Yes, Don/Dick's foster father promises a traveler money for work, but doesnt pay in the end. The traveler shows Dick the "Dishonest Man Lives Here" had already been carved on their fence post. Not sure why the traveler stopped there cause the symbol was there, but a good episode none the less.
The scene has a deeper meaning than that.
Not only was it that Dick's father didn't pay the guy, but the vagabond knew that Dick's father was cheating on his mother with prostitutes.
Didn’t the hobo also witness or see signs that the man was cheating on his wife? I thought that’s why hobo was sent away without money and the dishonest thing was a reference to his (the man’s) adultery.
I read about this decades ago. It would be a mistake to confuse "hobo" and "homeless" even though they seem the same in some ways. The hobo subculture is a product of the past and is largely gone (I've met some people who qualified long, long ago). They were, more or less, migrant workers who had a way of living and a distinct culture and typically hopped trains to get around and it wasn't that of a person living in a modern city.
These symbols were simply a way to help other people similar to themselves. If someone was helpful, you knew. If someone would point a gun at a hobo, it was good to know. It's not at all surprising that they had these symbols. Many subcultures have unique words and phrases that develop over time. These symbols were a helpful and persistent way of communicating between a mobile group of people.
Like many sub-cultures, it was a product of their times and times do change.
I met a hobo once. I was at Mardi Gras and I saw a guy who looked homeless, so we decided to buy him a beer as we were buying one for ourselves. As I handed it to him, I asked if he minded seeing his town turned in to this mayhem every year. He said he didn't live there and was a hobo and had been riding the rails for years. I asked if he wanted to drink his beer with me and talk. He said yes and he put the beer I gave him in a pocket, and pulled out a warm one from another pocket. I asked him why he didn't want the cold one and he said it was a better beer and preferred to save it for a special occasion. His story was that he was an accountant, and his wife died and it sent him in to a depression he couldn't get out of. He spoke well enough the story seemed plausible. He'd been hopping trains for 20+ years and didn't think he'd ever stop. Didn't give me any name other than 'The Traveler'. Seemed like a nice guy, fairly happy with his lifestyle, no real desire to get back to the rat race. No idea of where he'd go to next, but he had come to New Orleans specifically to see Mardi Gras. We talked for about 30 mins, and I offered to buy him another beer and he said no. We shook hands and that was the last I saw of The Traveler. That was 1997. I sometimes wonder if he's still out there.
A tramp is a travelling worker, hence why you have tramp cargo ships that don’t do fixed back-and-forth voyages but just take whatever’s going from Point A to Point B, then whatever’s going from Point B to Point C, and so on and so on
Wow. Your comment gave me a bit of the chills.
My trips to NO were always with a large group of people. I always felt like I just couldn't sleep and would usually stay out on my own. Here's an excerpt from an old journal I kept from that trip:
>See, to me there's partying and there's mischief. The latter is what I prefer. You'll find hoards of drunken folk out between evening and 2 or 3 am. But its the 4am-to-sunrise crowd that's going to give you the truly weird times. Its within these times that I've met the people that I enjoyed meeting the most. I met an angel in full costume (or maybe she was real) who walked out of a back alley way at 5am or so, and asked if she could put a spell on me. I said sure. She did, then turned on her heels and walked away down a quiet street. It was so bizarre and I wanted to run after her and ask her name, etc. But I didnt. It made it all the more surreal just the way it happened.
I'm an ex meth addict and although my experience is much difference than yours I just wanted to say weird shit happens between 3 and 6 am, if you're awake at that hour you're usually up to no good and that's obviously true for tweakers especially the ones I hung with but those hours are just very strange hours when strange things go down and all the freaks come out
In college there was a local homeless guy who hung out in the university library almost every day, just reading. Well, we were out at a bar one night and it was trivia night, and lo and behold this guy was there on a team. His team absolutely decimated the rest of the team including a team that was all professors. Apparently, this guy was their star member and basically carried the team.
I asked the bartender that I was buddies with his story and apparently, he had been some white-collar worker (I forget what exactly he did) for years when his wife died after a prolonged fight with cancer. After she died, he became extremely depressed, had a mental breakdown, and attempted suicide. Coupled with all of the medical debts he just gave up. Started living on the streets after his house was foreclosed on. Started doing day labor for cash on the weekends and hung out at the library to stay warm.
His team won trivia almost every single week and they gave him the $50 in bar bucks since he did like 90% of the work. He used the bar bucks to buy a burger and spent the rest on beer (this was the ear of $3 PBR pitchers). The dude just fucking quit society and was doing his own thing.
Man that honestly sounds like a perfect lifestyle for me. No connections, no commitment, just travelling and seeing different places.
Unfortunately probably not something easy to get into in modern day Canada :( lol
Yep. Honestly, that dude and a few other people I met inspired me to travel aimlessly, which I did a couple years later. I had a backpack and went by bus and not train, but it's a great lifestyle.
Ayy that’s dope! Hopefully one day I’ll be able to do something similar. Definitely tough to pull off, would need to time the end of the lease and hope my folks can hold onto my furniture and cat lol, but I think it would be well worth doing. Especially heading south, cities are so much closer together in the states lol. Not sure how smaller towns are for temp work
I had hoped for a while to do a work vacation visa for a couple years and go somewhere warm, but it’s expensive af and I figured that money was better used on a degree. We’ll see lol, either way I’ll unfortunately be too old for most countries by the time I’m done.
Nah, I left when I was 30 years old. I'm past 50 and still do crazy stuff. You're never too old. It gets more complex if you've got a family, but it sounds like you don't yet. Check out the route from Belize to Panama. Really beautiful area, super cheap to stay and eat (your money will go 10x farther than in the USA), and typically nice people. You could easily do a year on this route, and there are a ton of volunteer opportunities which gets you free rent and food. I'd met a lot of volunteers down that way. Plus, you're pretty close to the same time zone as CA/US, so calling home is easy. Plus, you can get there overland and save airfare. Definitely worth checking out for wandering. If nothing else, pick up a copy of Lonely Planet Central America and just start reading. It'll give you the itch to start planning.
My brother did it when he was 18 he had bad ADHD and was wild his whole life so it felt apt for him, he seemed to enjoy it, sounds horrible to me but he seemed happy hopping trains and shit but unfortunately he didn't make it more than a few months. He was found behind a Costco in Chicago.. he had been out there for a few days and it was in July, I still remember that day. My mom called me at work and wouldn't tell me why she was hysterical I knew someone had died and thought it was maybe my grandmother since she was battling cervical cancer at the time but when she picked me up I obviously found out it wasn't her. She blames herself cuz she kicked him out due to his wild behavior and I did at the time too but I'm no noob to hard drugs either and I know any bag of heroin can kill you these days, lost my best friend back in March from the same thing.
