“We listen to people, then change, since day one,” Craig Newmark (@CraigNewmark) responded via Twitter. “Sometimes people try to play us, and we need to deal with that better.”

Newmark and Craigslist have been under fire recently for charges related to child sex trafficking as well as its role as a major source for online prostitution.

The site’s changes are limited to rollover scrolling and a nifty animated selection bar for other cities. Still, no changes have been made to “Personals” section.

In other Craigslist news, alleged ‘Craigslist Killer’ was found dead in his Boston cell last Saturday.

“Phillip Markoff, 24, was alone in his cell when jail officials discovered his body one day after what would have been the one year anniversary of his wedding,” reported the Boston Globe Sunday. For the full story, click here.

The full interview can be read here but note, Mr. Newmark was not interested in answering most of my questions.

Of my list of 10, he agreed to respond to just two. One of the questions I wanted answered was about the “Adult  Services” page. (“Craigslist has faced harsh criticism for enabling prostitution. Why is it so important to keep the feature on the site?”) Of course, he was willing to entertain anything that controversial. (“Jason, you’re asking really big questions which will take enormous time, and some I can’t answer.”)

And I thought Mr. Newmark wouldn’t answer my questions because I am but a peon blogger. It turns out he just doesn’t want to answer the question at all.

In a story that ran August 3, 2010, Amber Lyon of CNN posted a fictitious ad from a prostitute offering her services to the Washington Metropolitan area. Within three hours, she received 15 interested. Despite blatant signs of her true purpose, “250-hour” the listing was not flagged or removed from Craigslist. When Ms. Lyon got an opportunity she confronted Mr. Newmark. His answer was the same with a real reporter as with me, silence.

Craigslist is far from perfect. For the most part I do believe the site offers something of value to a community that has the ability to do good. In my experiences I found it to be a wonderful conduit for connecting people. Still, a founder seemingly apathetic and averse to protecting his “Craigslist community” is not the “communist and socialist” he would like you to believe.

“If we for one moment believed our labor of love was increasing the incidence of [sex trafficking] or was contributing to the suffering of its victims, we would indeed have trouble sleeping,” wrote Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster on his blog.

“We’ve vastly improved our approach to the point where an adult service ad submitted to craigslist today relating to an underage person…would be rejected by our reviewers, with an immediate report submitted to law enforcement.”

Mr. Buckmaster wrote that along May 10, 2010, nearly three months before CNN confronted Mr. Newmark. Mr. Buckmaster goes on in his post to say that he is a man for the community and that neither he nor Mr. Newmark do what they do for money. “Valuing service over money is more fulfilling and enjoyable, and has always felt like the right thing to do,” he wrote.

CNN reported, according to a report done by Internet research firm the AIM Group, Craigslist is slated to pocket more than $36 million from the adult services section alone.

The full CNN report is available here.

Click here to read the Jim Buckmaster’s Blog.

This morning I ran across an interesting listing in the ‘Free’ section.

“Wedding Dress and veil, fits size 6”

That’s right. A bride was getting rid of her dress, for free.

At first I was skeptical of her excuse: “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes no room in our closets to store a wedding dress!” It seemed too cute and convenient to me. I suspected plot of revenge by some very angry husband—A woman’s inseparable connection to her wedding dress is something I don’t think any male will ever understand.

Intrigued, I emailed.

Karen (whose name I have changed for her privacy) responded quickly and agreed that space was not the true reason for liquidating her closet. “I just don’t see the point of keeping something that I am never going to use again,” she wrote.

Karen also explained that she liked the idea of her dress having the chance to live on in someone else’s wedding. “I’m very attached to my husband, but not at all attached to the dress!”

The dress, which she purchased from a wedding website for $150 was a steal. And though Karen admitted, “I’ve never been very sentimental about objects,” the idea to post the dress on Craigslist was her husband’s idea.

“I usually just put things that I don’t want anymore on the sidewalk in front of our house and they are gone within 5 minutes.” Karen thought the wedding dress was a bit more specific and felt, “it will be fun for me to get to meet the girl who is going to wear the dress next!”

Karen has fond memories of her own wedding which by most standards was a simple affair. “We had pizza delivered a keg of Yuengling and lots of Charles Shaw,” she recalled.

So far she has received three responses. Karen is expecting someone to pick up the dress tonight.

