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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Dirt came to Gainesville to meet up with a friend. When he went to his friend’s house, he found out the friend was arrested for murder. It wasn’t the first time.

Janell Pagliara usually stays in Florida. She’s only 18, and the farthest she’s traveled is Tennessee. She feels at home in Gainesville, even when she doesn’t have a house.

She came to Gainesville with Ryan Haley. This is his first time traveling.

They chose homelessness.

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They usually call themselves “dirty kids,” but also go by “rainbows,” “gutter punks,” “crusties” or “squatters.”

They travel from town to town—by hitchhiking, train hopping or by Craigslist’s rideshare.

They rarely settle down.

Their goal: freedom from mainstream culture.

During a survey by Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry on Jan. 26 and 27, Alachua County had about 1,300 homeless people. It’s not known how many of those are squatters or choose the homeless life.

Squatters are less likely to use public services, said Max Wells, grant manager for the coalition. This also means they are unlikely to show up in homeless shelters, he said.

According to Gainesville Police Sgt. Chuck Reddick, differentiating between trespassers and squatters is difficult. Trespassers are invited onto property but stay after they’ve been asked to leave, he said. Squatters enter abandoned buildings without permission.

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With nearly dreaded hair from not showering, do-it-yourself tattoos and piercings covering his face, Dirt is a typical squatter.

“Travelin’ full of love. Out of luck. Anything helps,” he said.

The 28-year-old, who has been traveling and squatting for about 14 years, holds his damaged piece of cardboard, hoping someone will give him some money.

If he has money, he uses it to buy alcohol and food.

Getting drunk is Dirt’s ritual, his prayer. He does it in every town he visits.

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Pagliara loves Harry Potter and SpongeBob.

She had problems with her parents.

She sounds like any other 18-year-old. But she’s not like most other 18-year-olds because she’s been homeless since she was 12.

“Most people think owning a house, having a wife and kids, living by society and having money is what life is all about. That is bullshit. It’s bullshit,” she said.

Her mom kicked her out of the house multiple times since she was 12, so she would sleep on friends’ couches or at Westside Park on the corner of Northwest 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. Soon she was sleeping on couches at random people’s houses or apartments.

After a while, she had run out of friends to stay with, so she started using a website that lists couches available to sleep on.

“Couchsurfing.com is a gift from whatever f---ing higher power you want to believe in,” she said.

Eventually, she started traveling.

“I chose the traveling lifestyle because it makes me happy.”

Mostly, she loves that she can be open with other travelers.

“It makes me happy that I can go, ‘Oh, you know, I like smoking pot,’ and I can smoke pot with someone.”

She said she doesn’t care that people think it’s wrong for her to walk down a street asking everyone for money.

“I judge me. No one else judges me.”

Pagliara met Haley in Tennessee, and she convinced him to travel with her to Gainesville.

Although he’d read Jack Kerouac and dreamed of traveling, he never realized people could do that.

“When I graduated high school, that’s when I realized I don’t want to be here [in Tennessee] anymore,” Haley said. “But I got sucked in, not because college is a bad thing, but I got sucked into college.”

The traveling lifestyle has taught Haley that you can travel without money.

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Dirt squats because he loves the freedom of not having to stay in one place, trapped in a job and a house.

His favorite part of squatting is getting drunk and fighting other squatters just for fun.

He gets around by hitchhiking or hopping trains; he doesn’t have a preference.

He came to Gainesville alone.

He normally travels with a partner, known as a road dog, but they split up in Jacksonville. His road dog went to Chicago, while Dirt made some money working for his dad.

Although Dirt chose homelessness, he has a fatalistic sense that he couldn’t leave even if he wanted to.

“It’s not like I have a choice. I ain’t got no home down in Fort Myers no more, so I just hit the road, travel around, make money, hang out with new kids and get drunk.”

When Dirt has no money, he asks people for their leftovers, or he gets food out of Dumpsters.