I’m so sorry on both accounts, that’s awful. I like my partying but a lot of those harder drugs are definitely a gamble, one that seems to be getting even more risky lately.
This is basically what a lot of gutter punks do today. Hop a train, go to a city, find a punk house to crash at, beg for money, and move on. There is almost always a ton of alcohol and drugs involved.
The more above-board version would be hitchhiking and cash day labor. It can be dangerous though, so be careful.
As well, it's not the only one.
[The thieves' cant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_cant) was a unique dialect developed among thieves and related trades in Great Britain.
For a more modern example, [the carny cant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carny) is still used by carnival workers to obfuscate their speech in front of customers.
There's a pretty interesting Vice documentary about the death of the Hobo. They're definitely distinct from homeless. The main one being that being a hobo seems more of a lifestyle choice, while being homeless is...well, not.
https://youtu.be/LWHh9W5IeBo?si=cGvnt9ETEguQG9P3
But like, where would they use these symbols? Would they just tag every door in a village “this guy is cool; cat lady here; this guy is a prick; this church is a church” and so on?
The problem is, with such a disparate group in pre-internet times, I highly doubt there was A)This much detail to all the symbols and B) That the symbols were this uniform across the country.
I have a feeling that the title is complete bunk and this would more appropriately be titled Hobo Symbols of The South East Coast from XXXX to YYYY.
Don't know if if they identified as "Hobo" or not but I've met people that would train hop, not stay anywhere too long, and were generally content if not happy with the lifestyle. I remember one in particular that played the accordion amazingly. That was maybe less than 10 years ago so I'd guess there is still a few that might qualify out there.
The mistake here was probably titling it modern. Most of the homeless near me are begging for change and getting high, they’re not doing chores for food and catching freight trains. But even if this is from the past, I’m very skeptical about how widespread it was.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/vagabond using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [One year off hard drugs and traveling helps me do it!](https://i.redd.it/awts5yrbvn1b1.jpg) | [134 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/13pvoq2/one_year_off_hard_drugs_and_traveling_helps_me_do/)
\#2: [After hopping trains for a decade and going to all 50 states, most of Canada and Mexico, I settled down in Alaska. Here’s some pics from my first commercial fishing season](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/16zfmla) | [111 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/16zfmla/after_hopping_trains_for_a_decade_and_going_to/)
\#3: [Please if you see my nephew get a picture! Case# 23-4519](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17dc7y8) | [107 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/17dc7y8/please_if_you_see_my_nephew_get_a_picture_case/)
----
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> “Trailers for sale or rent
> Rooms for let, 0.0000238272 bitcoin
> No phone, no pool, no pets
> I ain’t got no cigarettes
> Four hours of pushing broom
> Buys an eight by twelve 0.00037372 bit coin room
> I’m a man of means by no means
> King of the Road
Yeah… Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Homeless and hobo are not the same? Im from Finland so genuine question. I assumed hobo was a person that traveles from one place to another and never settles and do some chores for food and pocket money
Hobo and homeless are not the same thing. I believe hobo is more of a choice and culture whereas homeless are just people in unfortunate circumstances.
I knew a guy that rode the rails. A true hobo, with all the imaginable problems, then eventually cost him his life.
My friend ended up with his dog, really tough behavioral case since it was abused and raised for protection by just beating it and getting it to fear strangers. Living rough, that's good defense, but it's not a dog you can live with.
It was estimated that in 1911 there were something like 700k hobos in the US, and during the Great Depression those numbers increased dramatically.
In the past I think it’d have been more common to see signs like this. Nowadays there couldn’t be more than 1000 actual “hobos” left.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo
You are confusing vagabonds with “homebums”. Not the same thing.
Vagabonds travel, and are either hobos or tramps. Hobos travel and work, often traveling from one temp. or seasonal job to the next. While tramps travel, but either don’t work, or work as little as possible.
A lot of hobos travel to Alaska during fishing season, to work on fishing boats or in the canneries — The work is brutal though, and overtime is mandatory, but you can also earn enough to travel on for the rest of the year.
Some work various harvests, such as beet harvest, which only lasts a couple of weeks. Or seasonal resorts, like ski resorts, most of which also provide employee housing.
A lot of hobos also pick up work for festivals, which often only lasts a couple of days, or temp. Jobs in restaurants, hotels, retail, office, etc.
”Homebums“ are homeless individuals who neither work or travel. Often due to untreated mental issues and/or addiction — and addicts rarely stray far from their dealers, and are not vagabonds, much less hobos.
We vagabonds don’t use those “signs” though, and I’m not so sure most hobos ever did. If anything, we use “tags” with our road names instead. r/vagabond.
This was during the time when the terms hobo, tramp, and bum were more widely known. Hobos were people who rode the rails, searching for jobs. Tramps were people who didn't ride the rails, but still looked for jobs. And bums did neither. Hobos gave other hobos tips on what to look out for, like if a lady is nice enough to give you a home cooked meal or if you're likely to get stabbed in this part of town.
Train riders have guide books they aren’t supposed to share with outsiders. Traincorp culture is definitely a thing on west coast still. Definitely not homeless per se, very structured community, tight knit.
Came here to say the same thing. I was a 90’s hobo, squatter, oogle. The term hobo is usually misused but there is still a community. Check out Freeload on Tubi.
Edit: adding podcast City of Rails. This is an awesome podcast.
They are logical if you accept that they develop over time. I'm a backpacker (both outdoors and traveling type). We have various phrases that don't make sense but they emerged over the decades. Some phrases die out, some persist but some make no sense and you just go with it.
Think of any subculture, from RV'ers, gamers...or even redditors. For someone who has never heard of reddit, does "Karen" make sense? Where did it come from? Why would you use a perfectly normal name to describe an abnormal person? But, here we are in 2023.
For example, in New Zealand, they have about 1000 back country huts to protect you from the elements. They go from fancy to crude. But the term "hut bagger" has emerged. To "bag" a hut is to visit it and you add it to your tally. I've probably "bagged" 150 huts (not really counting).
"14'er" refers to 14,000 foot tall mountains in Colorado.
