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Hobo Lifestyles #1 - The Great Hobo Culture
by Tyler Carey
You either get the title or you don't, I guess. We spent more time working on a title than we did on our logo, and I guess it shows; maybe not. "People are going to think you're with Street News," someone said during a brainstorming session. If there's one thing I learned from that bitter cruel dot.com world, it's to never trust anything that comes up in a brainstorming session. Also, don't call it 'brainstorming' - 'tis too corporate.
So what is the significance of "The Great Hoboes of New York"? In order to justify it to one person, I said, "Oh, uh…I think it's a quote from Jack Kerouac…" Man, did that give us legitimacy! Well, truth be told, it's not a Kerouac quote, but he certainly spoke about the people we're focusing this magazine on - the original failed seekers and hard luck chums. In On the Road, Jacky Boy and his buddies spend a lot of time looking for Neal Cassady's long lost old man - a Mid-West bum, who served as a hero and proto-type beatnik to Jack, Neal, Allen Ginsburg and their friends. Casady's dad serves not only as the proto-type Beatnik, but also as one of a long line of bohemian icons. He's smack dab in the middle of Rimbaud, Dostoevsky, George Sand, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Muddy Waters, Tim Leary, John Lennon... These Great Hoboes, as I've dubbed them, are all of us. We've all had our hard luck years, our glorious bohemian days, our inklings of enlightenment. The Great Hoboes of New York serves as a forum for those who are in the midst of their hobo days, as well as those who are looking back on them fondly.
Ostensibly, The Great Hoboes of New York is a New York magazine, but you may notice that many of our contributors live elsewhere. It would be provincial to believe that only those living in cosmopolitan New York 'qualify'. It is the very atmosphere of New York that is the important thing - the influence of a multitude of cultures, neighborhoods and individuals. The actual germination of The Great Hoboes of New York was in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. No, not those rustic expensive Berkshires of Tanglewood, but more the hard luck ("hobo" if you will) abandoned mill towns and tobacco farms that housed a few of us before we returned to our native NY. It is distance from an inspiration that often serves to provide the best perspective for illustrating it.
The hobo family is not limited to a clique of artists and writers - this is no exclusive movement. To steal another evil corporate term, we're spreading by 'viral marketing' - word of mouth. Please share this site with your friends, and more importantly, please contribute your writings, pictures, thoughts and images. See our Submission guidelines, to the left of this screen.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Tyler M. Carey
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, The Great Hoboes of New York