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Saturday, December 23, 2006

Homeless And Wired: You Gotta Keep Pluggin' Away


When I was homeless in Los Angeles from the late nineties through 2005, I traversed the streets with a laptop, keeping what I called an "Offline Journal" of my adventures in homelessness.

"Offline" referred to my status as a non-house-dwelling person off the grid of mortgage and utilities slavery, not to my internet status.


I had internet. It was sketchy and sometimes an adventure finding unguarded phone jacks to plug in to my dial-up ISP, but I had internet. Pictured above is a unisex AM/PM restroom which had a painted-over and forgotten phone jack I used a lot. I found other unguarded phone jacks at a Texaco, a shopping mall and in apartment complex parking garages.

I might've been homeless, but I kept pluggin' away (see Revver video above).

Here's an interesting Wired story about other internet-connected houseless folk.

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2 comments:

  1. Wild. I guess most folks would think if you can figure out this computer shit, which many can't seem to do, then what the hell are you doin' bein' homeless? Shit happens I guess. It's not like I don't dream about being off the grid, without all the bills and attachments to bullshit society. Excellent rant by that dude. His other one on Mel Gibson was hilarious.

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  2. Yeah, I like Bedlam's rants.

    I know some real bright homeless folks and some dumber than mud homeowners, so it all averages out, I guess.

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