Spare a dime?

Adelaide is really moving up in the world. Most homeless people in Adelaide are pretty resourceful. They usually have a big old shopping trolley full of those plaid, nylong bags and a pair of tongs fashioned from a coathanger that they use to fossick for cans and other collectibles from bins on the footpath (American homeless people get them from trash cans on the sidewalk). But today in Adelaide, my head was turned by a real-life panhandler, just like the ones you see in big cities like London and New York. He looked early - mid 20s, and was slumped on the footpath, smoking a cigarette, outside Darrel Lea with a sign around his neck that read

PLEASE HELP
Need $$ for accommodation and food
Any change you can spare

and he had an old International Roast coffee tin or something in front of him for the depositing of said change, for those people who had some and were wanting to be charitable without having to save up for a whole copy of the Big Issue. Now I say he was a panhandler. But for a couple of weeks there has been one of those guys in the mall who spraypaints himself gold, hops up on a box and stands still a lot. Not much to it, really. Anyone with some old clothes, a can of colored hairspray and a milk crate can essentially do the same job. And they would look just as stupid as golden boy does cos it's been done to death and the novelty wore off 15 years ago. So I like to think that this guy begging for change was just an out-of-work, generation-x, method actor from the CPA doing a new, post-modern kind of street theatre.