“Spangers” growing in twisted trend

From The Blaze

Updated: Apparently healthy youngish people are begging for money in a growing lifestyle in modern America, but it is an old profession. Presenting themselves on street corners, convenience stores, shopping centers or showing up Sunday to beg at churches; it is a problem nationwide as video from KGTV in San Diego and from WNBC-TV in New York shows.

While both reports note the problem, the reporters did not have a source within the lifestyle. Tulsa Today knows these people, and they call themselves Spangers – the name from a combination of “Spare Change” then personalized. They avoid media and lie for a living and among themselves laugh at their targets – you normal folk who work for a living.

By historic names these are the beggars, grifters (drifters asking for gifts), panhandlers, or bums. They believe they are entitled to your stuff because they don’t have it and they want it. You have more than they do so, of course you should give it to them. It is only fair.

A pregnant woman panhandling with a young boy in San Diego for months was observed driving away in a nearly new Mercedes. She had been holding a “please help” sign outside a San Diego-area shopping center every weekend for two months, KGTV-TV reported. A man who may be her husband or boyfriend also would join them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CynYgP8PcWc

The Blaze picked up the story click here for more from The Blaze.

Apparently national media has not put the pieces together and talked with Spangers.

Tulsa Today has one source on this story employed by a local landlord to chase the Spangers away from his small downtown entertainment area. Requesting anonymity, he tells us he is employed to; be polite, approach suspected Spangers to ask them to take their pitch elsewhere while pointing out the armed security guard across the street ready to act if they do not move along.

Spanger pitches vary greatly.

A big bodied blonde first approached this writer on the streets of downtown Tulsa saying she needed eight dollars for a bus ticket to reach a nearby town. She tried the same pitch the next time – a mistake I pointed out. From that point; she would just wave and smile when we crossed paths.

Months later with her boyfriend cooking steak in Tulsa’s River Parks we talked for some time. They lived in government subsidized housing across from Boulder Park near 21st and Boston and she proudly claimed to have made $26,000 a year tax free off the good hearts of Tulsans. The couple later traveled to California for a time then returned to Tulsa. The last time I saw her, she was selling a self-produced music CD again on the streets of downtown Tulsa.

At one church in Southeast Tulsa, Spangers have became so regular that deacons now guard the front doors rather than minister in sanctuary. Spangers have been caught going through rooms looking for purses and other valuables. They sometimes show up with family in tow and shouting matches have taken place in demand for money. As a result, the church no longer gives money or food to any who ask, but refers all requests to social service agencies.

Spangers know the social services are not so easy to scam. They will not sit for the interviews agencies require. They are working for easy money.

Photo from The Blaze

The term Spanger is noted on www.UrbanDictionary.com with some comments suggesting that Spangers “ask people for spare change so they can travel around the country on tour with some crappy jam band.”

Lulu98 notes, "I can't even walk down the damn street without those f***ing Spangers begging me for my last quarter!" (December 28, 2005)

The good news for Tulsa is that Spangers travel for the best weather and it is winter here now. The bad news is they return for good hunting and Tulsa has a reputation for easy charity.

Victims are sometimes lonely men and some Spanger couples (heterosexual and not) may offer to preform, but they never allow the victim to participate. That would be whoring and they are not prostitutes, they are Spangers.

Of course people of good heart want to help those in need, but Spangers are not in need. They feel entitled. Others have stuff they want.

Google images: Spanger

Spangers often receive welfare and other government entitlement programs and they have a United States President that "has their back" in passionately supporting the redistribution of wealth.

Spangers agree with Obama and celebrate him. "Got the free phone, free Internet, free housing, and free Obama Money” even if they have to stand in line to get it - a compromise of their lifestyle, but within reason they say.

Spangers are a separate class and proud to take middle class money.

Next time you see one on the corner of some street or highway with a sign begging for spare change or work (which they will rarely do if you offer work) just know that they may be driving a Mercedes when they think you are not looking or drinking or drugging your money away as fast as you can give it.

Charity does not help Spangers it only enables dysfunction and furthers bad behavior and in reports from WNBC-TV, a group is using children.

WNBC-TV followed the women for a month and noticed they were accompanied by toddlers and infants as they panhandled on sidewalks and inside subway stations.

“The women commute together, splitting up to beg for money,” the report read, also noting that the group appears to have lunch together and to commute home on the same train. “They change their children’s diapers on the pavement and display signs claiming they’re jobless or hungry.”

WNBC-TV attempted to interview the women, but was met with resistance, as they either walked away, got physical with reporters or delivered a “lewd gesture.” This is typical behavior for Spangers. At the Southeast Tulsa Church mentioned above, when one couple with a child was referred to local social services in answer to the "homeless plea for cash" the couple erupted in profanities, increasingly agitated until they abandoned the scam and left shouting at the priest, "You are just like all the other damn heartless churches in this town."

The priest still smiles at that insult. Christians are not stupid and enabling criminal fraud is not a mission of any church.