Christine Whyte talks to a familiar face on Kingsway

“Anywhere but Starbucks, I won’t drink coffee there” says Paulo. Interesting, an anti-globalistion strike against faceless clone high streets? No, “I might as well pour engine lubricant down my throat,” he explains as we try to find a quiet corner of Covent Garden serving decent coffee, where we can smoke and chat.

Paulo sells The Big Issue on Kingsway, a long way from his birthplace in Rome. He was born in Italy, and moved from there to the US several times in his youth. His mother is an American, who worked in art galleries in Rome and New York, his father an Italian director.  He describes his itinerant childhood as “not much fun. You’re always having to make new friends, you never really know where or who you are.”

Despite this, wanderlust has lead him from the University of Rome where he got a degree in Politics, to Mexico City, New York, LA, and multiple places in between, until finally he arrived in London, with 100 Euros in his pocket.

Why did you take such a risk?

“Why wait? If you are going to do something, you should do it right away”, Paulo tells me. After a life of travelling, he didn’t want to have any regrets for what he might have done. It is difficult to hear that and not feel a little stirring in the heart at the idea of moving to a strange city. Getting off the plane free from baggage, family and memories, with a few notes in your pocket and a rucksack on your back.

This romantic image is soon dispelled by the reality of Paulo’s situation. “I couldn’t get a job, because I didn’t have a bank account. Getting an account is very difficult if you are not from this country.” Paulo has two passports, American and Italian, but no permanent address, without that he can’t get a bank account, no bank account means no work.

He was in a hostel for while  and starting selling  The Big Issue to pay the rent. But living in a small room with seven other men, and several rats didn’t seem worth the money, so he moved into a squat.

How does squatting work?

You grab a crowbar, you pick an empty house. Paulo is laughing at the naïveté of imagining there is more to it than that. He lives with friends from the hostel, squatting alone would be impossible. They are an eclectic group of two Italians, two South Africans and a Chilean. Paulo describes them as “like a family”.

Appealing as the idea may be, free house, nice flat-mates, Paulo explains that it probably seems a lot more appealing from the outside. “I’m not complaining about my situation, it’s the system, not being able to get a job.” He’s been to various NGOs trying to get a bank account, Crisis, Shelter, the Big Issue Foundation. But, strangely he has some criticisms of the organisation that he works for.

What's the job like?

“The Big Issue doesn’t help me”, he explains “they are there to help the homeless but not the vendors.” Paulo buys the magazines from the Big Issue from 70p to sell them for £1.50. He flips the magazine open in front of me, pointing out one page after another. Each one has a large advert. The vendors are paying for their magazines, and they are getting money from advertisers.

He tells me that a man once asked, “Why doesn’t The Big Issue give away stuff like other charities, pens and things?” Paulo laughs, “I told him, The Big Issue is not a charity. The Big Foundation is, it helps homeless people, but The Big Issue is a business.”

Do you resent that?

“I don’t object to it, but I am amused by it.”  The Big Issue is like the Evening Standard, like any other business, all its money may go to the Foundation, but it needs to retain its staff. There’s no advantage to them losing their vendors.

“The only help vendors get, is to help themselves.” Paulo tells me. On occasion an area co-ordinator will give you some advice, but other than that the vendors are on their own.

This independence appeals to Paulo though, he describes as like running your own business, setting your own hours, being your own shop and picking your pitch.

“Strange as it sounds, it’s psychologically easier for me to see the The Big Issue than to be a waiter.” Paulo has worked in the past, done his compulsory military service in Italy, trained as a cameraman and worked in video-editing and post-production in Mexico City. He doesn’t want to be at the lowest rung of a management ladder, and sees The Big Issue as a way to earn money and be more independent.


What do you think of London, compared with everywhere else you've been?

