CHESSNOID

As I perused the thousands of blogs on the site MyBlogLog, I found a community site run by the Web Urbanist. His amazing pictures include everything that has to do with the Urban areas. His tagline is ” Collectively Reporting on Urban Cultures and Alternative Arts” and is a very good description of what you find there. I think you will find it very interesting and enjoyable too.

One of his post titled: “Homeless Culture & Nomadic Urbanism: from Car Living to Couch Surfing” covers an area I have always been interested in. What I found interesting are the views he provides: “Few people realize, though, how many nomadic urbanists there are – those who choose atypical ways of dwelling (within or between cities) that involve no fixed residence.” Also, there is a mention of a site called Couchsurfing with over 250,000 registered users in every major city in the world. I never even knew this network existed!

I remember when I was in college, I tried to actually do a canned food drive to help the homeless through an organization called LIFE which stands for love is feeding everyone. I did a quick google search and am not sure they even exist anymore. The school I went to was Woodbury University when it was still in downtown Los Angeles. So I would see many homeless people all the time panhandling. This is what lead me and a college friend to do the food drive. It worked out and we raised awareness and helped a little bit, but I can’t feel that our efforts were just a drop in the global sized bucket.

I wonder if it is a problem that can be solved. It isn’t just local but completely global. I remember back in the 80’s many popular musicians did a benefit called “We are the World” and raised tons of money to help the hungry, and yet even today the problem persists and has grown worse. By the way, I did buy a tape to support it.

The Web Urbanist inspired me to watch an old DVD my wife and I watched a few years ago. It was a documentary by Marc Singer called “Dark Days”. I don’t think you can buy it anymore except at amazon or ebay, but you can rent it at blockbuster or netflix. It actually follows the lives of some homeless people and the soundtrack or music was made by DJ Shadow. I put the videos here from youtube, just so you could get a feel for the movie. I can truly say this documentary inspired me to become a better person and appreciate everything in my life.