Here’s the machine we got for the shop! It’s a Carnival King 8 oz. popcorn popper, which is plenty enough production for the crowd we get, even in a street fair, which is rare enough that we can rent if we need something bigger and faster, which we presently don’t.
The idea is not so much “to sell popcorn” — although that might be a very good business thriving business in itself, just plain old popcorn, but we have an angle that makes our popcorn very different from all other popcorns.
It’s the spice.
Anyone who knows anything about Arrakis knows that spice is always at the bottom of any deal.
Popcorn is exempt from some local and regional and all federal food-handler licensing. Ben Franklin’s arts & crafts store has a big commercial popcorn machine in the front of the shop — they give away bags of popcorn to incoming customers, being careful to avoid serving them to those inevitable folks who show up every day for a bag of popcorn and quickly run out the door when they’ve got it.
You can’t afford to give away stuff forever, and at some point, you’ll learn to charge for it so you can keep doing your public service, thus fulfilling your Bodhisattva Vow, the one you took in a previous lifetime.
It’s time to settle that debt. Popcorn is a good beginning, spicy popcorn doubly so.
We sell our Zombie Family Red Hot Popcorn Spice in a special spice bottle, and we offer the spice in sample form, by sprinkling a generous amount of our incredibly hot “salsa caliente” on the hot salted or unsalted popcorn as it’s bagged up, and offer a fair special to take home, two bottles for only $25, which is a LOT of popcorn spice that could outlast the planet.
So how to turn this into a street hustle?
Heck-darn, that’s easy enough — you just put the thing on a pushcart, and pushcarts are cheap and easy to get.
I just found the cheaptest steam table with umbrella on a rolling hand-cart I ever saw, available at under $400, from both eBay and Amazon.
Any other food vendor pushcart would cost a minimum of $2000, but this “Cash Cow” is great looking, and incredibly cheap, but keep in mind that it isn’t built to take punishment, not at that price, so you have to be more careful than the average concessionaire, and for rough street usage, or hauling on a trailer hitch, you’ll have to pay more.
For general peddling on the street, you can’t beat a peddler’s pushcart, and this answers that description close enough — there’s nothing like it on the market at that price and of course it doesn’t have to be about hot dogs.
There are plenty of ways of using this cart, none of which need to be foods you wouldn’t recommend in a million years.
If you examine the cart, there are several places to put a variety of steam-table items, and buns, condiments, etc.
All you need to run this baby is a RENTAL of a few hours in a commercial kitchen to set up your cart, and off you go to your favorite corner or patch of roadside or, in our case, right smack dab in the middle of a shop just crammed with art and craft items for sale.
Of COURSE it’s messy. Nobody but us would have a problem with that. Live with it. That’s what street hustles are all about. They’re messy.
If you REALLY want to sell and sell and sell, there’s always the BBQ Spare Rib Kiosk to consider — who can resist the aroma of burning flesh?
Our BBQ Sauces can be used on a wide variety of foods that aren’t particularly barbecued, and many of the foods on which it tastes great are vegan, so climb aboard and get in the flow!
Street Hustles are the way to go in an uncertain world. You never know where you might end up, or under what circumstances, and you need to be ready for anything.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”, is how some Jews say it — you know you’re going to get the shit-end of whatever stick is stirring the pot at the moment, so you brace yourself for the blow, but you hope it won’t come.
My only defense for my books, videogames, cartoons, standup comedy routines, songs and songbooks about Trump is that they were published before it was illegal to criticize him.
Haw, haw, haw — from here, it looks totally fake, not just the news, the whole shebang, and guess what??? It is.
“Most phenomena is or are illusion” is an intellectual’s answer to your prayer. Keep trying to get through — perhaps John Parker may succeed where other lektroids have failed.
Copper and Wood Bead jewelry handmade by YOU is a great street hustle, especially if you offer them at “Whatever’s fair”, which is how we sold stuff at love-ins in the 1960s. Whatever’s fair can be terribly unfair, but brace yourself — there are $20 bills ahead of you for a simple pair of copper and wood bead earrings, but you have to learn how to earn that kind of tip.
It’s not about the product. It’s about YOU.
We had “the worst street fair ever held in Nevada City” last weekend, and we still sold $40 bucks worth of hot sauce, on a 102 degree hot summer night that defeated all but the strong, and in a good fair, we can expect to do a couple hundred or more.
