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>>Erik: What inspired your homeless philanthropy efforts, including Gotham Soup Kitchen?
>>Jason: Homelessness to me it`s just frankly ridiculous in the United States and I understand
it`s a very complicated problem and itÕs not as simple as saying just let the millionaires
pay for the people to get off the street because there are reasons why people are on the street.
I was in San Francisco. I`d seen a homeless guy out on the street and he asked me if he
could sing for me. He had a great voice, he sang, I sat down with him, we shared a pizza,
we started talking. A couple minutes later another group of people passed by and I was
sitting with him on his level, and these people were standing above us and they ignored him.
And just me having that perspective sort of looking up and being in his shoes for that
moment in time, I found that completely disgraceful because he`s a man, he`s a human being, just
like the people that were there ignoring him and sort of bringing that humanity back to
people when they see or hear or smell a homeless person, it`s the instant turnoff and it`s
not their problem, I wanted to do something about that but I didn`t know what it was and
so I took my love of food and created this show called Gotham Soup Kitchen, which was
basically your standard sort of food and chef cooking kind of show but it was on public
access in Manhattan and I did it in my Manhattan kitchen and I took all the food that I cooked
and went to the park near where I lived at the time and gave it all to the homeless guys
who I befriended over the course of the show which ran for 3 and a half years.
>>Erik: And how the how did they react as you brought them all the food and built a
relationship with them?
>>Jason: The guys, because they were all guys, the guys reacted the way that anybody reacts
whey you give them food. They didn`t react differently than if I were to give you food.
They weren`t like, ``Oh my gosh, I am so starving, thank you``, which Is what you would expect
. They took the food they said thank you very much, they asked what it was they asked
what was in it, we had a conversation about how I made it. All those kinds of things,
very, very regular conversations.