As brick and mortar retail sales continue to fall – due mainly to the increase in online ordering that began long before the pandemic – opportunities for loiterers have been shrinking as well.
“It used to be you could count on a 40, even a 50 hour week,” says Steve Sankist, a third-generation loiterer from Memphis, Tennessee. “If you wanted to loiter, there were plenty of places to do it and plenty of people to see you doing it.” Now, he says, a 25-hour week is the average, with many loitering even less.
In addition, according to the Loiterers Association of North America and Canada, 75 percent of loitering now takes place outside, compared to only 30 percent as recently as 2008.
“This means a lot of added pressure,” says association spokesperson Louise Mandell, “especially during the cold winter months.” With fewer places to loiter and an average age approaching 60, Mandell says that loiterers need to step up their routines.
“Just standing around, getting in peoples’ way, and trying to avoid the proprietors and police is not going to cut it anymore,” she says. “Loiters should develop new initiatives like constantly jingling the change in their pockets, or hopping up and down on one foot, even saying “How’s it shakin’?” to everybody.
Sankist agrees, and has added a new twist to his loitering: Whistling. “As of now I only know one song, You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You,” he says. “But I plan to learn one new tune every week.”
So far, he says, his whistling has been a successful.
“I’ve gone from getting four or five dirty looks a day,” he says, “to pretty close to 20.”