“Krispy Kreme’s pretty much the reason why I don’t like doughnuts anymore because it’s f---ing gross. That’s all there is to f---ing get out of that f---ing Dumpster is f---ing doughnuts. There’s McDonald’s Dumpster, but McDonald’s food makes me sick.”

Sometimes, he goes to grocery stores like Publix.

“It all depends on if they have a dragon. Dragons are compactor Dumpsters; there’s a way to get into them, but I don’t know how to do it. Pretty much, just break it.”

When he’s not searching for food, Dirt tries to make money however he can.

“I’ll make art, play music, panhandle, all kinds of s---. Play music on the streets.”

His biggest moneymaker is selling cloth patches to other travelers, so they can sew them onto their packs or pants.

He’ll find someone who has Internet and a printer to print off stencils for the patches.

He made his most recent batch while staying at a friend’s house in Orlando. His friend’s printer wasn’t working, so he made the stencils by tracing them off the computer screen.

The patches have slogans, philosophies and icons on them.

“Booze not bombs,” one reads.

“Eat the rich,” says another one, alongside McDonald’s golden arches.

There are Johnny Cash patches, Betty Boop patches and a number of patches featuring Calvin, from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

“I got a s--- ton of them. I sell them from anywhere from $2 to $10 depending on who I’m selling them to.”

Dirt used his most recent profits to buy beer.

Gainesville’s not the best place for making money for Dirt. He remembers going to Knoxville, Tenn.

He held a sign there, just like in Gainesville, and he once got $400 in two days. He didn’t squat; he bought hotel rooms.

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According to both Dirt and Pagliara, the worst thing about Gainesville, which was ranked the fifth meanest city in America last year by the National Coalition for the Homeless, are the laws and the police.

Dirt said another traveler with him was accused of raping a girl when they were in San Antonio. The accused rapist was later murdered. Although Dirt said he had nothing to do with the murder, he left the town because of his fear of cops.

Similarly, Pagliara hates authority.

“I think the s---ty thing about Florida is it’s got all these rules against travelers,” she said. “But it’s also got some of the best places to travel to.”

According to Pagliara, the police “put us crust kids in jail to better society.”

Dirt wants to settle all the warrants the police have for him, but he doesn’t care if the police catch him or not.

“I’ve been thinking about doing a jail tour one of these summers, just going around to all the different places that I got warrants,” he said. “But I been talking about it for years, still haven’t done it. . . . If they catch me, they catch me.”

Pagliara feels the same way; she said she doesn’t care because she just ignores the authority. She calls the police sirens a “disco dance party.”

But Gainesville’s still her favorite place to be.

“People in Gainesville actually give a s--- about the traveling lifestyle,” she said.

Pagliara said Gainesville has an endless supply of food and people who want to help.

“Almost every person who is in this sort of scene, they want to help you if you want to help them,” she said. “That’s basic. It doesn’t matter if you’re a punk or a crust or a rainbow or whatever.”

Although Dirt does not describe himself as a bastion of virtue, he nevertheless won’t pull scams on people to earn his money. He believes in karma.

“I don’t do that bullshit because I believe in karma,” he said. “Karma will f--- you up eventually.”

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Dirt figured out how to live homeless on his own.

As a teenager, he joined a carnival, which taught him how to travel.

He said he thinks the only way to learn to travel is to just start hitchhiking and meet some people. If lucky, inexperienced squatters will be helped by older ones.

Dirt doesn’t bother helping them, however, because he doesn’t want to get arrested for someone who doesn’t know how to travel, he said.

Pagliara is teaching Haley the lifestyle, and she said she doesn’t plan to give it up anytime soon.

She taught him to only do what he wants to do and give up everything else.

For Dirt and Pagliara, squatting means meeting new people, getting drunk and traveling. They certainly don’t want to be judged, so they will travel long distances to find other people who accept their lifestyle.

“Dirty kids hang with other dirty kids,” Pagliara said. “And I will be a dirty kid until the day I die.”

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