I recently returned from a much-needed sojourn to the sunshine state of California. A total of ten days, spent in a combination of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, with brief spells in Vallejo and Napa thrown in for good measure.
Those who have never visited the United States of America often have an idealized imprint of the country branded into their consciousness, it’s fortitude perpetuated by popular culture. Who amongst us didn’t envy the lifestyle portrayed by characters from our favourite childhood television programs? I for one often wished that somehow, someway, I’d be relocated to a Bel-Air mansion.
America is perceived as a land of plenty; arguably superior, and vastly cheaper food stuffs, a predominantly more comfortable and agreeable climate. A country peopled by citizens of a sunnier disposition: famously considerate and helpful. For the most part they are right. Although even the most romanticized view of the States may have been augmented by several modern events. Chief amongst them: Hurricane Katrina. A natural disaster that brought New Orleans to its knees, and in the process reduced the inhabitants to the level of despairing refugees from a far-flung ‘Third World’ country. The World was watching, and America failed its people.
Hurricane Katrina also served to highlight the discrepancy between the way the British and American Governments deal with the displacement of their populaces and the subsequent results, including homelessness.
As dispiriting a notion it is to contemplate, I felt the urgent need to address the rather dark subtext of my trip: the abundance of homeless men and women who ensconced themselves on stoops, in doorways or on street corners. I would see the same doleful faces, day after day. Shaking their seemingly uniform polystyrene cups, like so many rattles, often accompanying this action with some ploy or line engineered to garner attention or sympathy from affluent tourists.
On our first night in the city we were confronted by a man who sang, “I’ve been waiting, for some change from you”,to the melody of Foreigner’s 1981 hit song ‘I’ve Been Waiting For a Girl Like You’. As shocked as I was, I admired him for concocting something as humorous and audacious as he had, given his circumstances. Then I considered that he was probably inebriated.
These actions rarely desisted, day or night. I witnessed two separate occasions where a particularly persistent young man who prowled a busy section of Stockton Street (A prime location given that it runs either to, or directly through both Market Street and Union Square, where Gucci, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton are all situated) accosted a man, and then a woman, choosing to pinch their sides. What response he hoped to elicit, I have no idea.
Another more elderly woman was no less animated. She had purposely grown a beard (I assume) and was dancing around vigorously with a colourful placard that simply read ‘HELP GLORIA SHAVE’. Given the obvious state of distress she appeared to be in, I almost felt implored to do so.
Perhaps the grandest spectacle of them all was a middle aged Asian woman, who, in rather regal fashion, positioned herself atop a red crate. And would sit, often for hours at a time, unblinking and unresponsive. When she did move it was with great solemnity, her short journey to apposite corners was a laboured exercise. She was mute for the duration of my visit. I thought perhaps she deemed her garb loud enough. Outfitted in a traditional Japanese golden silk robe, (an ensemble that included a matching crown and white gloves) she resembled a lost geisha such was her unusual permanence. Out of time, and seemingly out of luck. She was a curious, bourgeois relic. Too proud to beg, and yet despite her ostentatious get-up, a member of the all to well represented homeless community of San Francisco.
Others were more soberly attired, yet no less affecting. The sense of disconsolation and dejection was etched onto their faces, the accumulation of hardships they were forced to endure daily was all too apparent in their demeanour. A sense of hopelessness was palpable.
I doubted very much that my unwanted change would do much to alleviate their desperate situation. And therein lay the problem. In giving my money away I was only feeding a rather virulent problem. My actions only served to encourage and add credence to their behavior. In the direct charitable contribution from the general public to the hand of a homeless person lay the implicit excuse those in power would use to escape their civic responsibility.
And yet I was only thinking of their plight in the immediacy. Shelters and schemes were conspicuous in their absence. Must the displaced starve in order to force the hand of governance into seeking a solution?
Many of the homeless people I saw were plainly mentally unbalanced. At a bus stop on Market Street a young man waved his arms and shook his head spasmodically, conversing exclusively with himself. This was a common spectacle, particularly on Haight Street. Others were disabled. Stationed in wheelchairs they sat prone, with little choice but to endure the severity of the elements. Were such sights commonplace in Britain there would be outcry, followed by a subsequent media fuelled call to arms, and rightly so.
I witnessed all of this against the backdrop of an engrossing, seemingly tightly contested Presidential race, between two contenders, who, ostensibly purported to have the best interests of the American people at heart. Owing to Mitt Romney’s synthetic empathy and ‘car salesman’ demeanour, President Obama was once more swept into office on the back of a new slogan ‘Forward’. Pity the campaign staff didn’t revive or rework the old one ‘change’, for it’s still as necessary now as it ever were, especially for the homeless of San Francisco.
