I first met Chris Coon three months ago in Union Square. I was speaking to my friend Manuel when Chris walked up and asked for a dollar. I told him no, using the brusque tone that I normally reserve for panhandlers. “But I’m conducting an experiment,” he said. He had a clipboard in his hand. “I’m going to ask one million people for a dollar– to see if I can get out of being homeless.” This sounded like a pretty self-serving experiment to me. I was ready to turn Chris down for a second time, but Manuel started to lay on some peer pressure: “Trust me,” he said. “It’s legit. I gave him a dollar earlier.” Legit? What is that supposed to mean?
I pointed at Chris’s clipboard: “Can I see that?” Chris handed it over. On it was a piece of paper divided into two columns: DONATED and DIDN’T DONATE. This is the experiment?There were about five tallies in each column. Ten people total. I was number eleven. Eleven out of one million. “You’ve only asked eleven people???” I glanced at Manuel, hoping for someone to share my skepticism. But Manuel was giving me nothing: “It’s completely legit,” he said. “Trust me.” I looked back and forth between them. I was waiting for everyone to start laughing. But both of them were looking at me earnestly. ”I just started my Facebook group twenty minutes ago,” said Chris.
I sighed. Clearly I was going to have to pay a dollar to not look like an asshole. An asshole avoidance dollar. I reached for my wallet: “Alright man, here you go.” Chris took the dollar and added a tally to the DONATED column. “Thanks a lot,” said Chris.
“Anything for science,” I said. “But I’ve got to get going.” I told them both goodbye, and walked toward the subway.
A few months later, I was photographing in Union Square when I saw Chris again. He had cornered a man and his young daughter on a bench. I walked up to him enthusiastically. He still had his clipboard, but I noticed that his survey had grown more complex. He now had a whole list of questions with which to categorize the people who were donating. [Age / Sex / Race / Income Level]
“Hey man,” I said. “Do you remember me? I was like the tenth person you asked.” Chris looked at me blankly. He didn’t seem to remember me.
“Oh,” said Chris. “I think I remember you. But that was thousands of people ago.” I looked at the man and his daughter.
“I was one of the first people he asked,” I said proudly. They smiled nervously.
I stood back while Chris finished his pitch., then approached him again: “I can’t believe you’re still doing this,” I said. “What number are you on?”
“That was number 3, 456.” He handed me a business card:
Ask a Million… A Social Experiment / Christopher Coon- Experiment Conductor. “I’ve got a
website now too where people can make donations online,” he explained. “Let me show it to you.” Chris reached into his bag and pulled out a brand new lap top computer. “Some lady donated this to me.”
My eyes were real big now. “She gave you that for the project???”
“Yeah. Some Bulgarian lady. She just took me into Best Buy and bought it for me.” Chris and I sat down on a bench, and he began to pull up his website. “You can get free wireless anywhere in the park,” he said. He clicked around a bit until he reached his “Donation” page, where potential donors could provide a credit card number.
“Have you had people donate online?” I asked.
“Are you kidding me? Look at this.” Chris pulled out his smartphone, and began scrolling through his text messages. Every third line or so, in huge capital letters, were the words:
ONLINE DONATION RECEIVED. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“How much are those donations?” I asked.
“Mostly just a few dollars,” he said. “But some people give twenty.” He leaned in real close to me, and whispered: “
I’m going to make six million dollars.” His ambitions were exploding. He’d experienced the entrepreneur’s first taste of success. And now he was hungry. He was getting entrepreneur thoughts. (
If I’ve done this well already, just imagine…. ) The sky was the limit. And I wasn’t sure I was in a position to doubt him anymore.
“How are you going to make six million dollars?” I asked.
“The internet,” he said, reverently. He looked at me like I was a slow-learning chimp. ”Let me show you the traffic to my website.” He pulled up a daily traffic counter, and pointed to a number. It was a big number. I couldn’t believe it. In two month’s time, AskAMillion.com was getting more traffic than my website. Much more. And it was run by a homeless guy.
Unfuckingbelievable. I was jealous. Actually jealous. Of a homeless guy.
I took a business card from Chris. I was suddenly very interested in following his project.
The next week, Chris Coon blew up. He was on the New York Times City Room blog. (I’ve sent those guys five emails. Nothing.) He was in The Village Voice. The Huffington Post. CBS News. He was interviewed by not one, but two, German television stations. Granted, the comment sections on all of these stories were filled with negative opinions. The Huffington Post article had 420 comments, and maybe 10 percent of them were supportive. The rest looked something like this:
But despite the negative reactions, donations were coming into AskAMillion.com at record levels. There had been a handful of $100 donations. Someone donated six sets of business attire, which Chris was storing at a local dry cleaners. And he was now conducting his surveys electronically using a brand new Ipad2– also donated. Three months ago, Chris had told me he was going to ask one million people for a dollar. I was number ten on the list. I had assumed that he would quit after about 50 people. Who could have known that he was the Donald Trump of panhandlers?