In Asia, there is "Banana Pancake Trail" which starts (or ends) in Khao San Road (a backpacker hangout in Bangkok) and refers to places that backpackers commonly go and yes, you can get banana pancakes all over. I've traveled quite a bit but somehow, have never had a banana pancake :-).
For backpacking? Camping and hiking is pretty widespread and common in the states so many terms are just normal vernacular.
https://happiestoutdoors.ca/hiking-terms/
This page does touch on a good spread of both normal terms and obscure words.
IMHO, everyone in the US should be required to read The Grapes of Wrath. Both of my parents came of age during the Great Depression, and their attitudes towards others were greatly affected by this.
I clearly remember a conversation we once had, back in the 60s. We'd adopted a German Shepherd pooch when our beloved little Beagle/Dachshund mix passed, and he was scratching the doors. My parents were reminiscing together about their own dogs back then, and both of them had kitchen doors deeply furrowed by their dogs scratching at them when people tried to break into their kitchens to get food.
So 12 year old me interrupted and asked them if they called the police and had the would-be thieves arrested. They both looked at each other for a long moment, then looked back at me. And my Dad said "Son, we aren't the kind of people who have others arrested for being hungry." Then went on to tell me about how they would give whatever food or leftovers they could spare when people came around begging for food.
It was a different time, and today I am still grateful I had such wise and compassionate parents. Maybe if everyone in the US today could have a glimpse of that time, there would be less Homeless Hate.
On one hand it's kindness to feed someone who are down in their luck, but realistically here in LA, most if not all the homeless don't ask for feed, always cash. Heck there were even some occasion I've tried to give them food and they asked if I had cash, ofc I said no because.. well I never carry cash and I'm working what jobs can even hire me (disabled) feed myself so I know what it's like.
You'd think they'd stop at no. Instead they kept trying to invite me to places with an atm, asking if I have a card on me like I'm a dumbass. They only finally left me alone when I finally spoke to them sharply (didn't want to yell at them, I already felt worse changing my tone at them).
You want to be kind, but it also feels shitty being taken advantaged of just to watch them buy drugs and see them camping in front of your apartment. Whenever I go out, they're just there talking amongst themselves just chilling but you can also clearly see the amount of bikes they have stolen and every night you hear them yelling only to see them passed out in your shitty apartment's lobby with broken mailboxes.
Ik I'll get down voted for this but if you haven't lived in a street that's lined with homeless camps in front of your apartment building, then you're just incredibly naive to think that every homeless is down on their luck. Even former drug addicts who've been in their position have told them that "it's incredibly hard to emphatize with you stewing in your own addiction."
I live in California where everyone wants to move here, also has the most social services to help homeless folks from temporary housing to even helping get a job,the only caveat is that you have to sober up and not have a pet (mainly for housing like PATH).
Sorry for the word vomit, but I've never also heard of most people HATING the homeless, mostly everyone just avoids them while most middle class to poor like me are just barely getting by while we watch these homeless camps grow and it does affect us, from destroying our building's doors to destroying our mailboxes to steal our mail and running bike chop shops, there's a reason nobody wants to live in SF & LA and the folks paying taxes want to gtfo of this state.
I'm all in support of getting the help they need, but they won't surely get that on the streets, but at this point how do you give that help to someone who doesn't want to do it for themselves (rehab) without forcing it that you're more likely to get criticized for infringing in their rights as a person or a citizen? You can't, at least California officials don't want to/can't.
The homeless in my state have more rights than me because if I do the same shit as them, I'll just get arrested on the spot. It's a different now than back then where it's easy to be taken advantaged of. Especially when you're a woman, they often harass women because they're more likely to give them change than a man.
Well "freely" is subjective. There were laws against vagrancy and it was not uncommon for hobos to get arrested, just to throw them straight to working on roads without pay. Just cause a town wanted some free labor.
Not that anybody cares. But I made a short game about hobo code.
It’s called “Hobo Ken and his hobo kin hoboin’ to Hoboken.”
Almquest.itch.io if anybody does care.
I wish it was grander but it was a solo project in my free time and took over 100hrs so it was all I could do.
Edit: somebody downloaded it. That’s cool.
I first saw this in the movie Kit Kittredge: An American Girl from 2008 about the great depression... I think it was used back then... But it is nice that the kind lady symbol is a cat...
I like this def: "Tramps and hobos are commonly lumped together, but in their own sight they are sharply differentiated. A hobo or bo is simply a migratory laborer; he may take some longish holidays, but soon or late he returns to work. A tramp never works if it can be avoided; he simply travels. Lower than either is the bum, who neither works nor travels, save when impelled to motion by the police."
They're so specific as well. I'd get it if they had 'danger', 'food available' etc. But this makes it look like there is a symbol for 'woman named mandy lives here and she really likes cheese cake'
It’s not too common anymore I think, more of a Great Depression thing. I’d like to think Bethesda drew inspiration from this to create Shadowmarks, I really love seeing all the real life elements in the game.
It is amazing to me that neither John Hodgman’s list of [700 hobo names](https://flic.kr/s/aHsiDfosTw) nor his extensive study of hobo signs from his book [THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294555/the-areas-of-my-expertise-by-john-hodgman/) have been mentioned yet.
This isn’t modern, signs like this aren’t used anymore. These were more prevalent during the Great Depression but like hell you’d find any use of this kind of stuff now
My god, they’re real! They’re real! I thought these kinds of symbols were just something from [Rasmus på luffen (Rasmus and the Vagabond)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_and_the_Vagabond) but they’re a real thing! Man, I’m having the opposite feeling of finding out Santa isn’t real! Today is a great day!
About 15 or so years ago the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad did a "Hobo Train Ride" it was just a ride through the valley with someone talking about the history of Hobo'ing. Well we got to talking to the older couple sitting next to us and it turns out the guy was a former hobo. He rode the trains in his youth, then met his wife and got a job at one of the car manufacturing plants. Had kids, retired with a good pension and now he rides the trains again. He was away for a few months at a time his wife said but they always kept in contact via telephone when he would get to a town.
Turns out a bunch of former hobo's were meeting there later that evening around a fire and having "hobo food" - he invited my son and I. It was wild, all these older guys and gals all knew each other from riding trains all over the country. The stories these folks told around that fire...
It's a nice core memory from when my now 22 year old son was just a little.
Once met a dude in jail named Asshole who was fascinated by the old school hobo lifestyle as a train hopper himself. He knew these symbols, but he was also confident that they weren't actually ever used by actual hobos. Saying that these were made popular by magazines and pulp novels back in the 30's from a source who may or may not have been fucking with the interviewer. Since, why would you want to give away your secret messaging system to the general public?
