Craille Maguire Gillies authored the article and she's an attractive young lady who thought it would be a good idea to live among the homeless. Don't get too stiff about let them eat cake since she wasn't doing that. Whether it's brave or stupid to participate in such exercises is your call. (The Guardian: 'Don't worry, I won't kill you': the strange boom in homeless tourism)
Ed: how can she even defend herself against a big dog? This is a bad idea.
We'll see, mate.
It is a Friday afternoon in late winter and I am standing outside Prague’s central train station, near a bronze statue of Woodrow Wilson, stripping to my long underwear. A few minutes earlier I’d met Klára, from the tourism group Pragulic, who hauled carrier bags filled with the clothes I would wear over the next 24 hours as a homeless person.
Along with my new outfit, she gave me two things: a late-model Nokia programmed with contacts for the police, fire department, Pragulic’s staff and my guide, Robert, and an envelope containing my budget – 20 koruna (60p). “You can use it to change in the bathrooms in the station,” she says, “or you can save it and change out here.”
- Guardian
Ed: man, this sounds like it will be another journo shaggy dog story
Take it easy, Rambo. Give her a chance.
A tourist takes a picture next to a beggar on the Charles bridge in Prague
Photograph: David W Cerny/Reuters
- Guardian
Ed: a classic example of people taking pictures of people taking pictures.
Welcome to the New Age, Billy Pilgrim. You're not unstuck in time, they are.
Pragulic was created in 2012 by Tereza Jurečková and two fellow graduate students in the civil sector studies programme at Charles University. The idea: provide work for homeless people in the Czech capital and help others understand what life on the streets is truly like. “We want them to take the tour and do something,” Jurečková, told me later. Do what? “Start to care.”
- Guardian
Homeless people give tours of areas where homeless people live but they're paid for it. There are so many things wrong with that we don't want to consider a list but there's also quite a bit of rightness if it helps some people lift themselves back up.
Long after dark, still wandering, I start to quiz him about where we would sleep that night. He doesn’t like shelters. He says they smell. On the other hand, the trains run until half past midnight, and the trams keep going until 4am. It is 45 minutes from one end of the line to the other, and we could nod off some of that time, he explains. “I am at your service,” he says. “My job is to give you a 24-hour tour, so I will stay up all night.”
- Guardian
Robert is a trusted but mysterious homeless man who gives the tour but I'm still not diggin' this since she's incredibly vulnerable and I'm not sure how aware of that she may be. Any woman must be aware of her vulnerability after a time on American streets but this adventure seems like it's handing the world a razor blade while saying, yeah, go ahead and cut me.
Can a day on the streets change your perspective on homelessness or help you know how the other half lives? Of course it can. Whether such an immersion – or a two-hour tour – can make any lasting change in more than a couple of lives is a thornier question.
- Guardian
The rest of the article is to bring that perspective to you so she wasn't just taking pictures and her last question carries the day.
The Rockhouse doesn't even try to veil its contempt for most modern journos but Ms Gillies impresses us for finding a world beyond the keyboard and trying to lift over the banal prattle which seems to dominate journos everywhere else.
Craille Maguire Gillies / @Craille
Ed: how can she even defend herself against a big dog? This is a bad idea.
We'll see, mate.
It is a Friday afternoon in late winter and I am standing outside Prague’s central train station, near a bronze statue of Woodrow Wilson, stripping to my long underwear. A few minutes earlier I’d met Klára, from the tourism group Pragulic, who hauled carrier bags filled with the clothes I would wear over the next 24 hours as a homeless person.
Along with my new outfit, she gave me two things: a late-model Nokia programmed with contacts for the police, fire department, Pragulic’s staff and my guide, Robert, and an envelope containing my budget – 20 koruna (60p). “You can use it to change in the bathrooms in the station,” she says, “or you can save it and change out here.”
- Guardian
Ed: man, this sounds like it will be another journo shaggy dog story
Take it easy, Rambo. Give her a chance.
A tourist takes a picture next to a beggar on the Charles bridge in Prague
Photograph: David W Cerny/Reuters
- Guardian
Ed: a classic example of people taking pictures of people taking pictures.
Welcome to the New Age, Billy Pilgrim. You're not unstuck in time, they are.
Pragulic was created in 2012 by Tereza Jurečková and two fellow graduate students in the civil sector studies programme at Charles University. The idea: provide work for homeless people in the Czech capital and help others understand what life on the streets is truly like. “We want them to take the tour and do something,” Jurečková, told me later. Do what? “Start to care.”
- Guardian
Homeless people give tours of areas where homeless people live but they're paid for it. There are so many things wrong with that we don't want to consider a list but there's also quite a bit of rightness if it helps some people lift themselves back up.
Long after dark, still wandering, I start to quiz him about where we would sleep that night. He doesn’t like shelters. He says they smell. On the other hand, the trains run until half past midnight, and the trams keep going until 4am. It is 45 minutes from one end of the line to the other, and we could nod off some of that time, he explains. “I am at your service,” he says. “My job is to give you a 24-hour tour, so I will stay up all night.”
- Guardian
Robert is a trusted but mysterious homeless man who gives the tour but I'm still not diggin' this since she's incredibly vulnerable and I'm not sure how aware of that she may be. Any woman must be aware of her vulnerability after a time on American streets but this adventure seems like it's handing the world a razor blade while saying, yeah, go ahead and cut me.
Can a day on the streets change your perspective on homelessness or help you know how the other half lives? Of course it can. Whether such an immersion – or a two-hour tour – can make any lasting change in more than a couple of lives is a thornier question.
- Guardian
The rest of the article is to bring that perspective to you so she wasn't just taking pictures and her last question carries the day.
The Rockhouse doesn't even try to veil its contempt for most modern journos but Ms Gillies impresses us for finding a world beyond the keyboard and trying to lift over the banal prattle which seems to dominate journos everywhere else.
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