Ah, but in the case of an event line you also know the hundred or more people that you would arrest:
If the Apple store is in a relatively remote location, where most of the shoppers have traveled to shop there, that’s even better – will someone from 20 miles away want to drive back to contest the fine in court?
That’s interesting, they let you sleep on the sidewalks for tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park.
iphone resellers who stand in line to pay cash for a bunch of phones are weirdos, too…
Where are people standing in line to buy a concert ticket?
I go to a dozen or more shows a year, big and small and have never once even heard of one person going down the night before or the morning of the sale that could/would stand around and wait. Let alone camp out.
For a small show at the HOB, you can’t even do that if you want to, their box office opens at 4pm.
For bigger arena shows, you’d have to buy from TM and the only place is at Walmart. That’s a big no on principal for me, but I’m pretty sure that if someone showed up there at 10am the day of a sale, I’d get a better seat than they would online. It all goes though the same system.
I was going to post this earlier, but it kinda feels hostile to anyone that doesn’t fall into the “let homeless people do whatever they want and to hell with social conventions because it doesn’t apply to them” camp. However, even when there are public restrooms available, the homeless will just take over.
I am EXTREMELY lactose allergic (not just intolerant), and while studying at my public library, I hit their cafe and specifically asked for soy or almond or anything other than milk. Don’t get me wrong, dairy tastes AWESOME. It is my intestines that disagree. After the several statements of I’m allergic to dairy I thought I was going to get the right stuff…nope. 6 floors of public library, every single stall was occupied by the homeless. One even had a tent-like enclosure that went to the floor and he practically slept in during the day. Later I was told he packs it up just before closing every night, and puts it up again every day. And public access laws prohibit them from kicking someone out of the restroom unless they are purposely disturbing others.
So 6 floors of library, HUGE library, and I’m running from floor to floor to restroom hoping my ass wasn’t just going to explode. Ended up asking a librarian if there was a private restroom and she gave me the key to the employee room and make a comment about homeless living in there. After I came back, barely evacuating my intestines in time, she even said that OTHER homeless had to ask for the key because even they can’t get in to use it. 6 floors of public space, and every single stall occupied by the homeless. Not using it for its intended use.
So…it may be a self-perpetuated problem, but the homeless are not in any hurry to fix it either. That said, I’ve worked in mental health for some time, I’ve worked with the homeless population, and it is rare that I’ve found anyone I think is a horrible person. They just don’t have boundaries with social issues and feel that we should work around them as opposed to the other way. Most chronically homeless are mentally ill, and even when housing is available, most do not want to work within the system to attain it. They enjoy the freedom they have and have become accustom to the lifestyle. Other than encroachment into things like this – I don’t care. However, when people make it seem like the ‘rich entitled people’ have the problem and not the homeless, it is bullshit.
It should not be a one-way street. Homeless people have a right to define social convention as much as anybody else does. But guess what? People are required to have a fixed address to vote - assuming that voting even makes a difference anymore. We automatically get only one side of this story because the laws expressly forbid actual political representation of the homeless.
Sounds like an awful situation, no doubt. But my guess is that people were sleeping in the bathroom (of all places) because they were being harassed elsewhere. If it’s a whole 6 floor library, why wasn’t there room for them to sleep outside of the bathroom? Why do people get beaten for sleeping in big parks at night when there is plenty of room? The reason they were camping in the bathroom is because they were being persecuted in the first place.
This sounds exactly like a scenario of being offered “an acceptable way to live” by outsiders, and being labeled “a problem” when they don’t snap it up as their only viable option. Telling a group that they have to take a deal or be beaten is hardly altruism, it’s merely putting a friendly face on coercion. By taking the normative approach of automatically identifying nomadic living with being an expression of pathology, you actively deny these people agency, any meaningful say in how they choose to live their lives. It’s a popular outlook, that homelessness is not a choice, that people cannot be helped to exist as homeless people, but must instead be “helped” by making them live otherwise. It’s a cultural problem. If people can live nomadically in other parts of the world while being productive and happy, and not fouling the nest, it’s more than likely they can in the US as well.
The way I look at it is this…offering housing is a one-way-street. If you are GIVING someone something, they have no recourse to put demands of your gift. Beyond this, even if they could vote, they represent such a small minority of constituents that it makes things difficult to get traction. Even if they could vote, and all voted en masse, they wouldn’t get the # of votes needed to change this. It would take a much larger constituency to decide to change it. If you live in a democracy – and I personally don’t care for democracies as run in the US – get get the rules given to you. Simply put – none of us get exactly what we want. Or anything of what we want. However, it is still within the obligation of living within societies bounds.
BTW – As for nomadic people, again…this goes directly to the one-man / one-vote idea. If you are nomadic, how is it possible to ensure that you actually live in this locale? Oh wait, the post office will actually give an address to these folks for free if requested. As a nomad, you already know this. It isn’t the address wanted by polling places, but you can certainly register to vote with a PO address as well as a general address.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/67648567/christchurch-sex-workers-no-toilets-make-us-feel-like-scum
The comments are depressing, both in their viciousness and in their predictability.
Has “the line” become a conspicuous display of affluence or social status? Does standing for hours waiting for a new gadget or entry to an event say, “Look at me! I have the money to dump on this item/happening AND I’m not chained to a workplace to earn it!”?
Let’s reclaim the line! Queue up for everything. The water fountain at work, the bathroom at home. Orderly lines at the bus stop. Standing in line should now say, “I know what I want and I’m willing to wait for it.”
Coming in 2017: LineCon. For people who love lines and the people who love them.
Because it is a library, for the reading of books and such, not a homeless shelter or motel?
Like anything, it is what it does. Your explanation does not elucidate why lavs are for sleeping in, either. My point was that if they weren’t being harassed elsewhere, they would not need to be using the lavs under false pretenses. I strongly suspect that this was not where they preferred to be.
What it “does” is be a library. I assume that the librarians don’t have the cops get rid of people blocking every single bathroom because they don’t want to do it every day and calling cops is heavy handed. That said, they’re bathrooms, not a campsite.
I have sympathy for the f’d up plight of the homeless and I talk to the ones in my neighborhood but it is still a library and people still need to take a crap sometimes.
I’m sure they don’t really want to live in a stall in a library. Few people would.
I once went out at midnight, and waited to get a copy of Windows 95. It was a long time ago, I am guessing somewhere around 1995 or so. Not an Apple fan, but have camped out for tickets, and like people have said it was fun hanging out with others. I count those hours better spent than those I have wasted watching TV alone.
Just a few technicalities:
Personally I don’t think Apple customers should be able to sleep outside. Or people who line up for movies. Or Nike shoes. Or anything. Frankly, I don’t even think they should be able to line up for more than a couple hours without moving.
The sidewalk is for walking. If that means you aren’t able to spend all night so that you can be the first to see/do/buy/whatever something, so be it.
Now I’m imagining you as one more of the security guards who keep telling me “you’re not allowed to lie down here” when I’m curled up trying not to scream or bite my arms off under the sensory bombardment.
I’m good with people having medical emergencies on the sidewalk (or anywhere really). If you’re having some kind of mental breakdown, feel free to lie down wherever you want and wait for it to pass or for an ambulance if necessary.
Ambulances have flashing pain-weapons and sirens.
As I said, feel free to wait for it to pass. There is a free pass for anyone who is having a medical emergency to do whatever they need.
Have you considered the possibility that the people camping out in front of the Apple store are all homeless, and thus can’t have expensive electronics FeExed to their homes??
The wording of that bench warning brings to mind annoyed bus customers standing, hands on hips, while a lazy cop naps on the bench that’s meant for them.