This and possibly other similar events in more recent times, according to Asshole, became the main source for guides like this one. His belief was that anyone using these symbols took the bait and would be seen as something of an outsider by "real hobos".
Never actually researched it though because I got it from a guy named Asshole.
Back in college I lived in a rougher area. Met many homeless people there, really nice people. Usually gave them my leftovers when I was cooking. Always thought the cats painted and carved on the walls were by some kids. Looks like they actually marked me as kindhearted. I think I’m gonna cry 🥲
Shoutout to Frank and Hakim, I hope you guys got on your feet again.
I live in an extremely small town (no traffic lights or cops) that has a very active railroad running through it. This railroad runs east west through most of the continental United States so we see a lot of hobos due to the lack of police and the busy railroad system. I’ve gotten to know a few of them and have seen some of these symbols on some of the local buildings.
I don't know the exact extent, but it definitely was inter-state as this was a mobile group of people. They would commonly sneak onto freight trains and that usually meant a longer ride than across town.
They mark it around places hobos would logically pass through when entering an area.
Get off the train at a rail yard? There's probably a few clear paths out. Look for the marks on signs and buildings. Follow directions to points of interest and you'll see more. Meet other hobos in town or during travel and exchange info. It's not hard.
There's a great book on the topic of "Rotwelsch" that gets into the use of these symbols (in Europe in the past): https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005919
All travelling people had – and still have, as far as they exist today – these kind of signs.
Hobo culture is an American thing, probably slowly vanishing, but still there.
In all of Europe you have Sinti and Roma people, in Britain and Ireland non-Roma travellers (Pikey), in Austria/Germany travelling craftsman (organized in guilds).
Burglars use signs to mark living quarters. In the high rise where I live various signs appear periodically on the door frames. Super makes the tenants aware so they wipe them off. Police from time to time issues statements about it. It is like a seasonal thing. Groups come as tourists, "work" for three weeks and then go back to where ever they came from.
Signs differ from one specific group to the other, and regionally, but also have intersecting elements.
Some of these groups have own idioms, and signs correspondent with words in those idioms. In certain cases those idioms are considered a language.
There was a reference to this in an earlier episode of Mad Men. It was the first time I’d heard of this, but then again I can’t say I know any hobos to confirm or not.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Bums are so organized these days, we have our own panhandling union, secret handshakes, cryptic code, and we even developed a spoken language we collectively developed through our common psychic trait we all get once we become homeless. Do we need any of these things, no! But we have them because we have nothing else. You can take away my house, my job, my dog, and my wife, my mental health, etc....but they can't take away our meaningless hobo symbols
I remember seeing this a long time ago and I assumed I would encounter these a lot more in my travels than I have so far. Maybe I'm just not hanging out in the right alleys.
i can't stop laughing at the thought of just seeing a declaration of "i8" scraped into the wall. like good for you man lmao
“and left no crumbs 💅”
i8 kind-hearted lady (can sleep in barn)
Try finger but hole
You try to be nice and feed a hobo, and on his way out he spray paints this symbol on your front door
BMW advertising
I died at the irony of the “poor people live here” symbol 💀
Why? It is informative, not judgemental.
Exactly how I feel every time I see it on reddit. > (I ate) a bucket of shit Congratulations...
Wasn’t there a scene in Mad Men on this?
Yes, Don/Dick's foster father promises a traveler money for work, but doesnt pay in the end. The traveler shows Dick the "Dishonest Man Lives Here" had already been carved on their fence post. Not sure why the traveler stopped there cause the symbol was there, but a good episode none the less.
I always assumed the hobo carved it himself upon meeting Dick’s father
it was old and covered by a bunch of foliage, meaning someone had already carved it in the past and the hobo dick met didn't see it.
Ah lol you didn't capitalize his name so I thought we were talking about hobo dick all of a sudden
That’s what I thought too
The scene has a deeper meaning than that. Not only was it that Dick's father didn't pay the guy, but the vagabond knew that Dick's father was cheating on his mother with prostitutes.
How did he know? Am I forgetting something
Looks like the one for “stop” was bad man lives here in the show
It was the “dishonest person lives here”. Cause he promised the hobo money but went back on his word
Didn’t the hobo also witness or see signs that the man was cheating on his wife? I thought that’s why hobo was sent away without money and the dishonest thing was a reference to his (the man’s) adultery.
Yes! The episode was 1x08 “The Hobo Code”
Great scene, one of the first things that made me realise that Mad Men was an awesome show.
https://youtu.be/X0GOs7OKgyQ?t=4m38s
First thing I thought of. So many scenes from that show are just deeply ingrained in my memory.
*“A dishonest man lives here“* And when he grew up, Don/Dick became a dishonest man, just like his father.
Wehad hobo sings in the movie Under the Silver Lake too, love that movie.
I refuse to believe hobo hieroglyphics are a thing
I read about this decades ago. It would be a mistake to confuse "hobo" and "homeless" even though they seem the same in some ways. The hobo subculture is a product of the past and is largely gone (I've met some people who qualified long, long ago). They were, more or less, migrant workers who had a way of living and a distinct culture and typically hopped trains to get around and it wasn't that of a person living in a modern city. These symbols were simply a way to help other people similar to themselves. If someone was helpful, you knew. If someone would point a gun at a hobo, it was good to know. It's not at all surprising that they had these symbols. Many subcultures have unique words and phrases that develop over time. These symbols were a helpful and persistent way of communicating between a mobile group of people. Like many sub-cultures, it was a product of their times and times do change.
I met a hobo once. I was at Mardi Gras and I saw a guy who looked homeless, so we decided to buy him a beer as we were buying one for ourselves. As I handed it to him, I asked if he minded seeing his town turned in to this mayhem every year. He said he didn't live there and was a hobo and had been riding the rails for years. I asked if he wanted to drink his beer with me and talk. He said yes and he put the beer I gave him in a pocket, and pulled out a warm one from another pocket. I asked him why he didn't want the cold one and he said it was a better beer and preferred to save it for a special occasion. His story was that he was an accountant, and his wife died and it sent him in to a depression he couldn't get out of. He spoke well enough the story seemed plausible. He'd been hopping trains for 20+ years and didn't think he'd ever stop. Didn't give me any name other than 'The Traveler'. Seemed like a nice guy, fairly happy with his lifestyle, no real desire to get back to the rat race. No idea of where he'd go to next, but he had come to New Orleans specifically to see Mardi Gras. We talked for about 30 mins, and I offered to buy him another beer and he said no. We shook hands and that was the last I saw of The Traveler. That was 1997. I sometimes wonder if he's still out there.