The Lucky Penny Street Hustle has much more upside potential — if you manage to sell 30 an hour, which is two minutes per sale, you could possibly turn as much as a thousand dollars in a single day, especially if you had a team out there doing this at, let’s say, the Grand Central Station subway platform, or in a crowded street or fairground.
“Lucky Penny one dollar, help the homeless.”
You’ll need to explain that to one out of a thousand. Most will either give you a buck or they won’t.
To them, it’s panhandling, begging on the street, but YOU know it’s not — it’s marketing, and on the street, you have exactly .035 seconds to stop someone in their tracks and swap product for money, and get ready for the next contact and sale.
Okay, perhaps a few seconds more, but only a few.
It’s not about the product. They won’t stop for a product. They’ll stop for YOU, if you’re projecting enough CHARISMA, which is what every salesperson and performer needs in order to get an audience of more than their immediate family, friends and coworkers.
In short, tap dance a little, to get their interest. You can’t explain a product or an idea or a service to someone who hasn’t stopped to listen.
There can be no exchange of ideas until there is INTEREST, and no chance of interest other than SELF-interest, so you’ll have to convince a passerby who is on their way somewhere else that they should get whatever it is you’re selling, all in a fraction of a second as they zip around and try to walk right through you.
In the case of the Lucky Penny, you’re not selling pennies — you’re selling luck. If you look like a bum, you have a better chance with these, although it should be more sensible to get into an expensive outfit and stand leaning against your Rolls.
Even better, have your valet sell them while you wait in the car, munching on some strange French high-society mustard on a bun — this conveys a sense of luck that has no equal.
For equality’s sake, you want the popcorn or hotdog kiosk, or both, and hey, while you’re at it, they also have waffle-makers — you could roll them up and sell them as a sort of American Felafel, which is how you sell hand-painted finches, as “American Canaries”.
If it worked once, it’ll work again.
On the list of Prime Street Hustles is jewelry, but you can’t do a walkabout with metal embossing, making name-tags with copper and brass inlays, as I’ve demonstrated on youtube and other video outlets, but if you’re in a stationary spot, you can set up a small plastic-topped table and do them right then and there in front of the customer, for $10 apiece, or whatever they want to give, if you want to make it a straight donation.
“How much is it?”
“Whatever it’s worth to you is fine with me,” is the answer here, developed over a period of several decades working fairs and other outdoor and indoor public events, or you can set a price — “how about five bucks?” or “Is ten bucks okay with you?” or “I usually get ten dollars for one of those” — any answer like that will do the job.
You want to encourage the customer to try it, wear it, touch it — if they can’t, they won’t buy it, and that goes double for the popcorn.
Now, how about the Zombie Family Hot Sauce Hustle?
That’s a great hustle, because like it or not, passers-by are reminded that their days on Earth are limited, and that in the end, it’s all turned to dust.
“It’s not what you take with you, it’s what you leave behind”, you offer to every customer who will take a moment to listen.
“It’s not what you do or where you go, it’s the company you keep.”
These are the kind words that you can provide to every customer who takes a moment to stop by your booth and take some sacred food, some “prasad” from your kiosk table.
Food is the primary means of transmission of Enlightenment, Sacred Food doubly so.
Speaking of doubles, there’s the “daily double” on which to capitalize for a people-stopping pitch.
“Double Lucky Pennies, Double Your Luck!”
This will get the attention of those who already FEEL lucky or unlucky — you won’t have to convince them of the existence of luck or the relationship between luck and probability.
You’ll need someone intelligent, well-informed and open-minded to actually HEAR you say something like “The less likely this rare collectible coin will be found in your pocket change, the luckier it is to find it, wouldn’t you agree?”
If they agree, go into your Lucky Penny Pitch, leaving out the part about the homeless — just explain how luck works, as I’ve indicated in training videos and will cover in detail at the Labor Day Convention, which will be set up so you can attend online.
Find out how to participate in this important workshop this Labor Day, coming in only a few weeks from now.
Personal Portrait Hustle? Sure, if you’re good and fast enough to handle a crowd with a line waiting over your right shoulder. Personal portraits or silhouettes are a great fair hustle, but you have to be good, and you have to be really, really fast, but not so fast that people don’t want to pay you — as in all things, there is a balance to be achieved.