“It’s nice, but it was better in the old days.” When Paulo was in London in the late eighties, he describes the political atmosphere as polarised. He thought that this polarised atmosphere allowed for more creativity, more ideas, challenging of the system. “I miss the Cold War,” he states, there were two real strong sides then, you knew who you were and where you were. There was a fear, of the other side, that something different might take over. Democracies were real democracies, the people in power had to sell themselves to you. Now, they can take their masks off, they have no real opposition.

Nowadays, politicians don’t need to tell you lies, it’s all about the context, how you say it. Nobody is lying anymore, but they manipulate the truth, leave parts out, give it a different meaning. In the old days politicians would lie like children, it was easy to spot and cry out as censorship. Now we censor ourselves, using political correctness to stop people talking about things.

Politics is like managing a business. The Americans are very honest about this, they call it an administration. It is a company and in politics you are making your bid to manage the company, do things a little differently. You can question how the business is run, the administration, but the business itself, the structure of it? That’s taboo.

Did you ever visit Easterm Europe?

“I was there in ’87 and ’89, it was perfect if all you were interested in was working and studying, but not so good for anything else. It was verygrey.”

And your political views?

“Certainly not what I found out there!” Paolo describes himself as a humanist, or a progressive. Much more left than the Democrats or Labour, which he describes as centre parties.  While in the US, in LA, he did some volunteering for the Greens, which he describes as the only left-wing party in America. “The labour movement there has been totally destroyed, there is no point talking about the Democrats reaching out to socialist Europe repression of the left-wing in America was total by the thirties.”

The LSE used to have a radical reputation, in the sixties, which we're trying to keep hold of. Do you think that is important?

“Maybe it is a mistake, keeping the past alive, instead of looking to the future.” Paolo believes that the sixties were a very particular time, defined by the huge figures that held sway then, Kruschev and Kennedy. There was a lot to angry about, which had died away by the 80s. Paolo laughs, remembering that he already said that was when he enjoyed the charged atmosphere of London political life. The 80s were definitely something different, at the time Paolo was enthused by the energy, the punks in King’s Road, the political debate. “I didn’t care about silly hairstyles”, he explains. Rather, it was the spirit of creativity, these people in the street, saying ‘this is me, this is who I am’.

Paolo thinks London has lost this feeling recently, the people are scared to vocalise themselves communicate who they truly are. You shouldn’t save your creativity or your expression for the pub or club.

How much do you chat to people? Is your smile a selling technique?

“What better way to sell is there but giving out good vibes?”  But he has some advice for The Big Issue buyers - no explanation is needed. When people stop and say, ‘Oh, I don’t have any money right now’ or ‘I’ll be back later to get one’ it is just not necessary. “Whatever the reason is, I’m still not getting my £1.50. I see people, counting change or whatever, and it seems to really pain them to have to say no, I would like to say to them ‘Relax, it doesn’t matter.’ For me it’s a binary system, you either buy it or you don’t.”

“I understand that other people are broke too, they are getting out off the Tube, counting their change, wondering if they have enough for a cup of coffee.”

How is your social life?

“Being broke has a very negative influence on your social life, it’s difficult to get out and meet people. If you are  saying to someone, ‘let’s go out, I’m broke, you have to pay for all the drink, and I’ll still be broke tomorrow,  and yeah, let’s go out tomorrow!’  it doesn’t help. Even your own mother wouldn’t want to hang out with you.”

Why do people buy The Big Issue?

“That to me, is a big mystery. Do they actually like the magazine? It proposes to talk about so many topics. Apart from that people might feel sorry for me, which is not a thought that makes me happy, I don’t know why they buy it.”

In the US The Big Issue is very different. Paolo describes it as just crossword, sodoku and jokes. It remained in that focused format in the US, while the export format was changed to a mix of listings, opinion, reviews and news.

“90% of people buy it because they feel they can help me, and they do. But I still want to ask ‘what do you find so great about these magazine?’”

It sounds a bit like The Beaver to be honest...

“Ah, but The Beaver is a newspaper, it’s meant to be about all sorts of shit. This is a magazine, it should focus on one topic.”