The true story behind the kid who went 1940s viral for his week at the cinemas in San Francisco. “Richard said he had spent $20 on 16 movies, 15 comic books, six games, 150 candy bars, and a large number of hot dogs.”
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
The true story behind the kid who went 1940s viral for his week at the cinemas in San Francisco. “Richard said he had spent $20 on 16 movies, 15 comic books, six games, 150 candy bars, and a large number of hot dogs.”
Comments 3
Reading between the lines here: sounds like he was fleeing an abusive childhood. Making today's equivalent of $285 from panhandling takes a lot of unsupervised time.
Kids used to have tons of unsupervised time without being abused. My grandmother used to tell her kids to go outside and come back when it got dark. So I think a lot of kids could easily spend big chunks of time doing things parents didn't know about, like panhandling.
But just finished reading the article and unfortunately, yeah, it sounds like the kid really didn't want to go home. How sad!
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!