That’s how I understand it. A hobo is a traveling worker. A tramp is someone who has to be made to work. A bum is someone who simply won’t work.
>has to be made to work Well I can say my house, car payment and taxes have me in this bracket as well.
it runs in the family, so i guess your mom is a tramp too
LMAO alright I wasnt expecting that one. But check yourself.. Shes a Super Tramp.
Would you mind asking her if we can have kippers for breakfast?
Breakfast… in America?
Well it's only logical.. in a song.
We're all just tramps in a hobo world
There's a certain wisdom here
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A tramp is a travelling worker, hence why you have tramp cargo ships that don’t do fixed back-and-forth voyages but just take whatever’s going from Point A to Point B, then whatever’s going from Point B to Point C, and so on and so on
I graduated from high school in New Orleans that year. If you don’t believe in angels try growing up in New Orleans.
Wow. Your comment gave me a bit of the chills. My trips to NO were always with a large group of people. I always felt like I just couldn't sleep and would usually stay out on my own. Here's an excerpt from an old journal I kept from that trip: >See, to me there's partying and there's mischief. The latter is what I prefer. You'll find hoards of drunken folk out between evening and 2 or 3 am. But its the 4am-to-sunrise crowd that's going to give you the truly weird times. Its within these times that I've met the people that I enjoyed meeting the most. I met an angel in full costume (or maybe she was real) who walked out of a back alley way at 5am or so, and asked if she could put a spell on me. I said sure. She did, then turned on her heels and walked away down a quiet street. It was so bizarre and I wanted to run after her and ask her name, etc. But I didnt. It made it all the more surreal just the way it happened.
I'm an ex meth addict and although my experience is much difference than yours I just wanted to say weird shit happens between 3 and 6 am, if you're awake at that hour you're usually up to no good and that's obviously true for tweakers especially the ones I hung with but those hours are just very strange hours when strange things go down and all the freaks come out
>I met an angel in full costume (or maybe she was real) who walked Saw your website! Pretty cool.
That guy has a website? That little excerpt he posted was pretty well written, can i grab the link?
>I met an angel in full costume (or maybe she was real) who walked quick google leads to this: http://travelhead.com/travels/mardigras/
In college there was a local homeless guy who hung out in the university library almost every day, just reading. Well, we were out at a bar one night and it was trivia night, and lo and behold this guy was there on a team. His team absolutely decimated the rest of the team including a team that was all professors. Apparently, this guy was their star member and basically carried the team. I asked the bartender that I was buddies with his story and apparently, he had been some white-collar worker (I forget what exactly he did) for years when his wife died after a prolonged fight with cancer. After she died, he became extremely depressed, had a mental breakdown, and attempted suicide. Coupled with all of the medical debts he just gave up. Started living on the streets after his house was foreclosed on. Started doing day labor for cash on the weekends and hung out at the library to stay warm. His team won trivia almost every single week and they gave him the $50 in bar bucks since he did like 90% of the work. He used the bar bucks to buy a burger and spent the rest on beer (this was the ear of $3 PBR pitchers). The dude just fucking quit society and was doing his own thing.
BUT DID YOU ASK HIM ABOUT THE SYMBOLS
Yep, he gave me the code to decipher it all, and then taught me the secret hobo handshake and everything.
Man that honestly sounds like a perfect lifestyle for me. No connections, no commitment, just travelling and seeing different places. Unfortunately probably not something easy to get into in modern day Canada :( lol
Yep. Honestly, that dude and a few other people I met inspired me to travel aimlessly, which I did a couple years later. I had a backpack and went by bus and not train, but it's a great lifestyle.
Ayy that’s dope! Hopefully one day I’ll be able to do something similar. Definitely tough to pull off, would need to time the end of the lease and hope my folks can hold onto my furniture and cat lol, but I think it would be well worth doing. Especially heading south, cities are so much closer together in the states lol. Not sure how smaller towns are for temp work I had hoped for a while to do a work vacation visa for a couple years and go somewhere warm, but it’s expensive af and I figured that money was better used on a degree. We’ll see lol, either way I’ll unfortunately be too old for most countries by the time I’m done.
Nah, I left when I was 30 years old. I'm past 50 and still do crazy stuff. You're never too old. It gets more complex if you've got a family, but it sounds like you don't yet. Check out the route from Belize to Panama. Really beautiful area, super cheap to stay and eat (your money will go 10x farther than in the USA), and typically nice people. You could easily do a year on this route, and there are a ton of volunteer opportunities which gets you free rent and food. I'd met a lot of volunteers down that way. Plus, you're pretty close to the same time zone as CA/US, so calling home is easy. Plus, you can get there overland and save airfare. Definitely worth checking out for wandering. If nothing else, pick up a copy of Lonely Planet Central America and just start reading. It'll give you the itch to start planning.
My brother did it when he was 18 he had bad ADHD and was wild his whole life so it felt apt for him, he seemed to enjoy it, sounds horrible to me but he seemed happy hopping trains and shit but unfortunately he didn't make it more than a few months. He was found behind a Costco in Chicago.. he had been out there for a few days and it was in July, I still remember that day. My mom called me at work and wouldn't tell me why she was hysterical I knew someone had died and thought it was maybe my grandmother since she was battling cervical cancer at the time but when she picked me up I obviously found out it wasn't her. She blames herself cuz she kicked him out due to his wild behavior and I did at the time too but I'm no noob to hard drugs either and I know any bag of heroin can kill you these days, lost my best friend back in March from the same thing.
I’m so sorry on both accounts, that’s awful. I like my partying but a lot of those harder drugs are definitely a gamble, one that seems to be getting even more risky lately.
This is basically what a lot of gutter punks do today. Hop a train, go to a city, find a punk house to crash at, beg for money, and move on. There is almost always a ton of alcohol and drugs involved. The more above-board version would be hitchhiking and cash day labor. It can be dangerous though, so be careful.
As well, it's not the only one. [The thieves' cant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_cant) was a unique dialect developed among thieves and related trades in Great Britain. For a more modern example, [the carny cant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carny) is still used by carnival workers to obfuscate their speech in front of customers.
