City Strategy to Reduce Panhandling

[Bogtrotter]

Yeh I've always thought them more creepy than amusing. Some people apparently have a real problem with it. I wonder if one can get sick leave for this. From the The CTRN Phobia Clinic:

"If you are living with clown fear, what is the real cost to your health, your career or school, and to your family life? Avoiding the issue indefinitely would mean resigning yourself to living in fear, missing out on priceless life experiences big and small, living a life that is just a shadow of what it will be when the problem is gone.

For anyone earning a living, the financial toll of this phobia is incalculable. Living with fear means you can never concentrate fully and give your best. Lost opportunities. Poor performance or grades. Promotions that pass you by. clown fear will likely cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime, let alone the cost to your health and quality of life. Now Clown Fear can be gone for less than the price of a round-trip airline ticket."

 

[Erik T]

I think Glastonbury or some such giant British rock festival actually scrapped a proposed clown theme, because the anti-clown people were so appalled. I'm pretty sure I read that in the Guardian...
Night of the Living Dead?
I pass that King and Strachan gas station at all hours, and I am curious as when these legions of aggressive panhandlers come out? The odd sorry-looking hooker or street person, but hardly 'Night of the Living Dead'- that might be at Sherbourne and Dundas, or on Seaton Street, but this is a safe, decent area.
Aggressive Panhandlers-
What will stipulate the line between passive and aggressive panhandling? It is already against the law to threaten people, to shake them down for services they didn't ask for (Hello, 'washroom attendant' at the Opera House?), or otherwise harass or obstruct passersby. Some of the Queen and Spadina kids are guilty of this obviously, but if someone isn't going to wait for a cop to arrive so as to press charges against some squeegie punk who demanded money for holding the bank machine door open, why would an additional law condemming this (certainly lamentable) behaviour help matters?