I was raised in and currently live in the bay area, just a few miles out from San Francisco. This is an area generally known for it's super-progressive ideology, it's ultra-liberal political views, and it's general "we accept, embrace, and care about everyone and everything" attitude. To left wingers it sounds like a utopia, while conservatives probably wouldn't mind if this region broke apart from the continental land mass and drifted out into the Pacific. Don't worry, I'm not going to get political here, I'll save that oil drum full of feces for another day. But for all the self indulgent, altruistic bullshit that gets strewn about this region I call home, I've repeatedly come across one glaring inconsistency that I feel needs addressing.
Now, for the out-of-towners who have never been out here, a little clarification: despite widespread perception, not all of California looks like the Santa Monica beach where they filmed David Hasselhoff shtooking Pam Anderson throughout the 1990's. Even being less than 20 minutes from the ocean and one of the U.S.'s largest major cities, we've got a shit ton of undeveloped, rural land all over the place. This little factoid will become relevant in a moment.
On my lunch break from work, my fiance and I (we work in the same building) will usually grab some food and find a good place to park the car and eat. Yesterday was no different; as it was over 90° out we found a nice shady spot behind the local movie theater where we parked to eat our sandwiches or whatever the hell we got. The lot we parked in sits adjacent to a roughly ten acre field of unincorporated county land, which boasts nothing beyond a lot of dry grass and a set of old train tracks that haven't seen a train for a few decades. It's common knowledge among locals that these old railroad tracks are used as something of a transit system by the homeless, as you can quickly and effectively navigate from one end of town to the other without following or crossing over too many public streets. There's a crappy chain link fence with missing sections and disconnected pieces that follows much of the train track line, so you can essentially get in and out wherever you need to be. This system was useful as a teenager who may or may not have been avoiding officers of the law after engaging in arguably objectionable behavior, but I digress.
Back to the story. As we parked, we heard the voice of some woman yelling angrily at the top of her lungs. As I killed the engine, we traced the voice to a homeless woman, who was screaming obscenities and flailing about in the bushes not fifteen feet away from the car. Although my fiance was uneasy about our proximity to this unfolding altercation, I was wildly intrigued as to what was going on. As she emerged from the bushes and into the parking lot, it became clear she was having a full-scale argument with... an invisible person. She kicked over her shopping cart full of belongings, threw empty soda bottles and random trinkets in frustration, all the while shouting some of the most frenzied bile I can remember hearing. Specifically, some of her greatest hits were: "I know EXACTLY who the fuck you are! You're the ass hole who fucks with people until they're DEAD!" and "I'm not letting you take MY shit like you took everyone else's, you dick!" and of course "Go fuck yourself you dumb mother fucking piece of shit, bitch!" - Now, on the surface there was something amusing about this scenario, it's certainly something me and my friends would have laughed at (and possibly tried to film) back in our high school days. But as the novelty wore off and I watched this woman's gaze focused intently on a person only she could see, the stark reality set in that to her, there was actually someone there, and further, she was honestly threatened by them. The pity began to set in. Who was this woman? What is her story? What has happened in her life that drove her to this point? What was the invisible man threatening to do that was so alarming to her?
After about twenty minutes of this sad exposition of dementia, and after a few more cars full of voyeuristic lunch breakers had slowly driven by the scene, she picked up her belongings, pulled back a portion of the chain link fence, and wandered aimlessly into the massive empty field on the other side. Eventually she reached the train tracks and began to follow them, and she kept arguing with her imagined attacker for as long as I could hear her, but what was even more disturbing was when vultures began circling above her head. Yes, the eat-dead-flesh, scavenger-of-the-sky kind of vultures. Now, she was fueled by rage and spry enough for me to be confident that she made it through the afternoon unscathed, but the entire situation got me questioning how progressive and evolved we really are, both as a bay area resident and as a member of our entire collective society in general. I mean, this is someone who has clearly lost all control of her mental faculties and is literally in danger of being eaten alive by scavenging birds, and yet nobody but jerk with a blog and his fiance on their lunch break took notice, let alone did anything to help.
A slightly more humorous homeless anecdote, a few years back, my buddy and I were looking for a picture suitable for the cover of our album we were recording, and from the side of the freeway we saw a sweet, dilapidated old bridge that was falling apart. It fit what we had in mind, so we tried to find a way out to it in order to snap a picture. We parked at a shopping center nearby, and hiked out behind it along a little dirt path that headed in the direction we thought we needed to go. About halfway to the bridge, we came across a homeless encampment with about six vagrants, and once they saw us coming they perked up and picked a representative to greet us. As three or four homeless guys watched intently from their shanty village, one of the women met us in the path and asked us for some money. We told her we didn't have any cash, but she noticed we were both smoking cigarettes so she asked for some of those. I handed one over, and had the foresight to hold it above her hand, dropping it to her without any physical contact. She then looked to my friend and said "now you," almost as if she were collecting toll. He did not have the chance to follow my lead, thus she grabbed his whole hand when taking the smoke from him. This sent him into a bit of a panic, as he justifiably assumed she probably infected him with her hep c handshake. So after paying the "toll" and continuing on to snap a few shots of this bridge for our album, we had to head back past the camp once again to reach the car. This time, they were more prepared for us. As we approached for the second time from the opposite direction, the same lady was holding on to another homeless woman, this one much younger, and wearing a pair of short shorts. As we shuddered all the way towards them, she offered to "sell" us her friend, saying she just "washed her real good and put her in a pair of daisy dukes" for us. I insinuated she must be joking, but she made it clear very quickly that she was deadly serious. My friend jokingly asked how much, and she responded with "twenty dollars and she's yours forever." We politely said we'd think about it and come back, and after paying another toll of two cigarettes each, we continued on. As we walked away she said that she'll see us the following Tuesday to purchase her friend, to which I replied that there was no Tuesday this coming week so we'll have to reschedule. She was pondering the concept of Tuesday not being a day as we made it to safety and out range. The rest of the evening was spent watching my friend Purell his hands until they were raw.
