Yesterday I ventured over to the Vons grocery store off of Lake Murray Blvd. for my second panhandling adventure, this time with permission from the store manager. Upon arrival, I set up my guitar case by the entrance, set up my little sign, and started to play whatever felt good on my fingers at that moment.
After only about ten minutes, I noticed that a small girl was at the other entrance passing out flyers and asking for donations. I had competition. Then, after about a half hour, one of the Vons employees came out to the entrance that I was sitting next to, set up a little table with brownies, sandwiches, and Starbucks samples and began asking for donations for prostate cancer. More competition?! This was almost humorous. On this Wednesday afternoon, we as a 'fundraising team' were bombarding the poor customers. I just continued to play, smiling, asking passerbys for their change, and explaining my hopeful Ugandan adventure.
Prostate cancer girl stood with her brownies and didn't look pleased. So I decided to strike up a conversation. After a bit of talking, I discovered that she'd been on a trip to Afghanistan, loved to travel, and supported Invisible Children. She ended up giving me a dollar and wishing me luck.
My only competition now was the mysterious flyer girl at the other entrance. She was fierce, yelling 'GOOD AFTERNOON MA'AM!' from all the way across the parking lot. Luckily, her aggressive tactics were only pushing more people my way. Then, after a while, this rank smell started to waft over from her direction. As it turns out, the sewage line under the street had burst and was omitting a horrible sulfur smell, sour enough to singe your eyebrows. Flyer girl was trying to hold strong, but her side of the store was under line of fire. People holding their noses would run to my entrance, trying to escape the smell.
Finally, flyer girl retreated, leaving me and my guitar to endure the smell in victory.
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In the end, after a little over three hours of panhandling, I'd gotten words of encouragement, met some absolutely lovely people, was bought a Starbucks from inside Vons, and made a little over $115.
Hopefully, if all goes well, I'm off to do it again this afternoon.
