rant · moment 2 of 17

White Kids Selling Mixtapes and the Homeless Grandma Grift

from 147 - Love Tim (with Kevin Tienken) · #147

4 min

Riff on cultural appropriation applied to mixtape sellers, then a bit about the British tourist scammed with a sob story about homeless children and a grandmother's gangrene.

In this bit8 moments
  • A British tourist paid $60 for a CD in Central Park after being told it would help homeless children.
  • The hustle: hand someone a free CD, then claim you're a struggling artist and ask for money—they can't just hand it back.
  • White kids selling mixtapes in Central Park is so absurd Tim wishes cops could shoot them on sight.
  • Tim admits he's not big on cultural appropriation, but a white kid selling a mixtape genuinely makes him sick.
  • Foreign tourists feel guilty about not buying, so they hand over money even when they don't understand the pitch.
  • The number "a hundred thousand homeless children" sounds both too high and too low—impossible to verify on Soundcloud.
  • You can't just lead with the music; you have to lead with a social ill to make the sale work.
  • A man with a dying grandmother and gangrene managed to sell a CD for $80, using his grandmother's flesh-eating disease as the pitch.
Mentioned here

New YorkCentral ParkTimes Square

All 17 moments in this episode →