Here in the bay area we're bombarded with news stories about the university students in Berkeley protesting against the use of plastic grocery bags, or San Franciscans organizing a rally to force employers to cover gender-change operations under their healthcare plans. Everything is always so important and urgent, and there's always a litany of perceived injustices that need to be addressed and rectified by all these bleeding heart democrats out here, and yet when it comes to the homeless and the emotionally disturbed, you don't hear so much as a peep beyond a news story saying that the police had to tell a group of vagrants to "move it along." Sure there are soup kitchens and shelters peppered throughout the area, but the vast majority of our time, effort, money and resources go towards bickering about issues such as ensuring illegal aliens can attend a four year college tuition free, or probing a police department for six months to make sure they didn't violate some drug dealer's rights when they kicked down his door to find 1.2 million dollars worth of meth being cooked up in his living room. It's utterly absurd to me that as a civilized, first world society, we aren't able to properly prioritize and take care of our citizens first and foremost. These people are literally fighting with invisible attackers, selling their friends into what I can only assume would be sexual slavery, and are so out of their minds that they'll die horrible, lonely and painful deaths until they get real help.
It's easy to step over a bum who's asking for a smoke or some change and say they need to get a job and stop putting their hand out. But picture this objectively: A homeless man sits on the curb in <insert locale here>. His legs don't work due to a hit and run last year, and since he can't afford a wheelchair he rolls himself around on an old skate board. He's got about six of his original teeth left in his head, and smells of urine due to the fact that he doesn't have access to a bathroom, can't move effectively, and hasn't showered in over six months. His hair is falling out in part due to a drug addiction he had a few years back, and also because he's malnourished and hasn't eaten a real meal in upwards of three months. He has virtually no social skills because nobody other than his fellow homeless has talked to him as a human being for a decade, he has no mailing address to receive mail at, his credit is non-existent, his social security number is long forgotten, and having spent so much time on the fringe of society, he occasionally forgets his full name. Now someone explain to me, please, how in fuck's name that guy is supposed to "pull himself up by his bootstraps" and get a job. Even entry level jobs require you to furnish good to great credit, bank statements for the last three months, utility bills at your address in your name, professionally presentable attire, a coherent demeanor, and an impressive resume with proof of education and a solid work history. So again, how exactly is the guy on the street corner asking for the discarded half of your filet-o-fish going to get it together?
I'm not preaching from a soap box here or trying to organize a movement or anything, but I strongly urge whoever reads this to use it to put things into perspective. Treat these people like human beings. Sure they might squander away any cash you give them on booze, but why not give them some food? Grab an extra cheeseburger in the drive through and toss it their way. Donate some shit, throw them a jacket or something. Stop treating them like sub-human vermin, and take pity on them. Every one of us is dealt a hand, be it good or bad. Maybe you were born fortunate, or maybe it's been a struggle. Maybe you had to work your ass off to become successful, or maybe you haven't gotten there yet. Perhaps you had it all but squandered it away to a gambling addiction or alimony/child support. Whatever your situation is, you aren't any more important or valuable of a person than these people are, you just had a better combination of luck, drive, mental capacity, opportunity, and perhaps decision making skills. Everyone makes mistakes, and maybe they made some bigger ones that you wouldn't have made, but the point is they're still human beings; they're someone's sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and for whatever reason they're in a terrible situation now and need a little help, or at least to be treated with the dignity that one human should show for another. We should all be so lucky as to not see invisible people who mean to do us harm, and moreover have no family or friends to turn to for help.
And to all my left-wing super-liberal hippie neighbors around here, get off your fucking high horses. You're not helping anything with your hybrid driving, self-absorbed, holier-than-thou attitudes. You're not enlightened just because you vote democrat and live in San Francisco. You aren't more evolved than anyone else in the country regardless of region or political affiliation. Want some proof? Tonight, on the streets of the very city that you tout as the most progressive, open minded, and caring in the country, a homeless man is going to die of starvation and/or disease and/or the elements. And it's not because of lack of resources or the inability to prevent it from happening, it's because while you were rallying for gay marriage to be legalized, you stepped over that homeless man rather than help him to his feet. And rather than rent a hotel room for a night and buy a warm meal for someone in need, you were pumping fifty bucks of your money into the campaign fund of whichever politician promised to address whatever first world problem you care about. So knock it the fuck off with the "my shit don't stink" attitude, because your shit smells downright horrific.
And by the way, New York legalized gay marriage a few weeks ago and it's still illegal here, so who's progressive and forward thinking now, retards? Try focusing on a real, pressing problem that actually has real life or death consequences, rather than sucking each other off because of how awesome you think your ideologies are.
