Pimp This Bum: It's not what you think

Tim Edwards works to bring more attention to PimpThisBum.com



How a local website has changed the face of the fight against homelessness

By Andrea Afra

"I'm back in the fight. I'm tired of laying down. I'm tired of giving up. This life, it's worth fighting for. It's worth fighting for."

After starting an internet marketing company, Ascendgence, Kevin and Sean Dolan, a father and son team, decided to prove their effectiveness by creating a campaign to show that they could successfully drive attention to wherever they targeted. Their new project: PimpThisBum.com. They knew the name would induce visions of bum fights or worse, and either piss people off or make them laugh, but either way, it would stay in their minds.

"We knew that the same campaign with a sincere appeal, and a website like 'helpthehomeless.com' would be ignored. We knew that if we insulted people’s sensitivity or appealed to their humor on a subject as sensitive as this, we would get their attention," says Kevin Dolan, the father portion of the team.

Growing up as an Eagle Scout, his son Sean had always been active in the charitable sense, and while they were initially going to use a local Katy business as their case study, Sean had a different idea. And within a few months it was a success with 2.5 million visitors to the site. Their first recruit was a man named Tim Edwards. I watched the documentary style video on the homepage and saw a man who was humorous yet poignant, with a full beard, kind eyes, and a soft matter of fact voice, who seemed to be wanting nothing more than a chance to change his circumstances. In a losing battle against depression and alcoholism, he had found himself homeless and begging for money, a life he had lived for five years before PimpThisBum.com found him. After gaining news coverage, both locally and nationally, Tim has a new lease on life. Through the site they soon raised over $50,000 and the Sunray Treatment Center in Washington allowed Tim to enter their recovery program free of charge.



Tim and his friend Bobby, also once homeless, have redefined 'success'

It's the night before he leaves for therapy. Tim is sitting on the bed of a motel room, looking into a red heart-shaped compact mirror while he shaves off his long overgrown beard. Over the buzz of the electric razor he says with determination, ""I'm back in the fight. I'm tired of laying down. I'm tired of giving up. This life, it's worth fighting for. It's worth fighting for."

After he is freshly shaved, head and all, the Dolans read a letter to Tim from a man who had seen the news coverage and thought he might be his long lost cousin. Tim's mother and father had split up when he was just a small boy and though he lived with his mother, they too found themselves homeless for some time. She passed away several years ago, before he became homeless, and with all of his family gone, there was no one left to let down. The letter said his father had passed away a few years back, but there was still a big family left in Missouri and Tennessee and they all missed him. There is footage of his reunion with his father's family, including an uncle and aunt and a brood of little cousins. He also met his father's best friend who gave him his father's old harmonica.

"Bandmaster De Luxe Chromatic," he says with a sad smile holding it up for the camera.

After six weeks in rehab he returned to Houston and started hosting a nightly live web chat show online and on his 38th birthday the PTB chatroom folks bought him a new laptop. There is footage of this too and it is by far one of the most touching moments hearing him say that it was his best birthday ever.

I spoke with Sean, who lives with Tim at an extended stay motel. Tim now has job working as a machinist and carpenter and recently completed a project building scale models for an oil industry trade show. He is receiving life coaching courtesy of Balance Health and Wellness Center and with help from the donations, one of Tim's homeless friends, Bobby, has also taken control of his own life and found a job as a barista at a local cafe. They are celebrating their first paychecks together with a party at Cafe Cafe on the west side.

The last shot in the video is of Tim sitting at his newly found cousin Deb's house in Nashville, where he stayed for three months after his stint in rehab. He is sitting on a bench outside of a garden home. It is a beautiful day with flowers in bloom and birds chirping noisily over his low voice.
He looks healthy and handsome, with a jaw that looks strong enough to crush rocks. Wearing a crisp button down and slacks, he is speaking directly to other homeless people like him, but his advice is sage enough for anyone to heed.

