A SENSE OF GREYNESS

At first I wondered why they were parked in front of my building, then I realized that as I live close to donuts, and there is an open space, it made sense. Naturally the cops, emergency vehicles, street crisis response teams, and desperate random drunken yuppies around the middle of the night woud park there. Because everything that requires their input will be better with a donut.

As you would expect I miss the bacon wrapped hot dog sellers the most.
That, to me, really says "spontaneous eat joy".
The thinnest sliced bacon.
Chickeniest dog.

It's probably a good thing that the street crisis people do not have uniforms the same colour as their response vehicles. People dressed in bright red would, in the middle of the night, cause the psychologically fragile to panic, probably more so than men in white suits.

This is San Francisco. Narcan, valium, and straps.

It's foggy outside. You do not want to see some things lurking in the fog. Even if they are real and speak in calming voices. Perhaps especially if they speak in calming voices.
Dark grey shadows, talking gently, asking weird things.
Have you eaten? Do you need a donut?
Did you bathe recently?

Just in case, I make it a point to have bathed recently. Shave the unbearded area, brush the teeth, plus regular hair washing, whisker trimming, nail cutting. One is, as a a grouchy middle aged man, far less likely to upset people or be hustled off in the paddy wagon if one looks and smells clean. Not acting like a rioter also helps.


The other day I noticed that the little old person who lives on the sidewalk at Beckett Street (白話轉街 'paak waa chuen kaai', used to be Bartlett Alley till 1908) is no longer there. Best case scenario: a street crisis team has finally persuaded her that it was time to live indoors again, and helped her box up her precious garbage. She was averse to moving, and had developed relationships with the local pigeons, but her growing collection of boxes, plastic bags, and nearly empty food containers looked like a health hazard. She had been there, and across the street in the service dooway of Tao Tao (陶陶茶樓), or right at the corner of Wentworth (德和街 'tak wo kaai') just down from there, for probably at least eight or nine years. A sweet and gentle, rarely ambulating little old filthy presence. People of that age, even if they've started communicating with rats and pigeons, really need to be housed.

There are several other less than fully functional people in that area. The apprehension seems to be that they don't want help. Actually, what they don't want is tight supervision, or to be lumped in the same basket as the violent crazies behind the elevators in Portsmouth Square. But a few of them are clearly nearing the end of their tether.



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