I drove down Union the other night, only to see a woman standing on a street corner with luggage. Like, a lot of luggage – three big suitcases worth. Normally I would slow down to see if she was looking for a ride, as luggage often equals airport rides, but when I got a little closer, I saw that it was the same crazy lady who I’ve seen standing on Polk for the last couple of years, waiting for a ride that never comes. Usually she’s hanging out on Polk between California and Jackson, but that night she was on Union and Webster, looking more out-of-place than usual. She has long curly hair, and is always wearing burning man-esque fuzzy boots and big bug eyed sunglasses. She always looks pensive, scanning the oncoming cars for the one she thinks is coming to pick her up.
I would love to know who she’s waiting for and what’s in those bags.
In all the years I’ve been in San Francisco, there are a handful of homeless/street/crazy/all-of-the-above people I’ve seen all over the city most or all of my time here.
There’s the fifty-something white-haired guy in the baseball cap that’s always waving his cup on Leavenworth or Hyde or Larkin in the Tenderloin, whose trembling always makes me wonder whether he’s a severe alcoholic or just has a palsy of some kind.
Over at Geary and Taylor, there’s the horribly dreadlocked brother with vitaligo in sandles who hangs out by the Clift Hotel, bumming smokes and change off of passerby while darting out into the street.
The old black man who can’t really speak who approaches cars at the red lights of Van Ness between O’Farrell and Geary, waving his cup at you until the light turns green because he can’t move very fast.
Some guys are mobile, like the middle-aged white guy who runs up to your car telling the same sob story about needing gas for his car. I’ve seen him in the Marina, the Wharf, Haight Street, the TL, SOMA – you name it, if there are cars around you can find him asking for money.
The super tweeked old lady who could be thirty-five or sixty-five who hangs out on Larkin, walking up to your car and asking for money in the politest tone possible.
Another really tall, bespectacled balding man used to walk around the Marina all day. His hair was a bushy strawberry blonde and he would walk to the side of the street, usually in a suit and always with a lone piece of sparkly ribbon tied around his head, the kind you wrap christmas presents with. I never saw him not moving – even at the red lights he would walk in place. I always wondered what his story was, because he looked like he had money but was clearly not right in the head, but I haven’t seen him the last couple of years. Maybe he died, or moved, or can’t walk anymore, who knows.
The midget hooker, however, might be my favorite.
One night a bunch of years back, I was sitting in the queue at the New Century Theater on a slow weeknight, hoping for a drunken strip club patron to stumble out and ask to go to the East Bay. I looked up from my newspaper to see the usual streetwalkers hanging out by the ATM, but before I went back to reading the sports section, I saw her. She was all of three feet tall with teased hair and heels and when she saw me looking at her, she blew me a kiss.
Chalk another one up for shit I never thought I’d see.
What I always wonder is how these people survive, day in and day out, either depending on the charity of others for their existence or just being so batshit crazy that they can remember to eat (except for the midget, she’s got a gig). It must be exhausting to ask people for a dollar all day or walk up and down the streets for no reason at all or stand on a street corner waiting for a ride that never comes.
And yet they survive.
It gives slow nights where I don’t make a lot of money perspective and makes me grateful that I have my job, my health and my sanity.
