Joe the Barker

Just in time for the holidays, this happened. 

A Papa Murphy's pizza restaurant in Bellingham, WA teamed up with a local job placement service to re-assign and elevate a popular disabled neighborhood panhandler, creating a win-win-win situation for the ages. 

Joe B. made a decent supplemental living for years working the southeast corner of James and Alabama Streets in Bellingham's up-and-coming Sunnyland neighborhood with a cardboard sign that read NO DRUGS. In October, thanks to the creativity of a forward-thinking caseworker, Joe was handed a W2 and issued a uniform and a foamcore arrow sign advertising Papa's famous pizza dough  (baked fresh daily). Joe’s territory hadn't changed-- but everything else had.

"It seemed like an obvious application," said Isaac Fornettes, Joe's case manager at Service Alternatives a social service that specializes in job placement for the disabled. "I approached Papa Murphy’s and they were very receptive. The rest was easy." 

Haven Cole, manager of the Papa store in Sunnyland Square hired Joe on the spot, after an hour-long interview.

"Joe had a lot of questions," explained Haven smiling, suggesting Joe was as much interviewing her as the other way around. If she is trying to conceal her pride in having Joe on her staff, she's doing a terrible job of it. With deep, expressive eyebrows, a medusa, and earlobes stretched from tapers, Haven beams when talking about her star barker. “Joe’s got a big heart,” she said, shrugging. “Why wouldn’t you hire him?”

For his part, Joe is very committed to what he’s doing, putting that big heart on display every shift. Throwing himself into his work with seemingly little regard for his rotator cuffs, his curb crackles with energy. Crouching and leaping, Joe cycles through a routine of moves, but favors one he calls steering wheel-- a vigorous side-to-side shimmy guaranteed to grab the attention of even the most distracted driver. Sometimes he dances. Often he waves. Occasionally he sings, changing the words of folk songs to incorporate pizza, signs and cars. But mostly, it’s steering wheel for up to four hours at a time.

“As long as it works,” he says, punctuating the statement with a finger in the air.

Originally from Arizona, Joe moved to Washington State ten years ago in search of better healthcare. He is very open in discussing the automobile accident and the resulting brain injury that has stunted his physical and non-physical development. Joe was two years old at the time of the accident. He’s now 35.

Relaxing in the subsidized apartment where he lives alone, Joe indeed has questions. He wonders why people would be interested in reading his story. The drapes in his  apartment are drawn against the late afternoon sun shining over the traffic on I-5 just outside the window. It is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and the windchill outside makes it feel like it’s about zero degrees. The heat in the apartment is turned up very high.

To go with his questions, Joe has plenty of answers, and he doesn’t mind being asked stuff. His responses generally start out low, then crescendo in the middle as his engagement in the topic builds, before tapering down and concluding where they started, almost in a whisper. His favorite pizza is the 5-meat, which he takes with Diet Pepsi. The smore dessert pie is pretty good, too, for $5. Plus he gets half-off after his shift, so it’s only $2.50. Even I can easily divide $5 in-half, but Joe is very good with numbers, quickly recounting to the minute his last four shifts and effortlessly calculating their corresponding gross pay. He also has a deep knowledge of the WTA bus system and can tell you most any stop on most any route.

Joe doesn’t drive. He “tricks” traffic by walking King Street under Alabama. He’s well-known in Sunnyland and can be seen on his way to work or the bank. His previous straight job, before he was with Service Alternatives, was filling soap bottles at Brambleberry Soaps, also in Sunnyland. Joe likes his current position better, saying the soap job was “boring, after all.”

And while he admits the Papa Murphy’s job pays better than panhandling (a term he & Isaac both use freely), he does not look back on it as a negative chapter in his life. In fact, he may actually still keep it as a hobby, though not in Bellingham.

“It’s been rewarding to watch this transformation in Joe,” says Isaac. “But he was a bit reluctant at first to give up panhandling. He knows he has a presence in the community now, though, and that he can’t have both.”

Joe explains how he apprenticed under an experienced panhandler who still works Sunset Square. At the time, Joe would wander the sidewalks in front of the smaller shops flanking what was then Cost Cutter. But The Master taught Joe how to design a sign, always being careful to include NO DRUGS and/or ALCOHOL. Joe also learned to take a perch on the corner, where the automobile traffic was. But since the Sunset corners were crowded, Joe struck out on his own, staking his claim on James Street, where he stayed until falling in with Isaac & Haven late this summer.

Next time you pass Joe on the corner give him a wave or a shimmy with your wheel. Better yet, pull in to Papa Murph’s and grab a pie. Tell ‘em Joe sent you!