Opie and Anthony's Homeless Shopping Spree

I dragged Ali along with me to The Mall at Short Hills for my first Opie & Anthony live event. I've been a fan since they were on WNEW, listening off and on from the end of high school through college until they were fired. I've been a fan since their return to XM Radio.

The Homeless Shopping Spree consists of O&A picking up a few homeless people in New York, driving them by bus to a mall somewhere in the area, providing them with a few hundred dollars and setting them loose with crowds of O&A fans along for the ride.

Detractors suggest that this event is a mockery of the homeless or exploitation. I disagree. Yes, O&A use the event for entertainment, but they also, along with very generous fans, provide the homeless participants with a considerable amount of money to buy warm clothes for the winter and a day as welcomed members of mainstream society with food and drink and a warm place to hang out.

The fact that they chose The Mall at Short Hills, one of the most upscale malls anywhere in the country, as the location for the 2006 version is great. It is relatively close to where I live, a very popular hang-out for the Ridge HS crowd (although I didn't run into any current or former students today) and the last place people expect (or want) to run into homeless people. The most entertaining part of the day was listening to O&A fans explaining the event to unsuspecting mall patrons. The looks of shock and horror as husbands and wives previously oohing and aahing over diamonds and expensive cars came face to face with a group of smelly men (not the O&A fans, the homeless) were priceless.

Ali and I got there early for a pre-O&A walk around the mall. Then we sat in my car and listened to the first hour and 45 minutes of the broadcast while the bus from NY made its way to the mall. We had more than one person curse or flip us off when we signaled that we weren't planning to leave our parking space. The place was packed.

We got into the mall again as the homeless participants and O&A staffers made their way into the mall. The crowds of fans were impressive as were the mall security and O&A security attached to every homeless participant. As we followed a couple of them around the mall, we'd hear cheers and boos erupt from other locations followed by chants of "Let the homeless shop" and "a**holes" as certain stores shut their gates to avoid the homeless shoppers. For those keeping score at home, or thinking about last minute shopping, The Gap was the least welcoming of all the stores in the mall, kicking out everyone associated with the shopping spree at one point.

Even Santa posed for photos with the crew. As the homeless men converged on a central point for photos with Santa, so did the throngs. We stayed up on the upper level for a better vantage point of the festivities which included singing "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

Most of the Short Hills shoppers assumed some celebrity was in their midst when they saw all the cameras and crowds. They were in for a shock when they realized it wasn't a sports star or Hollywood celebrity but guys by the (self imposed) names of Half a Hulk Face, Blue, Big Red, and Grey Wolf. I personally witnessed numerous fans providing the homeless men with additional cash above the American Express gift cards provided by O&A.

The mall security and local police were phenomenal. No major problems occurred even as huge crowds took over the mall for a couple hours. The additional revenue created by the extra 800-1000 people more than made up for the handful of local "outraged" by the "exploitation." Hopefully they left the mall, drove home in their Lexus SUVs to their warm and cozy McMansions and wrote a nice, big check to the charity of their choice. This may not have been a conventional way of supporting those in need, but these men left tonight having been adored celebrities for a few hours, with bags of coats, boots and gloves and a full stomach.