crustypunks

I'm not sure what they call themselves—maybe Travellers, like they do in Great Britain. Here we call them crusties, or crusty punks. Mainly for the dirt and the smell, I assume.  They are street kids, probably with psychological problems or drug problems or family problems. They travel in packs. They dwell in squats and public parks, under bridges and hedges. Typically there is a dog in the picture, something to do with not being able to be arrested for loitering if they can say they are walking dogs. I ran across the phenom in New Orleans (above), where they take up residence in the winter. Come the stifling Louisiana summer, they head north for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or Portland, Oregon. They say they're seeing the USA, but I don't know. Here is a crustypunk blog with some stories. When they get older are they just plain bums, begging outside Zabars?
    I remember when I was their age, a hippy living on the beach in Hawaii, hitchhiking and begging and living on foodstamps with another bunch of kids—one a former male prostitute from, come to think of it, New Orleans. I began to feel inauthentic within a month or two. A privileged kid posing as poor. And I eyed the babies of the other drifting hippies "living off the land." Children who never had a birthday party or a Christmas. Children whose parents were taking acid trips and not thinking about mealtimes.
   So now I feel for the dogs.