A Start-up Meets the Street
Grappling with modern life in San Francisco

Something wasn’t right. Hard to say really, but I think it was the shoe. The shoe was peculiar. A well-worn black sneaker, laces frayed, soles peeling off from the toe in that infuriating way that will make most people grab the glue or open zappos.com. It lay four feet from his body. Yes, that precise. Not far enough to be forgotten, but not close enough to be valued. With the other shoe firmly tied to his foot, it seemed an unnatural distance.
I had walked right by, but the shoe gave me pause. I should have been drawn to the more blatant sign — a man, spread-eagled on the sidewalk in the middle of the day — but turn around for every man lying on a sidewalk in San Francisco and you’d never get anywhere.
I had been dying to get out. Staring blankly at my computer, caught in the crossfire of start-up banter (those voices of vital delusion) yelled across the sparse room I could feel my neck muscles tensing. It was time for my afternoon escape. Dodging discussions of Series A, I moved for the exit, wondering if being a start-up in SF had become a desirability in itself, rather than the transition it was intended to be.
Clearly I wasn’t fitting in. Having joined just six months prior, I had missed years of circuitous effort, scant funding, and compounding delays that left my colleagues oozing some cocktail of exasperation, desperation and determination; a survival instinct I couldn’t match. Now, with only a few months of runway left, the tension was building even further.
We had moved in only a week before, a major upgrade from the basement that had previously been our home. Clear evidence of success. But the new loft space felt ill-timed, a last-ditched effort to appear legitimate; tenuous, like buying a BMW on a credit card. Rustic industrial they called it. Marketing genius I thought, if only we could mimic it. Actually, $4000 a month for a cavernous storage room that was too hot when it was hot out, too cold when it was cold. Open concept they said, another spin on what it lacked.
I had burst out the door, headed for the corner store. A snack, a drink, anything. It really didn’t matter. I briefly contemplated taking up smoking; smokers always have a good excuse. Half a block from the office door I walked past the man, barely registering his existence, lost in my succession planning. But I noticed the shoe.
I turned and looked back at him. This was worse than normal. This wasn’t a midday snooze, nor a booze-induced blackout. I could hear his breathing from where I stood, or what passed for it anyway. A short, wheezy, desperate inhale, like what follows a punch to the gut. A phlegm-filled nasal exhale followed by an unnervingly long pause before another desperate inhale.
“Hey, you okay?” I croaked reluctantly, expecting a groan and a hand to wave me off. Nothing. Again, this time a bit more committed, “Hey, you okay?” Nothing but a gasp for air.
I knelt down beside him on the sidewalk, the vantage point of the downtrodden. His sun-beaten skin was heavy with sores and baked-in dirt. I shook him quickly, unconvincingly, careful to touch only the fabric of his hoodie. I repeated my three words, louder this time, more desperate, like a tourist lost in a country whose language he doesn’t speak, “Hey, you okay?”
Nothing. No one around. A slight panic set in as I realized my position. Touching the man assumes responsibility for the man. I hastily made the call that might relieve me of my newfound obligation.
“What is your location?” the 911 operator asked immediately. My heart jumped. No hello, no introduction. I understood her approach of course, but couldn’t help but feel unsettled by her curtness. Mentally I made a note to call her Beth. She sounded like a Beth. I settled down.
“Natoma, between 7th and 8th,” I stammered.
“What is the situation?”
“I found a man on the sidewalk, appears to be unconscious…”
I continued to describe him, his unresponsiveness, his labored breathing — the words pulling me back to a stark classroom of some first aid course a decade ago, my victim nothing more than a plastic mannequin bust propped on a desk.
“I need you to commence CPR.”
That was unexpected. No follow up questions. No, “just stay with him until help arrives.” CPR. Right off the bat. Beth was not one for chit-chat.
The acronym rang in my ears. I looked at his mouth. His lips were dry. Really dry. Cracked like the earth in a climate change documentary. The corners of his mouth were caked in something beyond dirt. Black like tar. The ambulance will surely be here any moment, I said to myself, is giving this guy mouth-to-mouth really going to make any difference? Catching the thought, I tried to mentally smack myself into prioritizing a man’s life over my own squeamishness. I was losing.
Beth began to dish out instructions, none of which seemed to involve his mouth. I quietly sighed relief before a fresh panic grabbed me as I realized how outdated my training must be. As instructed, I began chest compressions as Beth counted out a rhythm: “one, and two, and three, and four and…”
My back and arms soon began to ache, and I had a fleeting guilty thought that this was probably a really good workout. A crowd had gathered and a brave onlooker approached and criticized my technique, telling me I had to push further into the chest cavity. I glowered and she backed off, but I heeded the advice, now worried that I would break his ribs and he would sue me for negligence or some damn thing. My last thought before the paramedics showed up was how many un-altruistic thoughts I seemed to be having throughout this so-called altruistic act.
The paramedics pushed me aside as one bats a fly. I stood up, and for a moment didn’t leave, expecting I guess, some kind of recognition or kudos. It didn’t come. The crowd dispersed and the paramedics did what they do all day long. I turned reluctantly and started walking back to the office, my snack/drink/smoke desires having gone unfulfilled. Halfway down the block I heard a deep gasp and looked back — the man on the street sat straight up, breathing violently. He did everything he could in his confused state to escape the paramedics, but they grabbed him firmly and put him in the back of an ambulance. They pulled away.
I stood alone on the sidewalk for just a second longer, staring at the spot where the man had been. Four feet beyond, where it had been all along, lay his shoe. Just a tattered black shoe on a city sidewalk. A young man in a hoodie and jeans brushed by me, head down, eyes glued to his phone. I turned and left. Reaching the office door, I took a deep breath and went inside.
“Hey, guess what?” my co-worker called as I stepped in, “we landed another pre-order!”
