> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Surviving SM streets at age 22 - URL: https://www.smdp.com/surviving-sm-streets-at-age-22/ - Published: 2004-05-24T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T04:22:58.000Z - Author: John Wood - Tags: Health, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless *Cancer Alucard* PROMENADE — Cancer Alucard wants to be a rock star and a chemist, but first he needs to get off the streets of Santa Monica. Cancer, 22, whose real name is Jacob Wagenhals, wound up in Santa Monica by chance three years ago. Since then, he has spent less than a year living “inside.” His lives downtown, mostly on the Third Street Promenade. A foster child who suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Cancer was constantly at odds with authority figures growing up. After earning his GED and leaving home, he found himself homeless and checked into an Ohio mental health facility. “I had checked myself into a psyche ward because I had nowhere else to stay and there’s a vagrancy law in Ohio,” Cancer said in an interview last week. “So if you have nowhere to go, they throw you into jail. “It’s like illegal to be homeless, which is stupid.” After two weeks in the ward, Cancer decided on a whim to join a friend and venture to California on a Greyhound bus. He now sleeps on Community profiles is a weekly series that appears each Monday and delves into the people who live, work and play in Santa Monica. the patio of a restaurant downtown with his fiancé and three friends. The group of “street punks” rely mostly on the same services offered to local homeless — they take advantage of the feedings in local parks, and shower at the various shelters around town. Cancer’s aspirations are to become a rock star with his musician friends, or live inexpensively in Ohio and study to become a chemist. He also wants to get off the streets — but he said that’s not likely to happen until at least six months from now, when his friend’s fiancé is freed from a mandatory drug program. Here, the Daily Press caught up with Cancer and asked about life on the streets as a young man with a group of young homeless friends. How’d you end up in Santa Monica? “My friend called. He said he had two Greyhound tickets to California. He had been pondering this for four years and I had never even considered it, and I’m an Aries so I’m naturally very spontaneous. I thought about it for about two minutes and then I said, ‘Yes.’ Two weeks later we were on our way. “He randomly picked out Santa Monica on the map. For some reason he just pinpointed it, which is really weird because it’s the perfect place. It’s hard to be homeless here. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but there’s a lot of organizations here that help you. You have to be stupid to starve, or really lazy... It made it easier to be on the street, since we had never really been on the streets before.” Where do you sleep? “I’m not really going to disclose that because, you know, maybe somebody will get in trouble by it, but we have permission to sleep by the owner of the place. We’ve been sleeping there for about two weeks... “It’s a transitional phase so we can better ourselves. We don’t want to be on the streets, but we know we kind of have to right now... It’s really hard to get a job when you’re on the streets, seriously.” Can you describe the place where you sleep? “It’s a restaurant-type place, and we’re sleeping on their patio. It’s nice and closed in, so people don’t really see it, and we keep it nice and clean. “We’re not like other people who just trash the place. We respect the place. They’re letting us stay there. They don’t have to.” How many people? “The maximum that we told the guy would be staying there is five people. Me and my fiancé, and Zig and his fiancé, and now our friend Pupils. As soon as his fiancé gets out of jail we’re all getting married at once. “We’re doing some weird binding marriage where we’re all married to each other... We don’t know how it’s going to work out, but it’s going to be awesome.” What do you do for food? “Say on Thursdays there’s no feedings, and it’s really hard to get food. Sometimes we’ll sit there and we’ll do a sign, and we hate asking people for money. People think we enjoy doing it — people think we’re just lazy and we want to sit back and take money from you... That’s not the people I hang out with.” How much do you earn when you do panhandle? “Oh man, it’s unpredictable. Sometimes you can sit there for the whole day and not make anything, literally nothing at all. Other days you can sit there for 20 minutes and, depending on how clever your sign is... it’s limitless. I say, at max, like $300 in like three hours, but the odds of that happening are really rare.” What are some of your more clever signs? “The one I used for a couple days, I thought it was really clever — some of them are too clever — but this one said, ‘SOS,’ you know everybody knows what SOS means, but I changed it so it said, ‘SOS — Stranded On Streets.’ “Anything helps. Even though I don’t believe in God, I say ‘God bless’ because it’s polite. At least 75 percent of the U.S. is Christian.” Where do you shower? “Wherever we can. There’s a Dream Center place and in my opinion it’s seriously a cult, in my opinion. They’re like severe Christian... We force ourselves to go there just so we can shower and get some clean clothes and everything. We have to sit in a cramped bus all the way up to Echo Park and then ride all the way back. And we appreciate it, we really do, but it’s really hard to deal with. “We go to like the OPCC — there’s like different places that offer showers. If it were up to me, I’d shower three times a day. I love showers. I don’t like being dirty, which I think is a big misconception people have about homeless. “There are some people that don’t care, but me and my friends, most of the kids out here, we prefer to be clean, we like to dress nice. We would dress nice all the time, but say we had to ‘spange’ (ask for spare change) for something... we have to keep a pair of really crappy clothes, as much as we don’t want to. If we’re dressed nice, people aren’t going to believe we’re homeless. So we actually have to dress in the stereotypical garb, so we fit the stereotype. “People act like we don’t exist. And we prefer you say ‘No’ than act like we don’t exist, because that makes us feel very small, insignificant. That’s why you have a lot of people out here, homeless people that try to commit suicide.” Where do you want to be a year from now? “I want to be in Ohio. In Ohio, we can get, I could support, a four-bedroom house, 2.5 bath, central air, central heat, all amenities included for $675 a month, all by myself — and that’s considered expensive out there... “I say we’re going to push it for that one. We’re all going to go up there and camp out in the woods, or whatever, and try to get nice and clean, and work our asses off, basically try to sell ourselves so we can get hired and actually live.” What kind of work do want to do? “Basically anything I can get that pays at least, what, $6.50\. At least minimum wage.” You’re not picky? “If it’s something that’s repetitive it gets me after a while. I try to fight it... but it starts showing in my performance. I’ll zone out, and I won’t even realize I’m zoning out — and I either quit because I can’t handle it or they’ll fire me because they see my performance. “Most people just jump into college and take whatever course without ever thinking about it and end up with some crappy job. I can’t consider that an existence. “I want to be a chemist. I know I have the intelligence. I know it’s a lot of school. I don’t care. I know I have the intelligence to learn everything. It just seems like the perfect job for me because my drug of choice is created, is designed, by chemists and that way I could make it so it’s completely safe, once I know what I’m doing. “I can design it to where it doesn’t harm any part of my body whatsoever — and indulge in it responsibly every once in awhile.” What’s your drug of choice? “DXM.” What’s that? “It’s an opiate. It’s a disassociative anesthetic.” What does it make you feel like? “It all depends on the person... “First of all there’s the power of it. People will say it’s stupid because it’s not a real drug, but it’s more potent than anything else out there that I’ve tried, and it’s legal, so you can do it and not get into trouble for it.” If there’s one thing City Hall, the merchants or local residents could do to make life easier for you, what would it be? “The main thing, when you’re walking by, say you’re the manager of some place or something and you see somebody holding a sign, and you tell them to get a job — why don’t you offer them a job? Give them a chance... “Most of us out there, I can vouch for 75 to 80 percent, if you offer us a job and you let us know that you’re serious, if you offer us a job, I guarantee that we’ll take it. It’s not that we don’t want to work, it’s that people aren’t willing to hire us without a phone number and an address.” With the summer months coming, more and more young people take to the streets. But for Cancer, who was born Jacob Wagenhals, living on the streets of Santa Monica isn’t a seasonal affair. He’s been here three years. Born: April 2, 1982, in Rowan County, Kentucky. Background: A series of incarcerations, mostly as a young boy in Ohio. Cancer has ADHD and has attempted suicide twice. Family: Cancer is adopted and has an older sister who also is adopted. He said his parents, both teachers in Ohio, have resigned themselves to the fact that he needs to be doing what he’s doing right now. Aspiration: Become a rock star. Cancer said he and his friend hope to find a dedicated drummer and a bassist for their goth/industrial/rock/metal/emo band, “Malice in Wonderland.” Cancer plays the keyboard. Terminology: “Spange,” a verb meaning to ask for spare change. “Squat,” a noun describing the place where homeless people sleep. Hobbies: Collecting crystals, helping friends, playing music. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 24, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/052404.pdf?ref=smdp.com)