Semi-related, but here's a little story about expected "tips" on the street.
I was in downtown Atlanta at a hotel at 2am, and I wanted to get some 12-packs of soda and snacks for our road trip starting from there.
I thought to myself, "Sure it's 2am in Atlanta, but I've walked around bad areas of LA and Vegas before at night without issue, so what's the big deal?"
On the way out of the store, carrying a few bags of snacks and 2 12-pack sodas, a dude approached me. "Need any help?", he asked. I knew exactly what he meant by that, so I politely declined.
I kept walking. Another guy popped up and asked if I needed help. Again I politely declined.
Pretty soon I had about 6 of them completely surrounding me, with all of them "offering" to help carry the stuff for me and to give me directions back to the hotel (which was right down the street!)
I 100% knew they were going to demand a tip out of me -- probably a hefty one -- for any "help" received. There was nobody around on the street except for me and them. I kept walking, as they also did, in a circle around me.
Was I nervous about this? You bet I was. However, I thought back to advice I had heard regarding encountering a bear in the forest, and applied it here. If you act intimidated, you get attacked. If you try to run away, you get attacked. If you stand tall, speak firmly, and don't act the slightest bit intimidated, you have the best chance of walking away unscathed. That is, you don't pick a fight or antagonize, but you don't let on in the slightest that you're scared.
In fact, I took on a tone of mild annoyance, after turning down the first 2 more politely. I would loudly say back, "Nope! I'm good", or "Nope! I know where it is". The annoyance tone is effective, because it projects an emotion of frustration that they're bothering you rather than fear of them. It makes you look both unwilling to listen to them, yet also not scared.
I got directly across the street of the side door of the hotel. I knew if I made it to that door, nobody would attack me. I said, "Thanks for the offers guys, here's my hotel and I'll be ok!"
Then I stepped onto the street. None of them followed. Could these guys have mugged me and gotten away with it? Of course. There were 6 of them, one of me, and it was 2am with nobody else around. But they weren't outright criminals -- just dudes who attempted to look intimidating in order to get tourists like me to accept their "help" late at night in exchange for expected tips. None of them were willing to outright mug me, and deal with the potential prison time for such a thing.
But you can bet that if I accepted the "help" and then refused to tip them, it might have been a different story.