This is a primer on the seven panhandling archetypes identified by ‘The Violence Guy’ in his twenty years documenting the social sewer of Baltimore Maryland. Sketches of real panhandlers who clearly fit a single type will be used instead of generic templates. Generic and panhandler ought not to be used in the same sentence.

The panhandler who stakes out one location and cultivates an image of tolerable passivity is as old as civilization. Old Bill is a barely functional alcoholic who lives in his sister’s basement and manages to get dressed and to the concrete median strip at the underpass five days per week. Bill and those like him are on the urban endangered species list, being pushed to the margins by the two evolved forms of the stationary panhandler below.

Marc was a violent homeless alcoholic. In the mid 1990s he found a $300 per day white guilt corner in front of Golden Ring Mall on U.S. Route #7 at the I-95 ramp. He followed the panhandler who was working the corner down into the overgrown gully where he relived himself, beat the shit out of him, ‘left him lay’ and appropriated the sign [the corner being a package deal], returning to the guilt-ridden world above with a salesman's smile on his dark face. My coworker Stick [who was not called Stick for his lack of body fat], who once beat Marc in a street fight, seriously considered quitting his job and taking on Marc, but went into prostitution instead.

Little John was a heroin addict, a junkie. He lived in house with five other junkies. They had 1 car, a busted up old Chevette. This car was only used for earning money as a gypsy cab. While one house member operated the car another worked the corner at the Hyatt Regency on Light Street. The house members changed shifts, but that sign never rested. John and his five roommates made enough to pay their $1,100 monthly rent, stay well, and buy cigarettes by the case. Communal panhandlers are an obvious evolutionary adaptation of the beggar banding together to defend against the apex panhandler.

Smitty used to sleep with his legs in the storm drain under the sidewalk, his chest in the gutter, and his face on the warm asphalt heated by the steam that billowed up from the bowels of the rat infested Federal Hill sewers, behind the bagel shop. He was a thirty-something alcoholic who would mumble for change when I stepped over his body. Guys like this usually have an income and just beg so they have an excuse to loiter where they fell down drunk. Smitty was on disability and received an SSI check, which was mailed to his brother’s address. This is the guy sleeping on the steam grate who generally puts little effort into begging, but seems to do it more on principal. He is close to a classic hobo or resourceful homeless person, but lacks the self respect to stop begging.

Ransome dressed in gold slacks and silk shirts to go panhandling. He would work the Inner Harbor area as a tourist who claimed he had been robbed, ripped off, or ditched by his tour group. He would ask for cab fair to the hotel which would run about $5. The man should have been working in Hollywood and was a joy to listen to. Other artists might offer themselves as a guide, a bodyguard or a porter, the offer to ‘work for food’ having been so overused by the beggars that it is no longer viable. They are generally mobile and sometimes use automobiles which they pretend are broken down or out of gas in order to illicit sympathy. Pregnant women and panhandlers with babies fall on the fringes of this large creative category.

Brill Cream was a big hulking man who walked with a hunched back and rolled shoulders, scowling out from under his heavy brows—the Bluto of panhandlers. He would ask for ‘change’ or ‘a dollar’, rewarding the generous with his absence and afflicting the stingy with his presence. He would on occasion escalate to strong arm robbery or extortion.

Denise is a crack addict who was doing okay until her boyfriend got sent to prison. She soon found herself homeless, and for the last three years has been living in the interior doorway of a friend’s apartment. The outer door is broken and blows open at night. She can only stay there after dark and spends all day walking the streets scrounging for change on the ground, un-cashed lottery tickets, usable bus tickets that can be sold, and begging for a quarter. If you have a quarter she will ask for fifty cents.

She will also bum a cigarette and then sell it for a quarter, usually contenting herself with smoking used gutter scrounged cigarettes. One of her strategies is to politely lurk around the break area outside of a supermarket and offer to take a half finished cigarette from an employee who gets called back in before their smoke is done.

The slim rewards enjoyed by female panhandlers like Denise point to the implicit threat that male panhandlers pose. Female panhandlers who do not partner with a man or work as part of a commune do not last long, and soon turn to dumpster diving and other means of eking an income from the streets.