After reading the articles, I wrote Chris an email: Hey, it’s the photographer from Union Square Park. Can we finish that interview? Chris wrote me back: I’m pretty booked up this week, but let me know what time you’re thinking and I’ll see if I can squeeze it in. By the way, the project has evolved. I’m selling poetry now. So you’ll be the first one to get a shot at that story. After some back and forth, Chris and I decided to meet on Wall Street. He was planning on moving his social experiment to the financial district, and I thought it would make the perfect background for an interview: homeless entrepreneur begs in the heart of capitalism. It was a lay-up.
But then the heat wave came. Three straight days of 100 degree heat. I decided to wait a bit before calling Chris, thinking that it would be too hot for an interview– especially if he was wearing suits now. But on the third day of the heat wave, I walked out of the Union Square Barnes and Noble and there he was– dressed in business attire and carrying an IPad 2.
“Hey Chris! What’s up?”
“Hey man, I thought you were going to call.”
“I was, but I thought that I’d wait until it cooled down a little.”
“Yeah it’s been hot as hell. But I’ve been working.”
“Did you go to Wall Street.”
“Yeah I did, but I worked eight hours and only got $2. That place sucks.” I laughed. I knew from experience just how difficult it is to get people on Wall Street to stop and talk to you. I couldn’t imagine asking people to fill out a survey for the privilege of giving you a dollar.
“I had a feeling that was going to happen,” I said.
“But a TV crew was following me. They got some good footage of people blowing me off.”Damn it, that was my angle. “Hey, check this out–” Chris unplugged a small, white, boxy contraption from his IPad. “Have you seen these? It’s called a square. It allows you to swipe credit cards. I can take any credit card now.” Chris had become the hyper-evolved panhandler that nightmares are made of— no cash? no problem. He handled his business like it was a race-car videogame. All his winnings went into new shocks, brakes, and nitrous oxide systems. Everyday he got bigger and faster. He was running a textbook operation here.
“You’re a tragic figure Chris.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’ve got a lot of ambition, a lot of energy, and a lot of business sense. You could be a millionaire right now. I mean, if you weren’t homeless. Why are you homeless again?”
“Cause I just got out of jail, I thought I told you that already.”
“You may have. But I forgot. Why were you in jail again?”
“I put my brother-in-law in a coma.”
“Yikes.”
“I mean, it wasn’t my fault. He brought a gun into my house. I probably held the headlock too long but he brought a gun into my house.”
“And that was the first time you got arrested?”
“Oh, no. I was arrested a few years earlier.”
“For what?”
“Burglary.”
“What did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal anything. That’s a common misperception about burglary. Burglary is actually trespassing in a place with the intent to commit a crime. I chased a guy into the back of a Starbucks and threatened to beat the shit out of him.”
“Yikes.”
“But it wasn’t my fault. He touched my leg. Like he was rubbing it. What am I supposed to do? I can’t let that happen.”
Everyone with a long history of assault talks about their previous altercations as if they were unavoidable. As if they had no choice but to fight. What was I supposed to do? LET him step on my foot? Brawlers are society’s most principled men.
“So that was the first time you got arrested?”
“No the first time I got arrested was when I was ten. Some kid kicked my leg and called my mom a ‘hoe.’ So I knocked him out.” I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Chris kept turning minor conflicts into prizefights. ”You’ve got to understand,” said Chris. “My mom was the only person I cared about at that time. So I knocked him out.”
“Jesus, Chris.” I wanted to change the subject. “So where do you sleep?”
“Behind the Barnes and Noble.”
“Can you show me?”
“Yeah, but then I need to get back to work. I’ve got to take a bus to see my kids tomorrow, so I need to make at least $30.” We only had to walk a couple hundred yards to the place where Christ slept at night. When we got there, he asked if I wanted to see how he slept.
Chris has an Ipad 2, six business suits, a laptop, and the most-trafficed website of anyone I personally know. He’s done this in three months– while sleeping on a ledge. I know people with trust funds that play video games for a living. And they don’t even upgrade their car when they win a race. I thought back to the 420 people who commented on Chris’s lifestyle. They couldn’t do it. Who cares if his business is asking people for a dollar. (“I’m going to start selling my poetry. So people feel like they’re getting something.”) Look at the energy this guy has. He’s John D. Rockefeller. He’s Bill Gates–minus the education, minus a few teeth, minus a place to sleep, plus a long history of assault. He wants to make it big. (“I want to use this money for business school, but I’m afraid if I quit before one million, people will think it’s a scam”) Get out of here with your morals. He doesn’t want to work at McDonalds. You go work at McDonalds.
“I spent most of my childhood in jail. When I was twelve, they locked me up for six years.”
“For beating a kid up?”
“No. That’s when I was ten. When I was twelve, I tried to kill my stepdad.”
“You WHAT?”
“I tried to slit his throat when he was sleeping. It didn’t work.”
“You WHAT?”
“I tried to kill him. I wish I did. He beat my stepmom with a crowbar. He slit my tongue with a razor, and told me that’s what hell feels like. He burned my dog alive. He was a preacher, but he was evil. He used to smoke crack before church. That’s how he got me, he traded me for crack.”
“Wait, WHAT?”
“When I was a baby, my mom sold me to my stepparents for an eightball of crack.”