I have now been home for a full week and must admit I am a bit edgy about my newly anointed Craigslist-free lifestyle. To go to the movies I needn’t list or search, I can call a friend or ask my sister. Errands are no longer reliant on the Craigslist marketplace and I don’t have to budget myself so strictly either. As for roommates, let’s just say my parents and sister are a lot easier to live with than some of the strange people I have shared space with recently.

Still, I feel guilty and strange.

Buying toothpaste from an actual store feels like cheating. It’s ordinary and now, again, I am ordinary too. I am back to the normal way of life and in many ways its disheartening.

At times I have found myself cruising Craigslist, looking for excitement. I even responded to a poster looking to have his car driven to Tennessee, though I haven’t heard. And while it is nice not living out of one large duffle bag anymore, life on the road, with its unplanned excitement, will be missed.

Over the past ten months Craigslist has allowed me to do things I never imagined doing. I worked five jobs (live-in nanny, street canvasser, furniture salesman and two server jobs) and experienced three different cities in vastly different ways. I have gone sailing, hunting and snowshoeing by way of the site. I had Thanksgiving with strangers and sat in dark theaters with a variety of characters. I went on a hike with a girl who uses casual encounters to enjoy guilt-free sex. I have driven cross-country and back with Craigslist co-pilots and experienced diverse people with differing opinions along the way.

It would be a lie to say the site didn’t fail me occasionally. In Savannah I caved and bought toilet paper and struggled to scrape enough money together—I ended up completing the project with an extra $250. But to judge my entire project by the occasional disappointment would be a complete misunderstanding of my year and the experience.

The reason Craigslist is so fascinating to me and to many others is because of the very real possibilities the site produces. It truly enables and invites all sorts of behaviors. You want to find a group to go hang gliding in the nude with, give it a shot. Looking for a person to give you a tour of a new city, post your request.

In some cases Craigslist will fail, but most of the time your hopes are made into a reality. One of the people I met off the site said something that stands out now, even more than when she said it. Ellen, as I called her on the blog, posted on Craigslist for people to meet up with during her short tour of Savannah. Her listing, she said, “Allowed me to really look at myself.”

Craigslist is raw. The design is raw, the intentions are raw and the users are raw. It is that unfettered roughness that allowed me a chance at self-discovery.

And so although I write this final post from the exact place I sat writing my first post, I close this entry, and this year, a changed man.

I have learned the value of patience and courage and how to balance the two. I have seen people with different backgrounds and developed an appreciation for my own.

Most of all, I have learned the value of taking the risks and enjoy their rewards, even if that means others don’t understand your intentions and few see its prize.

Thank you all for reading and actively taking part in my journey. I never expected people to care about this little project and I consider this blog a tremendous success if only one person got joy out of reading my writing. If any developments on further opportunities to write become available I will make them known here. In the meantime, feel free to email me Jasonspaul@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @Jasonspaul

BP is, almost literally, combing the beach.

When Louis and I arrived in Grand Isle, Louisiana to see the oil spill for ourselves, we couldn’t believe what is being labeled as a cleanup effort. During our short visit, we witnessed seven people shoveling sand into bags. Upon further investigation at the Grand Isle community center, where BP is offering information and training courses for cleanup, we found out that the small cleanup crew was contracted work paid hourly.

The trip to Grand Isle was depressing and anticlimactic. In a place where so much help is needed no one wanted us, and in places where we were told oil is visible we weren’t allowed.

Grand Isle was not a ghost town as I had expected. The place was bustling with journalists, locals and, though I could never see myself vacationing there, tourists too. For lunch, Louis and I stopped into a local café where a journalist told us there were no volunteer opportunities on Grand Isle. We had heard the unfortunate news several times but hearing it again really made me mad.

During Hurricane Katrina I remember hearing news stories about people flooding into New Orleans to rebuild the city. I had friends spend their spring breaks working with Habitat for Humanity and the efforts to rebuild New Orleans have continued to this day.

This oil spill is probably the worst environmental disaster our country has ever seen. Sadly it is getting worse. Even more sad, our efforts to curtail and cleanup our mess are not working.

Tomorrow I return home. I hope to be driving with a fellow Rideshare or two. Either way, my final entry will be posted soon after my return.

Thanks as always for tuning in.

First to join the bandwagon was the Welshman.

Honestly, my planning for the trip to New Orleans was minimal. My friend Louis and I hadn’t figured out where we would stay and we arrived at our first rideshare’s pickup spot knowing nothing about the person we were about to drive seven hours with.

