'll accept. I'll accept that if you can add nine more zeros to it. At $20 trillion, maybe I can help with a national debt. That's what that ties into that, you know? That's my minimum donation. Better make that $40 now because we go $1 trillion a year, you know,

so have a little hedge on that. So $30 to $40 trillion is my minimum donation, everything else. I either give it the poor box. The last one I got was $1, and I put it on the lip of the trash can. A lot of competitions are half of the $1.5. and people going over the same cans, you know. But I still managed to feed myself and my fellow omnivore here. Okay, last question. Let's say the D.C. City government puts you in charge of developing a new program to help NFA people. What would you recommend? What do you think should be done?

I've kept the focus on myself, my local contacts. But you know a lot about this area, correct? Tyler, they're doing more than what the average municipality has been doing. So they're very proactive. I really can't complain. Their heart is right, even though there's still 10 cities. What the count is like 1,400 loose individuals, not counting families. The families is priority. They took care of them first.

That's a tough population to deal with, or the last on the line. The specific question was, what would you do to... What would you change? What should be done in Washington, D.C. That would be better for you and the people you know. All right. I can speak for myself and the few of like mine that I know. I got my eye on all these empty office buildings that they keep building and there's no, especially now estimate. How many people you think are actually going to remain teleworking that were not before? Percentage wise. 20% I think we'll keep on doing it.

At least, yes. All right. So that's 20% more. more office space, and they're still building phase two of the war, are still being built. Should they invest more in quieter trains? No, I'm intemper to getting a quart of grease and spreading on the tracks. I wonder when that would do the propulsion system of the thing, you know. So the family shelter, it doesn't have to be a fancy office building,

horror stories for families, kidnapping and all this stuff. So they move the families out. But I see, if you give me a partition and this open base, I'd love that. That's the one didn't ask about the Mitch Schneider shelter, that he twisted Reagan's arm to refinance and all that. I was there talking with Mitch and the planning and stuff, and he was $200,000 short of having individual partitions. The way I left it, it was remembering five people, two double bunks in a common space. PDS, personal differentiated space. that is the bottom line.

Preferably in community. That's my option. You have your own space, but you have access to an immediate community. You have best of both. They're learning that in senior citizen housing now, you know, give them their own rooms and their private bathrooms, but there's a beautiful social space

with common Wi-Fi and cable and everything else in the living room, you know? That's a perfect setting. You can satisfy both needs of members. Thank you very much, Alexander the Great, and also James Deutsch. Wow. Time flies when you're having fungus. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.

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