The guys in this picture are: A. Working for a living. B. Looking for handouts. The guys in this picture are: A. Entrepreneurs starting their own business B. Beggars The guys in this picture are: A. Prime examples of a real work ethic B. Disturbing the peace. I’d say, ‘take your pick,’ but you already did that, didn’t you? We have a complicated and frequently contradictory view of people who literally take their retail business to the street. Some of us pay them to entertain us, some give them a charitable contribution, and most of us pass by with anger or embarrassment or some other emotional response. Pretty much nobody will congratulate them for pursuing the American Dream, but maybe we’re missing something here. While I was enjoying a summer day on a bike ride, these guys were taking turns entertaining the motorists at Six Corners in Chicago. Okay, they were mostly using plastic pails as drums and not everyone was entertained, but that’s no different from any bit of street art. Some of us like it and pay for the show and some of us hate it and offer no reward, but the performers give it their all either way. That makes their job the same as a restaurant server or a porter or a valet, doing the work with no idea whether a tip is in the offing. Capitalism is a tough town. There’s a performing group at Walt Disney World that does essentially the same thing as my new friends on Cicero Avenue. The Disney World team has a longer performance with more people, more props and—sorry, guys—much more talent, but both groups seek to entertain us by attacking garbage cans with sticks. Maybe one of the guys in this photo will be in Orlando one day and get discovered, earning his way to a bright musical career and some great reminiscences about his humble beginnings. Probably not, but we never know. Every super hero has an origin story and my weekend entertainment was undoubtedly part of theirs. Sometimes, the people asking for money on the street aren’t offering anything tangible in return, although I do get the positive feeling that I’ve done something charitable, possibly heroic, when I give them a dollar. Here’s a mom with a baby, sitting on the sidewalk, looking for money to put food on the table, and I know all the reasons I shouldn’t part with my money. She might be a scammer, it might not be her kid, and giving her money only encourages her to keep begging and never get a job… Still, she’s having a worse day than I am by any measurement available and I’ll take the risk that she’s secretly a billionaire asking me to make her even richer. The choice is easier with a street performer or a migrant mom selling water or candy outside the grocery store. Now it’s a more physical transaction, an offer of a product or a service in return for payment. As a true capitalist, I can’t help but applaud the entrepreneurial spirit, even if I don’t happen to need any more Skittles. Every sale they make, or don’t, is part of their origin story and I’m helping them to craft it either way. Someday, maybe a couple of decades from now, my street-side drummers will be talking about our interaction on their podcast, recalling the guy who gave them ten bucks and the encouragement to continue striving for their art. Today, though, I spent $10 to get a blog idea, and that’s an investment I’ll make any day of the week. Next week, we're taking a look at what's really newsworthy and a way to avoid a whole ton of conversation, and people who subscribe here will love it the most.
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I'm having second thoughts about what qualifies as news and I know Italy will be very disappointing, but let's share some punchlines first. If you don't know all the jokes, just buy me lunch or dinner, or maybe a Porsche, and I'll catch you up on them.
Next up, we'll be comparing beggars and entrepreneurs, because the lines can blur quite a bit on the mean streets of Chicago. Subscribe now so you won't miss it. Web-surfing and puzzles are taking up way too many hours, which isn't leaving enough time to write my memoirs. Too bad, because I saved all the really good stuff for the book...
