He confuses the sob sister on crutches

Is it turning into an outpost of skid row or what? I don't walk on Boylston st if I can help it. Love the T elevators, though

When I lived in DC there were a lot of low level scams like this, probably because the success rate was better with the number of tourists (read: rubes from the sticks) who would flock to the city. The beauty for them was they didn't have to alter their shtick once they found something that worked.

One of my favorites was the "guy who just ran out of gas and had left his wallet at home". It wasn't so much his story as the fact that he was always walking around with his props (an empty gas can and a set of keys with a large dangling key chain). I was surprised that after several years he hadn't learned to keep his tank full and his wallet on his person. One time a friend's mom & sister were visiting DC and were there for a day or so before I met up with them. Sister starts telling me about how mom doesn't believe that she had been taken buy the guy when she gave him $5. I describe him down to the key chain. Mom learns lesson.

Another good one were the guys who stood by the top of the metro escalator on the mall selling maps to the Smithsonian museums for a buck. Tourist hands them a dollar, then walks to the first museum of their choice and sees stacks of these maps for free. Nobody is going to get that mad over being taken for such a pittance so they are safe in the same location all day. A journalist once followed these guys at the end of the day and one of them took the metro out to a suburban station and drove a pretty nice car home. Turned out the guy was also getting a disability check and his wife worked full time so they were doing pretty well.

I listened to a guy's sob story on the redline platform here one time. He was trying to get $16 (a/k/a a twenty) to take the bus to Springfield to see his dying mom after forcing the doctors to release him from the VA hospital so he could get there (it was longer than that, a pretty elaborate tale actually). When the train pulled in I gave him $1 and told him that his story was bullshit, but I'd give him that for creativity. Three days later I see hm sitting on a bench on the common and stop for a moment to ask him how his mom is. The frozen look of horror on his face at being called out was almost worth another dollar.

It's nice being the dominator and not the dominated, isn't it?