When I first started following Jimi the Hobo, I don't know, maybe about a eight or nine years ago now, he was as his name suggested, truly a homeless hobo. Uploading YouTube videos from places like McDonald's, filming primarily from his only domicile, his car parked in the national forests around Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Not sure exactly the order, but over the years he got a shitty little apartment that he eventually got evicted from, he got a settlement from an old accident case that made him flush with thousands of dollars so he bought a brand new truck and a big fifth wheel but then I guess, according to him, his ex-wife sued him for that windfall and he had to sell it all to pay her off.
He flew to Cambodia for a few weeks to see if he could "make it there." Then he stayed with his mother in Crackheadland Lancaster, California for a while but they don't get along so that didn't last. His trolls even say he got physical with her.
Then he stayed with some old friends in the valley, his old stomping grounds. But apparently he screwed them over and was soon out of there and we never heard hide nor hair of them again.
Then Jimi went to TJ. Stayed in several fleabag hotel rooms, drank mainly at the small outside bar of the Hotel Nelson. Filmed the hookers in the Zona Norte and gained a lot of followers due to this. The next few months would be him going back and forth between Tijuana and working as an Uber driver in LA living in cheap motel rooms.
Then a party-lovin' plus-sized Latvian-Canadian lady subscriber named Heilika contacts him, they meet up and they fall in "love." Or at least co-dependent lust for booze, drugs and kinky sex. Together they trial live together in Vancouver, her home, then, mainly due to the ultra-restrictive Canadian lockdowns during the height of Covid, they fly down to Puerto Vallarta and pretty much ride out the pandemic there hopping from one Airbnb to another.
Got to say, made for some interesting videos, but decidedly not hobo-esque. Five star accommodations, Margaritas on the beach, palm trees and mariachi serenades. But this alas, of course, didn't last forever. Heilika eventually had to go back to her pharma company executive job. Jimi made a couple of detours to New Mexico and Cali and then decided he wanted to join with her in Canada. He tried to cross the border and was denied. Trolls had called and foiled his attempt.
I don't remember how it eventually all went down but eventually of course they broke up, Jimmy ended up back in TJ in some fleabag with motel getting so drunk one night threatening to kill himself. For the next few months it was just a big old moanfest of Oh Heilika, You Bitch, Oh Heilika, I Love You!
Jimi went radio silent for a while and it eventually panned out that he'd been reunited with Heilika and they were traveling throughout Mexico but this eventually ended when she apparently lost her job, and became a fugitive on the run from the Mexican cartel since she owed them huge amounts of cash for all the drugs she was buying. They broke up again probably because she didn't want Jimi streaming anymore.
Jimi then makes an arrangement with a mild mannered YouTuber and they rent an apartment in Rosarito, Mexico not too far from TJ, Jimi gets a job in San Diego and he starts living a kind of normal life commuting from San Diego to his cheap apartment in Mexico, playing with their adopted stray dog Chapi.
But the hobo urge is strong in Jimi and after several months of this he decides he wants to get in on a IP2 homeless RV tour so he travels to Orange County California to retrieve a beat up RV, the one that chicken Andy and Andy Dick used for a Time, and brings it down to San Diego. Jimi proceeds to get covid and spends a few days sick as a dog in the dilapidated RV sitting in the parking lot behind a Walmart. The RV tour never happens. Jimi is left having to buy a tent and spends several nights sleeping in the tent in the woods behind the Walmart.
Eventually, Jimi makes his way back to New Mexico and apparently he and his ex-wife have made up well enough as friends for him to stay in her house alongside his daughters. But then the Wanderlust kicks in again, and he's off to Southeast Asia.
Jimi flies to Bangkok, spends about a month and a half drinking his way from one sleazy bar to the next throughout the touristy areas and red light districts of Bangkok and Pattaya. He gets a big dono to do some healthcare at some clinic in Kuala Lumpur so he goes there but of course never gets treatment at that clinic. After a couple weeks in Malaysia, we find Jimi back to his old haunts in Cambodia. Harry has a lot of ups and downs and like he had in Bangkok he suffers from various ailments such as food poisoning and heat stroke. He eventually goes broke and has to petition the US Embassy there for assistance to get back home to America. In an absolutely dramatic live stream, that couldn't have been better if it was scripted, Jimi makes it on the plane from Phnom Penh to Los Angeles in just the nick of time.
Back in New Mexico, he spends several more months with Laura and the kids but then apparently Laura finds a new love, a woman who she wants to move in with her. And seeing how having her ex-husband hanging around the house might be a little awkward what with her lesbian girlfriend now living there, Jimmy was given the boot.
Which brings us to present. Jimi is back to the woods and apparently even the streets of the San Ysidro area of San Diego, sleeping rough, as it were. I found out tonight he has a job, again. I haven't found out why he doesn't just go live with that dude in Rosarito again. He must have burned that bridge. Well he starts his job Monday. He has a zoom orientation call. Not sure how he's going to pull that off. Ah Jimi. Hang in there brother, hang in there.