It’s a question I get all the time from my millions of admirers: What’s the one incredible achievement of my life that brings me the greatest satisfaction? I understand why people would ask this, of course. After all of my trillion-dollar philanthropy and all the times I have saved humanity from imminent destruction, you’d think it would be difficult to pick only one. And yet, the choice is very simple. There has been no heroic feat, no philanthropic contribution, no single gift to our world that makes me as proud as my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As bananas contemplate the last stages in their terrorized existence, I strive to make their final days on earth as calm and painless as possible. It’s God’s work, and I am humbled by the opportunity to serve. Thankfully, none of us will ever experience the untold evil inflicted on bananas. Living in peace and resting in the sun, they look forward to a long and happy life with the same bunch of friends they’ve been connected to since birth. Then, one day, without warning, they are attacked by machete-wielding terrorists, separated from their homes, confined to cardboard cages where no sunlight can enter, and tossed into cold bins where they can be poked and squeezed by predators. Soon, all they can anticipate is the ultimate pain of being skinned alive and cut or mashed or simply devoured by their new captors. Their only hope is Chicago Banana Hospice. We work with the brave rescuers at Instacart, who miraculously find a way to save our poor friends and bring them to us for their final days. Here at our banana hospice, we provide a calm and quiet countertop where they can escape the terror and spend their final days in peace, still connected, literally, to the friends of their youth. We are non-denominational at the Chicago Banana Hospice, accepting Doles and Chiquitas and Del Montes, and even store brands, because they are all equal in the eyes of God. We don’t accept plantains, though, because we have to draw the line somewhere. We know you understand. Our work at the banana hospice is challenging in many ways. Watching our friends as they deteriorate can be heartbreaking. Sometimes we wonder if we shouldn’t simply end their suffering in a banana bread or a disposal, but we refuse to give in to those cruel interventions. Instead, we provide physical and spiritual support as they transition from yellow to brown to black and, ultimately, a state of ooze that will be mark their end of days on the kitchen counter. Only when their suffering has ended do we bring them to their final resting place. Then, we waste no time in reaching out to Instacart to rescue a new bunch of frightened victims that we can support on their journey to eternal rest. We hope you'll join us in this noble quest and create your own banana hospice. All you need is a kitchen counter, a grocery app, and the ability to walk past your bananas without intervening for at least a week. Is it any wonder that this is the pinnacle of my gifts to the world? Yes, I’ve saved children from burning buildings and created cures for more than 3,000 illnesses and defeated intergalactic evildoers, but all of that is nothing compared to my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As long as the terror continues, I will provide a safe haven for bananas from every brand and every corner of the world. Am I a hero or what??? I’ll be tied up with some new heroics next week, but subscribe now and you’ll be sure to see our next post, whenever I get around to it. I've discovered some great jobs that demand much less time than I was led to believe, and a whole lotta monkeys are not missing the stigma at all. It all makes sense when you consider:
Next week, we'll figure out whether the guys I met on the street are entrepreneurs or panhandlers, because it's really a toss-up until a couple of decades from now. You'll want to become a subscriber to learn the truth. Today’s pop quiz: How is a woman who’s crossing the street while staring at her cell phone the same as a guy in a bunker who’s railing online against people he’s never met? They’re both part of the largest social experiment in the history of the world, an experiment so vast that it includes all of us and offers no option to sit it out. It’s not a scientific experiment, though, so there is no control group and no way to stop the chain reaction. Our pal with the cellphone and our bunkerbuddy on his keyboard are both getting carried along the stream of technology that leads inexorably to isolation and narcissism. The same tools that were supposed to create a worldwide web of connections have created 8 billion armies of one, each a hero in their own minds and each besieged in a lonely tower. It seems we’ve all started to believe the world revolves around us. It could be that we’ve spent so much energy cultivating our ‘best lives’ that we lost the ability to connect with everyone else. Possibly, we’ve been told so often about the incredible hellscapes outside our doors that we’re afraid to venture beyond our portals. Whatever the explanation, the result is the same: the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. Do we instinctively need to connect with other humans in real life or do we only need to experience the rest of humanity on a screen? For millions of us, during the Covid lockdowns, our most frequent interaction with outsiders came when the (essential worker!!) delivery guy brought us our pizza and ammunition. We’re getting out more since then, but we’re interacting with the world much differently than in the time before. On the street outside my apartment, people stare at their phones when they walk, silently demanding that everyone else look out for them to keep them safe. Cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, skateboarders and pedestrians dare me to violate their space. In the bunkers where preppers wait for the civil war, every infraction anywhere in the world is a very, very personal assault, directed specifically at them by people who know who they are and where they are and are coming for them very, very soon. None of this is exactly new, of course. Drivers forgot how to use turn signals a decade ago and everyone shares photos of their food instead of the other people at the table. Bunker Bob posts images of his gun collection and the gun range, but he never offers up a group photo from the family picnic. The prevailing photo format of the 21st Century is the selfie, a photo we have to take of ourselves because we’re all alone. Or so it seems. There’s still some hope, though. Brave patriots are venturing out to the beaches in Chicago, gathering at neighborhood festivals, and dining at restaurants in the vicinity of total strangers. These are acts of rebellion today and these are the true heroes, battling to regain what has been lost and reject the tyranny of technology. You won’t read about them in the mainstream media, but they are our last hope and they cannot afford to falter. Perhaps I am naïve to dream of a day when people can speak without a keypad, when we can take group photos of our dinner parties instead of our dinners, when we replace the selfie with the ussie, or maybe the weie or the groupie. Yes, I might be naïve, but I have a dream of a better day. It’s only my dream right now, but I am the center of the universe and everyone will follow my lead now that I’ve shared my views online. Right? Right? Hello? Look at me, sitting alone in my bunker and railing at the world. End my isolation by subscribing now. You might not be glad you did, but I will certainly be much happier. |
Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
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