Every morning when I climb out of the Civic Center BART station out into UN Plaza, if I am not too deeply sunk in whatever book or article I was reading on the train, I look around. The Plaza was built in the 1970s and named for the United Nations, whose charter was signed in San Francisco on June 26, 1945. Now the plaza is filled with pigeons who gorge themselves on abandoned lunch containers and sandwich wrappers, except when there is an event, like the farmer's market or the food trucks -- then there is no room for the pigeons and they cluster around the edges, waiting.
I try to take the stairs out of the station, unless someone is asleep or sitting on it with their legs sprawled out. Then I take the escalator.
At the top of the stairs is the black woman whose name I don't know, who sells copies of Street Sheet. Sometimes she stands off to the side, smoking a cigarette. She wears oval glasses with metal frames and one of the black aprons that the vendors wear. If I have cash, which is only about one day out of ten, I buy a copy. We always greet each and sometimes we chat about the weather. She used to ask more questions, like once she asked if the bag I was carrying had gym clothes. She told me she had tried hot yoga once, which I have never done. Recently, I bought one of the 25th anniversary posters, as a gift for a friend I said, and now she is waiting for an update. Get cash, I think, and get an update.
Some days between the cars parked at an angle along Fulton someone will be tying a thick band around a bicep, flicking the needle end of a syringe.
Gregory is another Street Sheet vendor. He stands at the corner of Fulton and Larkin, outside the Asian Art Museum, or sits on the ledge at the base of the statute of Simón Bolívar at the T-junction of Fulton and Hyde. He has smooth skin and a little bit of gray stubble creeping up his dark cheeks, a dusting of close-cropped hair around the back of his head. He always wears dark sunglasses and he is always smiling. He talks in a sing-song voice, punctuated with small bursts of laughter. He speaks quickly, like he thinks I am about to fly away. It's true that I am always on my way somewhere, that is just the nature of things these days. But I try to face him squarely with my shoulders and feet when we talk. I bought a poster from him, too -- but that one was for me, and L. framed it for our kitchen wall. Gregory is friendly and articulate, aware of boundaries, up on local news. Sometimes he calls me Rachel.
I was walking back through at Friday night around 6:00 and a pudgy middle-aged white man in what looked like an old Letterman jacket was eating a tub of Breyer's out of the carton, using only the lid and his hands. Melted ice cream dribbled down the front of his jacket.
Another night we went out for drinks and by the time I was heading to the BART, the wind was already on a tear, screeching through the Market Street traffic and flinging itself between the thick stone buildings that ring Civic Center Park. A young man stopped me at the top of the escalator. He was thin, the top of his body curved forward, his eyes enormous heavy-lidded, like the eggs of a small bird, ready to crack. He spoke clearly, but without cease, each sentence fused to the next right at the point where the conclusion would have gone. If he was telling a story, it was one without a beginning or end. "I'm not asking for money," he said, and then he explained he had a meeting with his case-worker in ten minutes, and he wanted something to eat, specifically soup from a restaurant nearby. He wanted me to go with him to buy soup, and already I was nervous about the time, ticking off the seconds in my mind as he spoke -- you only have ten minutes! But then, he pointed out, I was in a rush. I didn't have to come with him. When I gave him $3, he explained again that he would use it to buy food, that he was getting a bed in a shelter, that he was depressed and depression could lay anyone low, don't doubt it for a minute. I still see him in the BART station or around the Plaza, often in the morning. He never recognizes me. For a long time, I wished that I told him that I didn't care what he used the money for, that I wasn't buying a story, that lots of people I know spend money on things they don't need and that aren't good for them and still they are given more money. But now I think maybe it was right to play the part he cast me in, not trying to be the star of my own show for once.
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