You can sell literally ANYTHING, even wooden beads in plastic baggies, if you know how to do a street pitch, but if you don’t have the skill, the best and most amazing product in the world at the lowest price ever offered won’t sell a single time.
It’s not about the product, it’s about the seller, or in your case, technically, the reseller, if you don’t make the product, the seller if you do.
Getting out there with a street hustle beats sitting around waiting for customers who will never get the nerve to venture into your shop.
Fear is everywhere, and you’re continually fighting against it when you’re selling anything — people are full of fear, full of anxieties, full of mortal dread, and you’re, well, different, and that makes a “fear object” out of you and the horse upon which in you rode — as you can easily see, I’m trying desperately to avoid a split infinitive or dangling participle, but it’s ding-dang hard to do when you’re also trying to be expressive.
Speaking of Expressive, another great street hustle is tap dancing or its rough equivalent in the form of singing and playing guitar, and if you can’t do that, how about a dramatic recitation of poetry of your own?
If you don’t happen to write poetry, you might consider giving an oratory about any subject other than politics, religion or race, all of which are dangerous subjects in Trump Amerika, where dialogue sparks violence, a general result of an education system set up to prepare a work force rather than an enlightened and liberated being, which should be the real goal of education, but isn’t.
Can someone be “educated” into enlightenment?
Sure. Have you not been paying attention to the various prophets and Persons of Merit that have been assaulting you with the suggestion of enlightenment and liberation?
I suppose you want a giant hand to come out of the sky and scoop you up into Heaven. I don’t do big stage effects, just closeup and club, so don’t keep looking up there — it’s not going to happen.
The Stairway to Heaven is step by step, and at the very top, it’s quite a grind. Good luck achieving that last little jump, and that’s why I strongly recommend the Street Hustle, and that begins with Magic in the Mirror, learning the moves, the timing and the misdirection.
Don’t get cynical — misdirection is not a bad thing. Recognition that the machine is a machine and realization of how it works, what makes it tick and work and change, can be learned, and should be learned, as the “MoveAct Code”, along with Blue-Line and other methods of understanding how the Universe is made, how it works, and what makes it go.
It is possible to master GODD BlueLine Mapping in just a year, but it takes application and effort, and you’ll need another year or two to get the hang of how to instruct the human biological machine in its own “Machine Language”.
One more Great Street Hustle that just might work for you — The Instant Tarot Reading. This is more or less a variant on the astrology column in your local newspaper, and in fact, you could print out the forecast for today from an astrological site, and offer the info by asking the passers-by the Standard Sixties Question, “What’s yer sign???”.
They give you their sign, you provide the readout — it’s totally dramatic if you MEMORIZE the list of astrological readouts for the day, but you can read them off 3″x5″ index cards, if you prefer.
I’d consider using the Morgan Deck for instant tarot on the street. You can work out how to shuffle and such in midair, or you can strap on a small table that opens downward and rests against your abdomen.
If you DO use a sandwich-sign drop-down board for your sales, make sure that it has a lip around the top, so things don’t fall off onto the ground with every bump and twist you make with your upper body.
You can also set up a small table — there are magicians’ tables that literally pop into existence from a tiny little thing concealed in the hand, and there are many ways to present yourself in a carnival atmosphere, which represents the very best that Earth has to offer.
How about setting up a painting easel right on the sidewalk? Almost any and every town and city and even some of the smaller hamlets have some sort of inexpensive license for artists.
You get to sit on a stool or stand in front of your easel, and paint anything — it can be the street scene in front of you, or it can be an abstract, or a portrait of a sitter who sits in the small foldable chair or stool opposite you.
Most street artist licenses allow you to create a work and sell it to the customer on the spot — of course, you’ll have to collect the ever-popular state sales tax and any other taxes that might apply.
I didn’t have to say that, but I prefer to indicate how much law is on your side there. If the law was written by federal government people, you know it can’t be too much in your favor — it all goes to the very rich, taken from the very poor.
So as an artist, you’re statistically not probably on the “rich” side of that equation, but if you get a reputation for portraits, you could be.
You might also consider puppets, drums, dance, theater — I’ve seen a street Shakespeare company do very well in large crowds in New York City and San Francisco, although I wouldn’t try it in Los Angeles or Miami — tastes are very different there, but in those cities, you might try something along the lines of Gilbert & Sullivan.
