Alexander the Grate on Life as an NFA

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 mercatus.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 them I'm Alexander. And more often than not, because it's not the most— now it's common, it'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.

So 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 round 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 comes in has got to go out, and that's not readily available. 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 at the Washington Monument, a mile away basically. You know. So you have to get resourceful and creative and get back to your reptile, reptilian brain roots. And all these things come naturally, whether we, how we program them. So the question was, 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 NFA, no fixed address, you know. Okay, 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 is sort of a dramatized version of this here, out of Chicago called Unshackled? And they gave life stories of redemption of the Skid Row population and stuff, you know. So I learned about the mission life from there. I knew there was one in— it's a 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, 2 sheets, a pillow, and a pillowcase on a 6-inch mattress. The Hilton of the missions. Yeah, the next— that's for 2 bucks. So I took about 2 or 3 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 4 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 anymore. Baltic and Mediterranean, I call them. One was, uh, so you get, uh, this is a plain 4-inch foam mattress with a FEMA disaster blanket. That's what they call it.

From FEMA, right?

Uh, or made by prison inmates. And, uh, it's a disaster. I think now they're FEMA, but I don't know who produced them then. But, and you provide your own pillow. That ain't the end of it. When they fill up That was 6th and I in Northeast. Then they send you to 15th and Maryland Northeast. 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, wait. No, yeah, yeah. You tell me. You know, people ask me, why don't you go to a shelter? Oh really? You're aficionado of shelters? Which one do you go to?

No, I'm not saying that. 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, you see the progression, downward progression. So that's where you start, you know? Okay, when you're in a shelter, you have bathroom access eventually, but That's more on when you're independent outside, when especially the shutdown now, what people were taking for granted, the restaurants and McDonald's, the Holiday Inn, all that, it's a lot more problematic. But that gray 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 and II. Oh, she got cooties. Throw the cooties. So it's— they had plush toys that looked like cooties. Well, you know what that is? That is human body lice, Pediculus humanus.

Corporis.

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. All right.

And that's a problem with shelters, not with living outside.

Unfortunately, they start at the shelters, but if 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. 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 some cities, 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, one would think. But multiply, like New York City, I don't know how sympathetic they are. They have about 10 times D.C.'s population. But 10 times that in Easy Rider country, Florida, California, that's where sun bums go. And it's a problem. You increase the number of interlopers and ne'er-do-wells enough, like they say, a liberal is somebody with, positive attitude towards neighbor until he gets mugged. And then, you know, you get— your charity gets over. It's a problem. That's why immigration is such a problem. That's why one of the reasons the previous president got— 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 municipalities in the Sunbelt are overwhelmed and the mindset is, what they say, warm hands, cold hearts.

Yeah.

Whereas in Boston, cold hands, the empathy level is higher, or New England, let's 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. It's just a personality thing at that point. Yeah. No, the municipalities, the police, the— I haven't— they get a hard way to go because they're too— we'd rather not have you here. It's a— no, there's no good Indian but a dead Indian was, you know, We were the interlopers and the hostile conquerors in America, and we're trying to exterminate those that were usurping their reality from them, you know.

So 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 what? 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, or 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 a 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 conch 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 homeless because any of you here, including myself, have some degree of shelter insecurity. That's my new narrative. Relative states of shelter insecurity. 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've walked a mile. Empathy grows with experiencing the situation. But they haven't learned. They're still— they're choleric about this smelly, grungy infestation of their nice, manicured, water-guzzling green spaces and stuff, you know. 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 insecurity. 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 insecure to some degree. The most— you can have the most Bezos-style mansions in this world, but everybody loses their— 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 it. Now, you're lucky if the soul is just an emergent 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 insecure?

Absolutely. I've read Heidegger. I completely agree with you.

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, it's, you don't have to worry about where you're going to stay the night.

Yeah.

You know.

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, barrio around, just 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 murdered and the police clear you out 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, under the barrel, that's what they call the underclass. So When they become poor, at least they have potential for increasing and saving and getting a better life. So, I've heard stories of— they look down on the people that they laughed at in the barrio, 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 at 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 5 years, they're offline now. Church of the Brethren. Okay. It's a, it's a Anabaptist peace church, basically. I even went to their peace lectureships and stuff. So, you see, if you're a peace activist, you're an activist in other areas that are prescribed in the Beatitudes and stuff. It's there, doors open at 11:30, you get a classical soup kitchen, you know, and whatever else they would get donated. Bowl of soup and whatever sides. So that became my mainstay. After a couple 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 you, you have a name tag on your bag. They take your shoes, by the way, so you don't run 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 the weekend section, something in the Post. And I contributed, I said, "Oh, did you know about there's a community calendar in the 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 Freebie Finders Fellowship. All right, where it's free, there will be. Why? Because we were all sober. We had something to do, occupy our time. If we had some substance habit to take, that's where your focus is. Almost every time, you know what you You want to get a couple of bucks 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 the segue. That's the time we discovered 4 to 5 free movie, classic international movies a week at the Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress, which is 3 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've worked with Jim for a while, you know. Coming down the lobby and stuff, we make some points about, uh, the movie, and I said, "Chin!" Oh, 5 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?

We'll know in a minute. It's gone.

It sounds like it's leaving.

It was short train.

Yeah.

7 to 8 cars.

Great. Yeah.

So by the way, we're on the wrong side of the tracks here, and the next freight, 100-car freight train comes, the trash coming down from New Jersey. No offense to New Jersey.

That's where I'm from, so I understand this very well.

But DC's got to be there too. We got trashed last year.

What's your favorite movie, by the way?

Good Grief. One that's free and has 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 Capitol Triple F, his name was Lawrence. When we got settled into routine during the summertime, we go down to the, uh, to the mall. This is about springtime actually, when every school group in the area is coming to DC for a nation's capital tour. School buses 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 lunchin' and the food is piled high. I mean, overflowing every can. And this is fresh stuff. This always is disgusting. Who would eat that? It was mother's love in her kitchen that morning, you know? Fresh, clean stuff. Trash liners 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 here. Well, not in this generation anyway. The other places of the world. So we'd spend the afternoon there and come back what Lawrence used to call two hands heavy. That means two 3 plastic grocery bags in each hand. We had enough food to feed a dozen people. And so you've partaken with us there. For the less acclimatized to 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 homeless, I call him.

What's the best food you end up with? Like, where is it from? What's an A+ for a food day?

Oh, have you into my classification system? Have you?

Let's hear it. Absolutely. I'm a foodie too.

Okay, you're jumping around too. Let me tell you one more thing at a time here.

Yes, this is the point of the podcast. We jump. This is the jump around podcast.

Yeah, but at least let's consummate one thought at a time. There's some cool stuff here. I mean, at least fun stuff. So, all right, that's the beginning of the Bums Banquet. And for those that are not fully acclimatized, We had a classification system. This is a Class A. Hasn't even 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. Triple A would be still hot, you know.

What's a D? C-minus?

Only the rats know that. A lot of forks here. I 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 where this happened. 8-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, we're an overfed population, the affluent society. Are you really hungry 3 times a day? You know, I mean, it's a luxury to have I mean, when people have to hesitate, "Boy, what am I going to eat now? Truth to tell, I don't really need it." 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 throwing their lunch away, they didn't know that at the bottom of the bag, their mama left a napkin with a stick figure on it saying, "Hi, hope you're having a good time in D.C. Love, Mom." Mother's love comes along with the peanut butter sandwich.

Yeah.

But under the napkin is up to $2 in change or bills for drink money. So he makes his cash is left behind there too, you know. All right, let's go back up a few tangents here. The most thing— Oh, oh man, you have a lot of things out on the floor here.

A lot of things going. Balls being juggled.

Yeah, juggling.

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 quickie eating stuff. We're talking about around here, food trucks, hot stuff, direct donations. José Andrés, World Central Kitchen. Those are marginal means and the street people and stuff. How are they gonna eat? They took care of us. You know, they just been distributing. I haven't seen much around now, for most of the year, they were distributing hot lunches and dinners to whomever 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 the 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 gonna see if I can find somebody downtown. So for a couple of weeks anyway, he and another guy— well, that was mentioned, yeah, 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 gonna mention you at some point, you're the ultimate disposition resource here— So Jim's partaking of this too. The box of 2 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 that I remember, you know. That's why I cut to my little clique here based, the freebie finders, yeah. The freebie finders 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'd I join the Great Society? Input screening is, um, you put all your clothes away, they give you a leftover hospital gown from Howard University Surgical Department, waiting for dinner, everybody's dressed in white surgical gowns, the homeless. So I said, wow, what an astute party of 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.

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 Yes, you are. But this is 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 5-year plan for the $5 trillion and it'll add $1 trillion automatically to this amount. But it's pushing $30 trillion, which is what, 80? So you can scan this quick. $84,000 for every man, woman, child in America.

So you're a fiscal conservative?

I'm just an observer at this point. Yeah. The point is, I see this number. I see a sword of Damocles hanging over the economic head of America. What 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— gross domestic value beyond the product— what is everybody worth if you tally it all up from zero to Bezos?

Just as a guess, what 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.

GDP is about half of that, right?

Think of national wealth as 6 to 8 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'll have to listen to 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 debt.

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 restructuring of the global economy, which your basic allotment is built into that, you know, a sea change, a radical change in the world economy to make for a little more stability? I mean, as 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 is 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 when she's pregnant? And yes, that's a perfect example. Ricky says, let's plan this, calm everybody, practicing, you know. Honey, I think it really is time. And they go into a Cuban frenzy. I mean, after. I don't want to 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. 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 there are a lot of scenarios being bandied about, right?

Of course. Okay. But they remain on paper, I would say.

Yeah, until you're punched in the face. Okay, I got it.

Now your NFA buddies, when you're with them, You're all chatting. What is it you talk about mostly?

I got used to the way your mind works, first of all. You know, I'm pretty maniacal, but you're called a polymath. Well, all this poly's 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 50-mile radius of D.C.

Okay.

You remember this after the bums banquet, I'd say, it's time for the reading of the list. And he would go on for several minutes and saying the National Gallery of Art has a movie tomorrow. The Pickford Theater has one, uh, on Thursday. There's a free concert at the Library of Congress. There's a talking head lecture, he would call it. That is boring to him, you know. He liked the music and any movie. In its heyday, it's possible— is it possible to get stress syndrome from too many freebies available? I mean, before the internet— yeah, right. Well, I got enough just on foot. I'm glad 2 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 4 actually— the Archives and the Library of Congress. They all have independent programs. So on a good day, and especially a weekend— oh, just a— 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 5 o'clock Romanian film in the afternoon. About 4 or 5 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 Mei 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. And 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 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 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 basic shelter at the same time, 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 4-letter word for this is loss. Everybody, you know, all the comfort counselors are in on that. 10 topics removed, that's the answer to the categories for those that, uh, 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?

Or you can tell by looking at them? By science. So one of the ladies after the shutdown, the one I'd seen on a regular basis, I think it was, it's she, it's in the front row there that I had to 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— lady gave me, from Ohio or something, 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 regentrification.

How does that affect you though? Better for you? Worse for you? Easier?

Harder? Yeah. The Wharf is killing me. Or, or I have to be careful now not to be too specific. All right. In my whereabouts and locations. Of stuff because remember Alex from Target, the supermarket clerk in Florida? He was 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? Yeah. Hate mail and death threats because he's such a nice guy. So I don't know what kind of reactions one might get. Comet ping pong come across the 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 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 with 4 abreast. 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, and— 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 invasion 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 to, you know, take it from a native. And those are my pieces, 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— you have a lot of maintenance and stuff, the infrastructure, your old building's 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 I Street, the Jazz Church actually, I won't mention, but everyone in 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 gotta find some shtick. 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 5 minutes.

Oh really?

Yes, first one. If you had a lot more money—

Yeah, it's actually mid-55, mid— 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 impecunious, totally out of the monitors. 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 and say, well, your brain is fooling you into thinking that you're doing foraging in 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, arroz con frijoles. The construction workers, during the middle of the shutdown, They were the only business around for big construction projects at Memorial Air and Space Museum, these buildings here. So the 100 construction workers, and most of them Hispanic, beautiful veggie— I mean, they eat their shish kebab off their platter and leave the beans, the rice, the salad. I said, 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, it's the— I really eat by concept, you know, until we learned otherwise. So what was the original question on this one?

If you had more money, would you give it to other MFA people?

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 wrestle 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 that if you can add 9 more zeros to it. At $20 trillion, maybe I can help with the national debt. That's what ties into that.

Yes.

That's my minimum donation. Better make that $40 now because we go a 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 to the poor box. The last one I got was $1, and I put it on the lip of the trash can. Some— a lot of competitions, half a dozen 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 and my local context.

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. You know, 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?

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 mind. 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, will keep on doing it, at least. Yes.

All right. So that's 20% more office space. And they're still building— phase 2 of the Wharf is still being built.

Should they invest more in quieter trains?

No, I've been tempted to getting a, a quart of grease and spreading on the tracks. I wonder what that would do to 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 moved the families out. But I say, 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 in the I was talking with Mitch in the planning and stuff, and he was $200,000 short of having individual partitions. The way I left it, it was, remember, 5 people, 2 double bunks in a common space. PDS, personal differentiated space. That is the bottom line. Preferably in community, that's my optimum, all right? 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 man.

Thank you very much, Alexander the Great. And also James Deutsch.

Wow, time flies when you're having fun. Yes.

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