I parked outside the Atlanta youth hostel where we waited twenty minutes for our blond haired twenty-one-year-old ridesharer. I had just about lost my patience when I heard a heavy suitcase clonking down the stairwell. If my car had baggage weight requirements like an airline, Peter, as I will call him, would have paid a hefty stowage fee.

The Welshman introduced himself and I hustled everyone out the door to my car. Peter is the British equivalent of Sean William Scott’s character in American Pie. Throughout the ride Peter discussed his limited interests, mainly drinking and having sex with women to the standard “at least as beautiful as Jessica Alba.”

Peter also had a distorted view of the United States, from the subtle to the not so subtle (observing that “New York is much like Atlanta,” to claiming he had traveled all over America despite never venturing further north than Georgia.)

We drove further and further into the country between College Park and Union City to our second rideshare’s pickup spot wondering if my GPS had directed us wrongly. In the back seat Peter took swigs from his two liter orange soda in an effort to cure his massive hangover earned from partying out to four in the morning, a likely reason for why it took him so long to pull his life together and be ready when we arrived at the planned time.

We finally arrived at the home of Mark P, our second ridesharer, an hour later than planned. Somehow Mark P was not prepared either. Apparently he was “making burgers for the ride,” which we turned down, a decision Louis later regretted. We sat in the driveway unsure how we could add another person, much more, additional baggage.

Mark P rolled his bags to the trunk and told us, “Don’t worry, I’m a professional packer.” Mark P played bag Tetris and finally we managed to fit everyone and everything.  And so we were off.

For the first hour or so Mark P fielded questions about New Orleans, his work in the music business, the NBA coaching business, the black hair business and the woman of New Orleans, fully exciting Peter, sometimes into a fit of giggles.

Mark P, Louis and I have concluded, is a strange cat. At one point in the drive he passed around a professional portfolio of his work, CV included. He described stories of working with professional athletes on specialized haircuts, one job, and his management of child rap stars. When a popular hip-hop song came on the radio, he would always have a story if not about himself, about a cousin or friend spending time with the celebrity.

None of it really made sense. Here he was, ridesharing in a back seat with a motley crew yet he seemed to know everyone, at one point claiming he had done Carmelo Anthony’s hair and was passing through New Orleans en route to personally style an NBA star’s doo.

Another oddity about Mark P was his cell phone situation. For whatever reason he had two phones yet neither worked. Throughout the ride he made calls to his people in “The N.O.” The way he spoke changed, “Yo, I’m on my way girl so you better start the party now.”

We learned, through Peter’s questions that Mark P is engaged and has a one-year-old child. It came with a bit of surprise when, after finishing a conversation with what sounded like a girl, Mark P made a troubling remark. “Trouble.  Trouble. Trouble brewing. I’m about to be baaad boy”

Eventually we arrived to New Orleans where Louis, Peter and I decided to check into the hostel Peter had arrangements for.

So far, the entire time I have been in New Orleans, I have felt as if I am in another country. The fact that the hostel is filled with foreign travelers and has a typical grunge flavor probably plays into this perception, but this whole city feels different. I feel like I am back on Las Rambla in Barcelona when a club promoter all but drags me into a bar on Bourbon Street. The trolley car that shuttles late into the night feels like Amsterdam’s streetcar.

This morning Louis and I left the hostel for a cleaner toilet and cheap breakfast of yogurt and coffee. My urban survival skills have taught me to appreciate a clean restroom, something our hostel does not exactly offer—this morning Louis asked me if he was dreaming when he heard someone throwing up in the bathroom, which is inches from our bed.

In the backyard of a quaint coffee shop, we made phone calls to some of the leads some helpful locals had given us the night before. Currently we are waiting to be deployed for beach cleaning and possibly cage construction for rehabilitated pelicans. If an opportunity to volunteer does not come our way, we have decided to drive to the coast to see the oil-spill wrecked beaches first hand.

It doesn’t take long for me to put my entire life into a single suitcase and move on. Like an ethically dubious street salesman in New York City, I too can fold my blanket and disappear into a crowd.

If you are counting, I am leaving Savannah a bit shy of my three-month sentence—it has not been that bad, but my lack of postings does reflect accurately my inactivity.

I am however not returning home just yet though.

A few months ago someone posted a scorching message on one of my posts. Their comment was simple and something I can agree with slightly. Why not spend three months in three cities doing something good for the world. I could have spent nine months picking up trash along America’s highways or built water wells in developing countries.

