Rough family, poverty. I grew up in council housing in West London, there was physical violence and there was crime everywhere around. I put myself on the streets to get myself away from the immediate physical danger and to prevent myself from continuing the vicious cycle of being nurtured in crime having that define my own life.
Whilst on the streets I hitch-hiked around, and as I did so I discovered that you slept during the day and kept your wits about you at night. It’s too cold some nights to sleep out, so then you move. Or crawl into a building site where others wouldn’t go and you’d be safe and mostly sheltered.
I eventually found that not being on the street at night was better than being on the street, since I was young I went to bars that had gigs. You could get in early before the gig started, so entrance was free. And then stay post-gig as a club would run until 3am at least. Some nights you’d meet students who would take an interest in the story and let you crash at theirs. Which is a free toast top-up and shower opportunity. I developed confidence from having to find these opportunities.
With the gigs settling in I would meet bands, and then they’d know me and give me free food from their riders. Eventually I knew a lot of the bands and I offered to run their T-Shirt stalls. This earned me money too.
Knowing the bands gave me exposure to them, so I wrote fanzines and sold those. You’d sell more fanzines if the band who were playing were on the cover… so I’d make only the insides, and produce covers according to who was playing.
Elastica took a shine to me so I followed them around, helped design their merchandise, run their paper mailing lists and sold T-Shirts. This led to the stock management thing, they purchased me an IBM computer which I put in the squat I then was living in. I built a program to manage their stock, then their mailing list, then tax reports of merchandise sold, etc.
Finally I ran into another band who I liked, and I offered all of the services I now knew how to do. The sales of merchandise, running of fan club, etc. They said yes, and I did that stuff and also acquired a modem (it was 1996 now). I taught myself HTML and PERL and made a website too.
Within 2 years I’d gone from the streets to employment in the music industry where programming was a core part of my job alongside selling merchandise. Later I worked directly for the label and by this time was off the streets properly with a flat-share with a girl I’d met in the music industry.
It makes a great tale, but not all of it was easy. Hunger was frequent, illness almost as frequent, cold nights scar your memory. I slept in some bad places at times, and other times managed to blag my way into some swanky places. It was ups and downs, but all of it was better than returning to the place where I had grown up. And the driving force in my life is to ensure that I never return to the place I came from, and to never go back to the streets. It’s a hell of a motivator.
— Hacker News | Ask HN: Cool Things You’ve Done (Brag Thread)