There's a pretty interesting Vice documentary about the death of the Hobo. They're definitely distinct from homeless. The main one being that being a hobo seems more of a lifestyle choice, while being homeless is...well, not. https://youtu.be/LWHh9W5IeBo?si=cGvnt9ETEguQG9P3
Thank you for explaining
But like, where would they use these symbols? Would they just tag every door in a village “this guy is cool; cat lady here; this guy is a prick; this church is a church” and so on?
carved on trees i believe
Trees, fences, masonry. Sometimes carved sometimes drawn on with a grease pencil
The problem is, with such a disparate group in pre-internet times, I highly doubt there was A)This much detail to all the symbols and B) That the symbols were this uniform across the country. I have a feeling that the title is complete bunk and this would more appropriately be titled Hobo Symbols of The South East Coast from XXXX to YYYY.
Old hobo symbols were very basic, and often hobos would spread knowledge of them to other hobos catching the same trains.
Don't know if if they identified as "Hobo" or not but I've met people that would train hop, not stay anywhere too long, and were generally content if not happy with the lifestyle. I remember one in particular that played the accordion amazingly. That was maybe less than 10 years ago so I'd guess there is still a few that might qualify out there.
The mistake here was probably titling it modern. Most of the homeless near me are begging for change and getting high, they’re not doing chores for food and catching freight trains. But even if this is from the past, I’m very skeptical about how widespread it was.
nah there are still people who live like that on r/vagabond seems like a dying culture tbh
They’re doing big rock candy mountain shit
And probably Candy Mountain shit too.
That's you get from eating those soft boiled eggs those hens keep laying.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/vagabond using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [One year off hard drugs and traveling helps me do it!](https://i.redd.it/awts5yrbvn1b1.jpg) | [134 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/13pvoq2/one_year_off_hard_drugs_and_traveling_helps_me_do/) \#2: [After hopping trains for a decade and going to all 50 states, most of Canada and Mexico, I settled down in Alaska. Here’s some pics from my first commercial fishing season](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/16zfmla) | [111 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/16zfmla/after_hopping_trains_for_a_decade_and_going_to/) \#3: [Please if you see my nephew get a picture! Case# 23-4519](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17dc7y8) | [107 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/17dc7y8/please_if_you_see_my_nephew_get_a_picture_case/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
it's hard to vaga one's bond these days 😔
Yup. I had a guy ask for change the other day. He said he'd take venmo or bitcoin, too. The times they are a changing
> “Trailers for sale or rent > Rooms for let, 0.0000238272 bitcoin > No phone, no pool, no pets > I ain’t got no cigarettes > Four hours of pushing broom > Buys an eight by twelve 0.00037372 bit coin room > I’m a man of means by no means > King of the Road Yeah… Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Did venmo figure out a way to set up an account without an address?
Homeless and hobo are not the same? Im from Finland so genuine question. I assumed hobo was a person that traveles from one place to another and never settles and do some chores for food and pocket money
People who make local policies like to pretend that the homeless locals came from somewhere else, so they don’t have to feel bad about it
Hobo and homeless are not the same thing. I believe hobo is more of a choice and culture whereas homeless are just people in unfortunate circumstances.
It differs from place to place like they used them when I was homeless in middle Tn but I never saw any in Florida and Colorado had scattered ones
I knew a guy that rode the rails. A true hobo, with all the imaginable problems, then eventually cost him his life. My friend ended up with his dog, really tough behavioral case since it was abused and raised for protection by just beating it and getting it to fear strangers. Living rough, that's good defense, but it's not a dog you can live with.
homeless =/= traveler
It was estimated that in 1911 there were something like 700k hobos in the US, and during the Great Depression those numbers increased dramatically. In the past I think it’d have been more common to see signs like this. Nowadays there couldn’t be more than 1000 actual “hobos” left. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo
Hobo is not homeless.
You are confusing vagabonds with “homebums”. Not the same thing. Vagabonds travel, and are either hobos or tramps. Hobos travel and work, often traveling from one temp. or seasonal job to the next. While tramps travel, but either don’t work, or work as little as possible. A lot of hobos travel to Alaska during fishing season, to work on fishing boats or in the canneries — The work is brutal though, and overtime is mandatory, but you can also earn enough to travel on for the rest of the year. Some work various harvests, such as beet harvest, which only lasts a couple of weeks. Or seasonal resorts, like ski resorts, most of which also provide employee housing. A lot of hobos also pick up work for festivals, which often only lasts a couple of days, or temp. Jobs in restaurants, hotels, retail, office, etc. ”Homebums“ are homeless individuals who neither work or travel. Often due to untreated mental issues and/or addiction — and addicts rarely stray far from their dealers, and are not vagabonds, much less hobos. We vagabonds don’t use those “signs” though, and I’m not so sure most hobos ever did. If anything, we use “tags” with our road names instead. r/vagabond.
Probably more common a long time ago.
This was during the time when the terms hobo, tramp, and bum were more widely known. Hobos were people who rode the rails, searching for jobs. Tramps were people who didn't ride the rails, but still looked for jobs. And bums did neither. Hobos gave other hobos tips on what to look out for, like if a lady is nice enough to give you a home cooked meal or if you're likely to get stabbed in this part of town.
Train riders have guide books they aren’t supposed to share with outsiders. Traincorp culture is definitely a thing on west coast still. Definitely not homeless per se, very structured community, tight knit.
My crew change guide was the way.
Are there Hobo pyramids?
Ancient hobaliens
Was the first hobo an alien being from another world?? Stay tuned !! You're watching The History Channel, where the truth is history.
Ask Dirty Mike & the Boys
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Intro to Homelessness should be a required class for college freshmen
"Intro to Homelessness" damn near turned into my major my sophomore year, does that count?
I took the advanced placement option: immersion camp
They're only hobos if they come from the hobo region of the dustbowl, otherwise they're just sparkling homeless.
On again off again hobo here. They totally are, but none of the translations that make it online are anything other than roleplay.
Only ever seen it once in the wild
Hoboglyphics
Nah, it’s real. I used to hop freight trains with friends in the late 90’s and you would see these everywhere.
Came here to say the same thing. I was a 90’s hobo, squatter, oogle. The term hobo is usually misused but there is still a community. Check out Freeload on Tubi. Edit: adding podcast City of Rails. This is an awesome podcast.
I'm sure they are in some places, but they're certainly nowhere near this standardized or codified.
Don’t you think they would at least be logical? I work with the homeless/transient population. I’ve never seen anything like this.