"Don't give up. God made the way, but I had to actually do the work. I had to get up and start walkin'. Now I get to walk into the sunset and face new challenges."
And he is no longer alone as he meets new challenges, as he now has a cheer section of millions of friends and fans across the nation.

Meet Tim and Sean live and join the conversation Monday-Friday at 8pm central and Saturdays at 12pm at www.PimpThisBum.com

For more information and how you can be a part of this success story please visit
visit PimpThisBum.com, a non-profit charity

Greenbacks for Green Bins: A Letter of Thanks and Clarification for West Coast Donation to City of Houston

To: Mr. Stephen Elliot, Author and Founder of the Progressive Reading Series, San Francisco, California

From: Andrea Afra, Assistant Minister of Propaganda for the City of Montrose, Texas

Re: Donation for recycling bins

Dear Mr. Elliot,
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you and the San Francisco Progressive Reading Series for raising money to donate to the City of Houston for the purchase of recycling bins, as it will benefit not only Houstonians but Montrosians alike. We apologize for the red tape you faced when trying to make the donation, however it was not known who the proper parties were to handle the contribution, then the mayor's legal department had to be consulted with which determined that your signature needed to be obtained for a waiver stating that the mayor's acceptance of your contribution was not an endorsement of any political candidate or party. Again, thank you for your donation of $1,250 as it will help offset the taxpayers' cost of the Mayor of Houston's $600,000 green marketing campaign that has yet to show any progress.

We are aware that you became familiar with Houston's recycling program after reading a July 2008 New York Times article reporting on a national study of the thirty most populous cities in the country published by Waste News that ranked San Francisco as the top performing recycling city at 69%, while Houston, the fourth largest city, came in last place at 2.6%. San Francisco not only generates good money from recycling but sets a prime example of how to succeed without depending on public funds to do so. A private company handles SF's recycling service and gives part of that money to the city. There is no charge for bins or for collection as all of the costs are more than covered by reselling the materials.

The NY Times article stated that: "...25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city...but the city says it cannot afford more bins." As you wrote in your article published by Huffington Post, you felt that you could help out with this problem and raised enough money to purchase 276 bins, at $6.25 per unit. Here again we must apologize for any confusion. If you would have read further into the article you would have come across the quote from Mayor Bill White saying, "We (Houstonians) have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up."

What this translates to, Mr. Elliot, is "Houston doesn't give a shit about recycling." That is the overall attitude here. We are the energy capital of the world, yet we are the nation's worst recycling city. Over 160,000 residents have curbside recycling pick up service, but in many neighborhoods so few residents actually use the bins that it is not worth the cost of sending out the trucks. It won't get any easier than having someone come to your house twice a month and make your soda bottles and beer cans disappear, yet it is clear that people don't value the service enough to use it. Those who do utilize their bins run the risk of losing the service if their neighbors don't improve on their recycling efforts.

The citizens of Montrose would like to say that they are champion recyclers, leaders in the green movement, however we are just as apathetic as everyone else. We forget to put our bins out, we're not sure if we can recycle #2 plastics or #6, we don't even know our recycling day. Those who don't have city recycling pick up deem themselves exempt from having to recycle, which is bullshit. We will be the first ones to say that one shouldn't depend on their city for anything. There are plenty of ways to get rid of waste responsibly and we've devised a simple how-to guide for recycling in Montrose and Houston, and while it includes instructions on using public recycling services, we encourage the citizens to put other methods into practice as well.

Again, Mr. Elliot we'd like to thank you for your donation and hope to clear up the misconception that our atrocious performance may be contributed to by our need for more bins, when in truth our shoddy ranking is just a reflection of the value we place upon our environment. In the future, you may send contributions directly to the City of Montrose Recycling Fund which goes towards the purchase of unopened glass and aluminum containers of beer and other spirits so that they will be consumed and disposed of properly by responsible citizens, aka the Mayor and his loyal staff.

Our sincerest thanks and regrets,
The City of Montrose