by CORIANDER NEUMANEIMANAYMANEEMAMANN, Alternate Reality News Service Urban Issues Writer
The crowd on the other side of the velvet rope in the park was loving every minute of it (although a few of the seconds were somewhat less than whelming).
“Stop videoing me!” the grubby little man standing outside the makeshift tent on the other side of the rope roared, shaking the beer can in his right hand menacingly at the crowd, spilling some of the liquid on the confused ants on the ground under him. Nobody in the crowd took their phones off him; that was the whole point of they’re being there, and, anyway, how would their friends on TixTalk know they had attended the performance if they didn’t meticulously record every second of it? “I’m not here for your entertainment! I’m here because the system is corr – stop videoing me! If you don’t stop immediately, I’ll…I’ll…umm…line?”
A small voice from the tent behind him whispered, “If you don’t, I’ll go all cannibal on your asses and -“
“Right. Got it,” the man cut his understudy off. He took a moment to shake his arms out, then turned his gaze back to a young couple in the front row and screamed, “If you don’t stop videoing me, I’ll go all cannibal on your asses and come out there and start eating people! Eat you whole! GULP!”
Then, as he does at the end of every performance, Franken Beane, the homeless man, tossed the beer can at the crowd, careful to ensure that it went over everybody’s head (now that he had gained a small measure of success, the last thing he needed was an assault charge!). Unlike the ants, those people who were hit with beer squeed in delight.
The City of Toronto was getting bad press for rousting homeless people out of public parks. So, they did what every city faced with this dilemma did: they turned the homeless into a tourist attraction.
“The Park Purification Programme is a win for everybody,” enthused Mayor Tzipporah “Tzippy” Cuppe. “Instead of spending stupid large amounts on policing, it actually puts money into our budget. And tourists from small towns get the thrill of feeling superior to the big city. I wish we had thought of this ages ago!”
The city pays a small stipend to select homeless performers who are willing to sign contracts which outline which behaviours are and are not acceptable, which allows them to rent small apartments to live in during evenings and weekends and eat. Oh, the decadence!
The PPP has been so successful that City Council has been working on plans for a summer festival to be known as Hobopalooza. Over the Canada Day weekend, homeless people will set up camps in parks throughout the city. At various points in the day, police will raid the camps, randomly confiscating tents, bicycles, pots and pans and anything else that strikes their fancy, and forcing the homeless to move somewhere else. (Probably in a park that hadn’t been raided to that point, but although it makes little sense, the city doesn’t want to micromanage the event.)
“If we promote this right,” Mayor Cuppe dreamily stated, “it could bring half a million tourists to the city in three days. Who else is the best Mayor of the city since Mel Lastman? Noooooooooooobody!”
Not everybody is impressed by the programme.
“He isn’t grimy, he’s greasepainted!” complained bag lady Evelyn Credenza, who looked like she hadn’t washed since the first Trudeau was Prime Minister. “And those ripped jeans – they’re designer clothes, ain’t they? I tell you, once they get a little money, some comrades lose their edge – and tourists don’t get an authentic homeless experience!”
“You got any cigarettes on you? I…I don’t smoke, but they keep the squirrels away,” added Benji, an indigenous homeless man with more tattoos than common sense would suggest cohabit on one body. “I mean, have you ever noticed that all of the homeless tourist attractions are white? You would think the money would be spread equally among all of the different races represented in the parks, but noooooooooo! You sure you don’t got any cigarettes? You look like somebody who hates squirrels.”
Benji went on to say that a fairer distribution of revenue from the sales of t-shirts with images of cops pretending to harass homeless people could house all of the homeless in the city for a year. “Do you know somebody with cigarettes?” he concluded. “If you don’t give the homeless cigarettes, the squirrely bastards win!”
Mayor Cuppe sighed. “No system is going to please everybody,” she commented. “But monetizing homelessness is so much better than criminalizing it!”