“What Freakonomics is about is stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and seeing what is happening underneath.”

Bobby Nomicks sits in the Clarion Alley that is always empty, save for the artists that frequent it and the fans that admire them. He is 51 and left his hometown of Dallas Texas when he was 18. After having a promising career in sports he was injured and became so disillusioned he decided to venture out west. He seems confused at first that I have taken the time to talk to him and tells me maybe a phone call would be better so he could get his thoughts in order. He looks at me straight in the eyes, takes a couple of deep breaths and says he is ready to speak for himself and the people who live on the street.

“Information is the currency of the internet - or is it?”

Bobby begins by telling me that the worst thing you can ever do is to fall asleep on a freight train and end up in Kansas City.

“It’s dead,  and nothing is going on in that place,” he said so he stayed there for a couple of weeks until boredom moved him on. He is mesmerized about Canada and the closest he has come to the international lines is Oregon. He is drawn by kind people and the possibility of eventual free health care but love has kept him south of the border. It’s always about puppy love he mutters under his breath and then tells me that he has had one too many a broken heart, so now he occupies himself with watching the people who go by and wondering what they are all about. He asks me a few questions about myself and then asks me if I am married.

“Here are three basic flavors of  incentive: economic, social, and moral.”

We start discussing politics and he has some unkind words for the kids that are participating in the Occupy movement down the street. He tells me that most of these kids have never had responsibility in their lives. Bobby insists they are not using their brains like the hippies did in their anti-war protests. He raises his voice and says they should enlist a few to help as the protestors brains are not really ‘occupied’ right now.

A  lot of the youth he has seen 'occupying' the street are homeless and should go back to their parents as he has not seen his parents in decades and has regrets. Bobby has no idea if they are dead or alive and does not have the money to find them. He then worries about the possibilities that if he did actually find them would they want to see him?

“That’s the problem in this country," he says. "Everything, no matter what it is costs too damn much!”

Bobby says that President Obama needs to slow down and take things day by day.  Obama is hiding enormous stress Bobby says quietly and should take notes from his political idol Abraham Lincoln. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”  quotes Bobby. He admires Lincoln because he was self-taught. Every day he has faith that this country can pull itself out of the ‘shit pile’ it’s in now.

“After all, he says, we’ve pulled ourselves out of a quagmire before so why not now?”

“It all comes down to greed and the more people want the less there is for someone else. The government spends too damn much on stupid things and the poor and the seniors end up suffering. Take away those big salaries and spread that money among those who need it.”

Bobby says most politicians are good actors but he can act too as he took lessons as a teen. He laughs and says that he will give them his best John Wayne or Clint Eastwood impression and make them tow the line.

“They will have to make my day or else!”  laughed Bobby.

"So it’s the imminent possibility of death that drives the fear – which means that the most sensible way to calculate fear of death would be to think about it on a per-hour basis."

He believes in God though he does not take kindly to the Christian radicals that are around these days trying to bring him into their fold.

“I believe there is a God but whatever you believe in is a good thing too!”

He cannot understand people who walk by and look at you like you just don’t exist. Life is rough on the streets and they have no idea what it is like to have the pavement as your best friend day after day. His number one motto is “Let Bygones be Bygones” and we all need to start learning to get along with each other.

Besides God and love of his fellow man his next favourite thing is eating prawns on Fisherman’s Wharf. He does not worry about dying and calls life  without  possessions “almost paradise".  With that we both agree that rich or poor,  economics, politics, and personalities are often inseparable, and break out into song. There in the vacant alley stood two strangers pretending to be Mike Reno and Anne Wilson from Heart. Some days it  just does not get  better than this and you grasp every minute and run with it.

"Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies between the pain of hell and Paradise. " - George William Russell 

Images and text by Linda Seccaspina 2011

Quotes from Freakonomics