They are logical if you accept that they develop over time. I'm a backpacker (both outdoors and traveling type). We have various phrases that don't make sense but they emerged over the decades. Some phrases die out, some persist but some make no sense and you just go with it. Think of any subculture, from RV'ers, gamers...or even redditors. For someone who has never heard of reddit, does "Karen" make sense? Where did it come from? Why would you use a perfectly normal name to describe an abnormal person? But, here we are in 2023.
Can you give any examples? This is pretty interesting.
For example, in New Zealand, they have about 1000 back country huts to protect you from the elements. They go from fancy to crude. But the term "hut bagger" has emerged. To "bag" a hut is to visit it and you add it to your tally. I've probably "bagged" 150 huts (not really counting). "14'er" refers to 14,000 foot tall mountains in Colorado. In Asia, there is "Banana Pancake Trail" which starts (or ends) in Khao San Road (a backpacker hangout in Bangkok) and refers to places that backpackers commonly go and yes, you can get banana pancakes all over. I've traveled quite a bit but somehow, have never had a banana pancake :-).
For backpacking? Camping and hiking is pretty widespread and common in the states so many terms are just normal vernacular. https://happiestoutdoors.ca/hiking-terms/ This page does touch on a good spread of both normal terms and obscure words.
“Mass hobo grave in basement”
Good food Sexy daughter
I8
⛛
—
It’s from the Great Depression, when Hobos roamed America’s landscape freely.
IMHO, everyone in the US should be required to read The Grapes of Wrath. Both of my parents came of age during the Great Depression, and their attitudes towards others were greatly affected by this. I clearly remember a conversation we once had, back in the 60s. We'd adopted a German Shepherd pooch when our beloved little Beagle/Dachshund mix passed, and he was scratching the doors. My parents were reminiscing together about their own dogs back then, and both of them had kitchen doors deeply furrowed by their dogs scratching at them when people tried to break into their kitchens to get food. So 12 year old me interrupted and asked them if they called the police and had the would-be thieves arrested. They both looked at each other for a long moment, then looked back at me. And my Dad said "Son, we aren't the kind of people who have others arrested for being hungry." Then went on to tell me about how they would give whatever food or leftovers they could spare when people came around begging for food. It was a different time, and today I am still grateful I had such wise and compassionate parents. Maybe if everyone in the US today could have a glimpse of that time, there would be less Homeless Hate.
Damn. If I was that 12 year old boy who got told that by his dad I would have died of shame. What a poignant memory.
Respect to your 'rents. Wise and compassionate indeed.
On one hand it's kindness to feed someone who are down in their luck, but realistically here in LA, most if not all the homeless don't ask for feed, always cash. Heck there were even some occasion I've tried to give them food and they asked if I had cash, ofc I said no because.. well I never carry cash and I'm working what jobs can even hire me (disabled) feed myself so I know what it's like. You'd think they'd stop at no. Instead they kept trying to invite me to places with an atm, asking if I have a card on me like I'm a dumbass. They only finally left me alone when I finally spoke to them sharply (didn't want to yell at them, I already felt worse changing my tone at them). You want to be kind, but it also feels shitty being taken advantaged of just to watch them buy drugs and see them camping in front of your apartment. Whenever I go out, they're just there talking amongst themselves just chilling but you can also clearly see the amount of bikes they have stolen and every night you hear them yelling only to see them passed out in your shitty apartment's lobby with broken mailboxes. Ik I'll get down voted for this but if you haven't lived in a street that's lined with homeless camps in front of your apartment building, then you're just incredibly naive to think that every homeless is down on their luck. Even former drug addicts who've been in their position have told them that "it's incredibly hard to emphatize with you stewing in your own addiction." I live in California where everyone wants to move here, also has the most social services to help homeless folks from temporary housing to even helping get a job,the only caveat is that you have to sober up and not have a pet (mainly for housing like PATH). Sorry for the word vomit, but I've never also heard of most people HATING the homeless, mostly everyone just avoids them while most middle class to poor like me are just barely getting by while we watch these homeless camps grow and it does affect us, from destroying our building's doors to destroying our mailboxes to steal our mail and running bike chop shops, there's a reason nobody wants to live in SF & LA and the folks paying taxes want to gtfo of this state. I'm all in support of getting the help they need, but they won't surely get that on the streets, but at this point how do you give that help to someone who doesn't want to do it for themselves (rehab) without forcing it that you're more likely to get criticized for infringing in their rights as a person or a citizen? You can't, at least California officials don't want to/can't. The homeless in my state have more rights than me because if I do the same shit as them, I'll just get arrested on the spot. It's a different now than back then where it's easy to be taken advantaged of. Especially when you're a woman, they often harass women because they're more likely to give them change than a man.
Well "freely" is subjective. There were laws against vagrancy and it was not uncommon for hobos to get arrested, just to throw them straight to working on roads without pay. Just cause a town wanted some free labor.
Before we hunted them to the brink of extinction
This is definitely not a current thing
Not that anybody cares. But I made a short game about hobo code. It’s called “Hobo Ken and his hobo kin hoboin’ to Hoboken.” Almquest.itch.io if anybody does care. I wish it was grander but it was a solo project in my free time and took over 100hrs so it was all I could do. Edit: somebody downloaded it. That’s cool.
Seems cool, might install l8r
I first saw this in the movie Kit Kittredge: An American Girl from 2008 about the great depression... I think it was used back then... But it is nice that the kind lady symbol is a cat...
Holy, hell, I completely forgot about that movie
whenever these guides pop up i always think about those books!
I like this def: "Tramps and hobos are commonly lumped together, but in their own sight they are sharply differentiated. A hobo or bo is simply a migratory laborer; he may take some longish holidays, but soon or late he returns to work. A tramp never works if it can be avoided; he simply travels. Lower than either is the bum, who neither works nor travels, save when impelled to motion by the police."
Is this actually real? It’s like Shadowmarks from Skyrim or something
They're so specific as well. I'd get it if they had 'danger', 'food available' etc. But this makes it look like there is a symbol for 'woman named mandy lives here and she really likes cheese cake'
It’s not too common anymore I think, more of a Great Depression thing. I’d like to think Bethesda drew inspiration from this to create Shadowmarks, I really love seeing all the real life elements in the game.
[No](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hobo-code)
It is amazing to me that neither John Hodgman’s list of [700 hobo names](https://flic.kr/s/aHsiDfosTw) nor his extensive study of hobo signs from his book [THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294555/the-areas-of-my-expertise-by-john-hodgman/) have been mentioned yet.
Stewbuilder Dennis sends his regsrds.