It is true, the Craigslist project has not added anything to the Universe. If I am lucky I have made you laugh once or twice. But my commenter, I must assume, this was not enough.

When I heard about the Gulf Cost oil spill I wondered if there was a way to use Craigslist to make a difference. After all there is a section of the site devoted to volunteering. What I have discovered however is opportunities to donate one’s time are scarce.

This week the New York Times wrote a piece http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21workers.html

about out of state contracted workers—not even volunteers—who were turned down in favor of local help. I was afraid volunteer opportunities were being limited similarly. And, after trading emails with a Craigslister asking for information on how to volunteer, my suspicions were confirmed.

Unfortunately, the oil spill is not the only problem requiring attention. Issues still remain from Hurricane Katrina and so other listings on Craigslist requested general help with homeless residents.

Tomorrow, after work, I will be driving to Atlanta where a friend of mine lives. He has decided to join me on the final leg of my journey. Together we will stay in New Orleans where I will conclude the Living Craigslist project volunteering for a week.

Savannah is so much hotter.

The heat of summer is here and I am constantly reminded of it. Whether it is my house’s continuously running air conditioner despite it being set to 79 or my walk to work in my all-black uniform—the owner of the restaurant has instituted a new policy where employees are not allowed to enter the restaurant in “civilian clothes.”

Despite the heat, today my kickball team—the Ballbusters—played a schoolyard game for five hours. The sun burned through our green t-shirt jerseys and before the first inning of the first game was over, we were all disgustingly soaked in our own sweat.

Today was the kickball league’s final tournament. We lost our first game, which meant that we were only allowed one more loss. Somehow we rallied and won our next two games.

Our team was more upbeat and cohesive than usual—I am pretty sure we only won two games this whole season—but the success brought us closer and I had more fun this afternoon than I did any other week.

Everyone was high-fiving and cheering and when one of our players had to sit out because of heat exhaustion, we all did everything we could to make him feel better.

I would not suggest this dodge ball league to someone apathetic. It was less about hanging out and making friends and more about winning games, something we didn’t do much of either. It is too bad today was the last day of season and not the first. I feel I have learned more about my teammates today than I found out over the past three months.

When I got home I took a quick shower. I checked weather.com to find out the day’s temperature. I have to say, it felt a lot hotter than 98 on the field. And as I type this, in my bedroom at 9:30 at night, I find myself sweating still.

In their wake they have cleaned the kitchen, bathroom and made a number of exciting changes. First, they gave the kitchen a facelift with prefabricated tile wall linings. It’s especially nice because it covers up the grease stains on the paint and, for now, makes the kitchen look like an adequate place to cook though I’m not sure it was worth the three days I had to spend eating cold food. I do however appreciate the bathroom without the cakes of body hair.

And because the landlords are no longer here, their daughter has returned to her boyfriend’s. Of course Sami, the landlords’ daughter is not the only person to move out. Barney, my belching housemate has also left the building. Other than taking the wireless router, he wont be missed much. We never officially had a full conversation and I am pleased to report the landlords bought a new router—I was without Internet for a few days here, it was not easy.

This leaves Isaiah and me. Now a few days ago there was some contention on whether I would ever see my Jesus obsessed housemate. The landlords were threatening to throw him out of the house for not paying rent and utilities—I believe his debt had reached close to $700.

Two nights ago, after a long day working, I went to sleep early. I awoke to Isaiah—he has no control over the volume of his voice—praising Jesus in a conversation to our landlord. “The big Man came through for me, man I knew He’d come through,” Isaiah explained almost with a shout in our hallway. I heard him count out the money and hand it over to the landlord who was probably thanking Jesus too.

I am not sure how Isaiah found the money, or why he didn’t pay, but for the next few weeks we will be the only two occupying this house. In many ways I am so very ready to move on.

Not only because the project slowed to a miserable pace, but also because I am ready for something different.

Today I put my two weeks notice in at work. I told Valentino, who is leaving tomorrow for the World Cup and later Greece, I wont be here when he returns in late July. “Where is you to be,” he asked me in our dining room. While I have been yelled at countless times by the emotional Greek freight train, I have grown to respect him. His intensity may be misguided at times but it is only because he is passionate about his work. I will miss his screaming and his scowls along with his borderline racist jokes and strange signals of affection too.

For the next two weeks, work will be less fun and the screaming will come from my cafe’s older and angrier owner. I haven’t discussed him in great detail, but dealing with the man who has been known to fire people for wearing the wrong color socks will not be easy.