Drugs are always a popular street hustle, and you shouldn’t let notoriety scare you away from drugs — for instance, Real Double Dutch Dark CHOCOLATE and the infamous HOT or ICED Cappuccino, which we have and offer in abundance — you can get them in small single-serving packets for only $1 apiece, sell them for $2, make a buck!
If you can offer a CHOCAHOLIC’S TASTING ROOM, I can fill it with chocolate, tea, coffee and other wondrous goodies from Grandma’s House — there’s no limit to your income potential with a coffee, tea and chocolates kiosk in a busy intersection, such as the tiny kiosk we had in Sunset Mall in Sacramento many years back, when we were young and able to handle the stress of a busy mall for ten hours a day, on our feet the whole time, talking, following, walking with customers, getting their attention and their interest, and making tons of sales the whole time!
It’s easy, but you have to TRY.
Water is good. Be a Water-Brother to everyone — sell legal, officially licensed and labeled packaged waters of all kinds — magical waters, fountain of youth, any label you like, any size or shape of bottle.
Also sell a variety of your own manufacture of water bottles and flasks, which you make for yourself on Zazzle and other such sites.
Go to a place where people are thirsty, and set up your umbrella pushcart or small canopy tent where a LOT of people walk by, the slower the better, but NEVER UP A HILL.
Always set up on the flat, where people spend less energy walking around. Find some SHADE and KEEP COOL, show a lot of coolness, such as several IGLOO cases filled with crushed ice, atop which you see many cans of cola and orange drink and organic drinks and special energy drinks, you know, like that.
Be sure to price it so it’s easy to handle in a bathing suit, even if you’re nowhere near the beach. It’s always about convenience, and having to fish around for money is not the same as whipping out a cellphone and transacting without ever actually looking at the vendor or the product in person, standing face-to-face with you, while texting and messaging you as if you were a million miles away, and in a very real sense, you are.
Space is a bubble, lunchtime space doubly so. All encounters are bubble-to-bubble, no matter what it seems, but don’t let that deter you from selling popcorn or making copper wire jewelry or pushing some chocolate or coffee or tea at a customer.
Get on board before the ship sails.
Join the Penny Army and get The Teaching, the Dharma, out there where it’s most needed, in the Amerikan public, before it’s too late.
It’s already too late for the environment, but let’s work to save the Teaching, and possibly to move to another lifestream where the environment survives Trump — a rare find, but we might end up there.
Stay with the Pack Of Green, the POG.
Get the gear you need to transfer worlds, get it now, before dictatorship sets in — once Congress is dismissed, it’s game over, so be warned, get yourself out of this rotten lifestream and into a safe and saner one real soon, by getting your environment set up with a Trans-Space Installation, resembling a CQR setup which is often called a “Bardo Rig”.
It all starts with a SuperBeacon and Matrix, which forms the heart of your radio rig. You can’t bring this on the street, but you CAN bring a small CQR ammy to the marketplace, in the form of a “Classic” ammy, available WHOLESALE and ready-to-ship in just two weeks!
We’ve got a GIANT order of sterling silver coin-edged and fancy bezels coming to us in just a couple of weeks, and we have ORDERS for a lot of them, and we’re taking orders now for more for the holidays and mid-terms.
We are selling ammies fast, and you could, too, along with Lucky Pennies and Lucky Rodneys and Double-Lucky Pennies and Red-Hot Popcorn and Zombie Family Hot Sauces and more!!!
Let’s get together at the Labor Day Convention weekend workshops, and we’ll explore all the possible ways you can participate in work actions and at the same time build personal and family wealth not for personal gain, but merely for protection.
Protection from what?
Why, from Trump and his minions, of course. If you treat it like a D2 game, you’ll see in a flash how easy it is to play this level with skill and elegance.
Don’t look to Trump for elegance, haw, haw, haw! And don’t forget, I’ve gone up against this guy before, and in the end, he’s a creampuff and a whisper. His name is soon forgotten, and his face remains in human history as just another Halloween Mask of some horrible monster out of many ghoulish Hollywood fantasies just like this one.
There’s always the “French Drop” hustle, which is a closeup magic show for passers-by, but this is a tough assignment even for the very experienced magician — people are inclined to brush right on past you, not at all interested in anything you might have to say or show them, and that’s where your CHARISMA comes in.
If you have it, they’ll stop to watch or listen to anything. If you don’t, they won’t.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby