People have been asking me why I have forsaken the present and chosen to write about the past over the last few months in my Beat This column.
There are many reasons, but tonight on a quick walk to the Castro from the Civic Center area which I now call home, quite a few reasons just cropped up. It’s not like these things haven’t been there for awhile, but tonight it all really hit home in a very stifling way. Why does this city constantly stink of raw sewage just about everywhere you go? That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not really. I can honestly say that I’m seldom far from the acrid stench of urine and human waste every time I step outside. I feel like I’m reporting from the trenches as I quite often walk the Market Street corridor of filth from downtown to where I live near Van Ness Avenue and on up all the way to the Castro. It really didn’t hit me until over the past few days what a journey of the damned this trek has become. It can be an inexplicably depressing little slice of life to take that walk on any day, and a very telling testament to the erosion of the quality of life and standards of decency the past decade or two have dealt to this, everyone’s favorite city, the Gay Mecca, San Francisco.
Just once I’d like to stroll out to the corner store without encountering as many as four miniature homeless camps on one block of Market Street, the stench of this unfortunate human condition unique to each camp, like a different fragrance counter at Macys. Each camp can also thrust a prevailing demeanor into your face and consciousness at any given time. You can get many variations of extremes right in your face, though certain ones come more often at the beginning or end of the month, or “check day,” as it was pointed out to me. You can have a cup thrust at you and plaintive pleas for change, you can be faced with purely bitter attitudes for appearing to have what they do not, you can refuse their panhandling and be told to “have a nice day,” “God bless you, sir,” or “Thanks anyway, brother,” and feel like maybe you could have tossed them some coin, if only you had some.
But the scene I really can’t handle is the homeless meltdown, the determining evidence that these people are out there on the streets because they are sadly beleaguered with mental health issues that have been left undiagnosed and untreated, because it’s hard enough in this nation to get basic medical care unless you are very rich or adequately insured, let alone psychiatric care. And the streets of San Francisco are serving up big, sobering, frightening doses of crazy by the handfuls, sometimes several times per block. Even in the distance you can hear it all around you; the raging barefooted man screaming about the people who are after him, stopping only for a good cigarette butt off the ground, the quiet mumblers addressing themselves or the voices in their heads, the hoarse-voiced skinny women sobbing then lashing out at passing strangers intermittently, and more.
I overhear things everyday from these people as they walk down the street talking to themselves or others or screaming it loud for all to hear that are full-on textbook displays of bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia or sleep deprivation or drug induced psychosis. This often includes serious conspiracy theories, governmental mind control, people convinced that social services and homeless shelters are trying to kill them and all others in their situation, talk of forced sexual abuse, vampires draining their life-blood, cameras watching their every move, fear of robotic policemen, suspicion of all authorities, fear of all who appear wealthy, fear of being murdered if they sleep, and it all goes on and on and on.
I can expect little samples of advanced mental illness on every single block of Market Street. You can also witness the occasional heated fights among them, conflicts about drug deals gone wrong, petty rip-offs, stolen bed rolls, territorial doorway wars, public drunkenness, anger at establishments not allowing bathroom access, fights over those automatic cleaning toilets or a place in line for food at Glide or any of the other places that provide meals for these unfortunate individuals trying to exist in a world that really doesn’t know what to do about this dark, unfortunate problem where human beings fall through the cracks and are unable to care for themselves, so they litter the street like the unwanted garbage of a society that just wishes they would go away and stop creeping them out and filling the streets with piss and shit and vomit and filth and reminding them that something is deeply, irrevocably wrong in our modern civilized world.
I witness it and I don’t get mad at them. How could I, really, when only months ago I was homeless myself, though fortunate enough to have had the help of many friends which meant I never had to sleep on the street or want for a bathroom or beg for money from strangers? Luckily, I was able to fight my way back to stability, but how could I feel anger or hatred for these unfortunate people when I know so many individuals like myself who have lost their homes and are going through a residentially challenged period and trying to repair their lives to the state they are accustomed to? This degree of homelessness is a bit different than the raw and in-your-face street-level situation I’m writing about. But I’ve watched it degenerate for some people, and they can very quickly get swallowed up into it and lost forever, just like so many others have. It’s a dark and serious problem and it always has been, and nobody knows a possible solution, and all of the attempts to address the problem (Care Not Cash? Yeah right) have served as a mere flimsy Band-Aid on a growing wound that isn’t healing and requires so much more specialized attention and perhaps a totally different focus. No one knows what it is, what to possibly do, but everyone knows that with our national economy in crisis, this problem is certain to grow worse by the day.
The quality of life in San Francisco is clearly plummeting, and nowhere is that more apparent than on our fair city’s streets, streets that I can remember joyously walking on and feeling so great to be living in this magical City By The Bay. Who wouldn’t prefer delving into the past if they remember a city they were proud to live in and call home? Short of a lobotomy, head trauma or Alzheimer’s, memories are yours to keep forever, but is that all we have anymore of a San Francisco that is not a frightening reminder that we have a very serious problem here that has gripped us hard and won’t just go away? I’ve seen many other major metropolitan areas all over the world, and none of them show even a fraction of the homelessness we’ve all gotten so used to. It really makes you wonder why and wish things were different. A walk on Market Street shouldn’t be like a walk through a mental ward or a post-hurricane refugee camp, but sadly it is these days. It’s totally bumming me out more and more every time I step out of my home.