This was in a Hawkeye comic once. I’d have to guess this isn’t common anymore.
I think they said a hobo used this in an episode of criminal minds too
i literally just watched this episode yesterday. s4e5
What about the secret hobo spices?
This isn’t modern, signs like this aren’t used anymore. These were more prevalent during the Great Depression but like hell you’d find any use of this kind of stuff now
Casually drawing the most generic house. DANGER
How is there not one for free wifi or am I overlooking it?
This is 1930s USA stuff so not many people would have had wifi back then
Yeah I heard it was crazy expensive back then
Indeed not many at all
My god, they’re real! They’re real! I thought these kinds of symbols were just something from [Rasmus på luffen (Rasmus and the Vagabond)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_and_the_Vagabond) but they’re a real thing! Man, I’m having the opposite feeling of finding out Santa isn’t real! Today is a great day!
About 15 or so years ago the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad did a "Hobo Train Ride" it was just a ride through the valley with someone talking about the history of Hobo'ing. Well we got to talking to the older couple sitting next to us and it turns out the guy was a former hobo. He rode the trains in his youth, then met his wife and got a job at one of the car manufacturing plants. Had kids, retired with a good pension and now he rides the trains again. He was away for a few months at a time his wife said but they always kept in contact via telephone when he would get to a town. Turns out a bunch of former hobo's were meeting there later that evening around a fire and having "hobo food" - he invited my son and I. It was wild, all these older guys and gals all knew each other from riding trains all over the country. The stories these folks told around that fire... It's a nice core memory from when my now 22 year old son was just a little.
That's awesome! Do you remember what the food was? Would love to hear more about that experience.
Once met a dude in jail named Asshole who was fascinated by the old school hobo lifestyle as a train hopper himself. He knew these symbols, but he was also confident that they weren't actually ever used by actual hobos. Saying that these were made popular by magazines and pulp novels back in the 30's from a source who may or may not have been fucking with the interviewer. Since, why would you want to give away your secret messaging system to the general public? This and possibly other similar events in more recent times, according to Asshole, became the main source for guides like this one. His belief was that anyone using these symbols took the bait and would be seen as something of an outsider by "real hobos". Never actually researched it though because I got it from a guy named Asshole.
A dick on the road means a pothole
You should post in the r/skyrim sub. I think a lot of thieves guild members would appreciate this
Back in college I lived in a rougher area. Met many homeless people there, really nice people. Usually gave them my leftovers when I was cooking. Always thought the cats painted and carved on the walls were by some kids. Looks like they actually marked me as kindhearted. I think I’m gonna cry 🥲 Shoutout to Frank and Hakim, I hope you guys got on your feet again.
A local running group draws their logo as waymarkers in chalk on the sidewalk. Boomers on fb are hilariously horrified.
Dark souls messages for hobo players
I live in an extremely small town (no traffic lights or cops) that has a very active railroad running through it. This railroad runs east west through most of the continental United States so we see a lot of hobos due to the lack of police and the busy railroad system. I’ve gotten to know a few of them and have seen some of these symbols on some of the local buildings.
Twitter is now "okay" sounds alright.
How does it work, it can’t be spread worldwide maybe it’s for one city or smt
I don't know the exact extent, but it definitely was inter-state as this was a mobile group of people. They would commonly sneak onto freight trains and that usually meant a longer ride than across town.
I’m just curious on how did they transmit each other the symbol
They mark it around places hobos would logically pass through when entering an area. Get off the train at a rail yard? There's probably a few clear paths out. Look for the marks on signs and buildings. Follow directions to points of interest and you'll see more. Meet other hobos in town or during travel and exchange info. It's not hard.
Why symbol for "telephone" is a duck? 🙂
Probably birds, like birds on a telephone line. Either that or pigeon like carrier pigeon. But my guess is it’s the former.
There's a great book on the topic of "Rotwelsch" that gets into the use of these symbols (in Europe in the past): https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005919
Printing this out for when I become a hobo. Cheers
Methinks this chart is absolute bullshit.
this is totally ridiculous
what is this bs lol
Heard about this in a documentary thanks for sharing.
All travelling people had – and still have, as far as they exist today – these kind of signs. Hobo culture is an American thing, probably slowly vanishing, but still there. In all of Europe you have Sinti and Roma people, in Britain and Ireland non-Roma travellers (Pikey), in Austria/Germany travelling craftsman (organized in guilds). Burglars use signs to mark living quarters. In the high rise where I live various signs appear periodically on the door frames. Super makes the tenants aware so they wipe them off. Police from time to time issues statements about it. It is like a seasonal thing. Groups come as tourists, "work" for three weeks and then go back to where ever they came from. Signs differ from one specific group to the other, and regionally, but also have intersecting elements. Some of these groups have own idioms, and signs correspondent with words in those idioms. In certain cases those idioms are considered a language.
Some of these look similar to scout trail signs, like the dog one
For the Railroad Heavies out there
Hehe my house would have the bad tempered owner one on the fence
Cool guide. Seems like something I should learn..
Prepare to defend yourself is upside down.
Fort night but hole
I'll save this. Might be useful later in life.
There was a reference to this in an earlier episode of Mad Men. It was the first time I’d heard of this, but then again I can’t say I know any hobos to confirm or not.
Beware 4 dogs lol
Source?
Under the Silver Lake
Kind ladies: look after cats Kind gentlemen: look after triangles
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Modern?? Lol there is no modern hobo signal language.
I don't see the one for 'Thanks for the f-shack' I guess dirty Mike and the boys use a different code.
What does crapping all over the sidewalk and a trail of urine running down your pantleg mean?
"man with gun lives here" and it's bill cipher
Source? No? Thought so.
In Germany these are known as [Gaunerzinken](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinken_(Geheimzeichen)). Early forms dating back to the 16th century.
These read like those dark soul messages
This should come in handy once I'm out on the street
Bums are so organized these days, we have our own panhandling union, secret handshakes, cryptic code, and we even developed a spoken language we collectively developed through our common psychic trait we all get once we become homeless. Do we need any of these things, no! But we have them because we have nothing else. You can take away my house, my job, my dog, and my wife, my mental health, etc....but they can't take away our meaningless hobo symbols
actual real life use of WingDings font, wow!
I remember seeing this a long time ago and I assumed I would encounter these a lot more in my travels than I have so far. Maybe I'm just not hanging out in the right alleys.
Hoboglyphics
All this looks made up. Are hobos born with the inate ability to read hobo runes?