Coming back to our apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf, we drive aimlessly and eventually rustle up brunch on Fifth Street…
“TRAM!!!”
We pass signs in windows with “I DO support the right to marriage” (but I’m not fast enough with my iPhone, especially now Rockstar’s watching lots of snow videos and is in charge of calling up my phone camera)… But this is a beautiful teal house anyway…
Their houses are just gorgeous. And there are dogs going for walks everywhere.
There’s a tall, broad-shouldered african american man sitting in a Santa hat with a backpack and what looks like some belongings in a cardboard box near the parking meters, occasionally holding up a cup.
His voice.
It’s one of the most pleasant voices we’ve ever heard, not just walking along the streets here. We’ve encountered not a few people on the streets with cups especially around the shopping centers:
“HelLO.“
“I could use a little HELP.“
Sometimes to my un-trained, have-always-lived-in-Asia ears, they sound belligerent.
7 years ago running around Times Square after an impromptu decision to take some wedding pictures (Opened phone book. First photog listed was in Chinatown. Long white dress came free with the photo package. Voila. Wedding Pictures. Yes, seriously) people came up to us with a cup, “Hey, you’re getting married. How bout a dollar?”
Our Chinatown photog said in Cantonese to us, “Don’t give them anything. They just choose not to work.”
“I can’t stand them.”
I… have to get my head around people who choose not to work and just bum dollars… You can’t bum enough to buy Prada, can you? Or have kids… Surely you’d find work if you could? Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for them thinking they CAN’T find work. But people have told me there are people who CHOOSE not to work at all, I should really get out more often.
(Uh… Yeah, says the person who saw snow for the first time at age 34 and used to rarely travel except when she got married. I know.)
This Christmas we watch on tv as they interview people at the homeless shelter.
There’s a bespectacled woman with a 5 week old baby. “Well, I guess here I am.”
Another woman with smooth, long, blonde hair in a black v-necked sweater says she came from a good home and then the crisis hit.
I know someone from here whose parents had a drug habit and have been in and out of homeless shelters. His wife, whom I met in Hong Kong where they now live, tells me every time he looks at the graffiti, he gets mad because it signifies the height of irresponsiblity. For someone who had such role models growing up, I have the utmost respect.
Then there was the whole impromptu band with full set of percussion instruments playing really groovy Christmas music on the street outside Westfield shopping center something, and the lone man with a trumpet in front of the lighted Christmas tree in Union Square…
Except I was a little afraid to open my wallet in the crowd by myself (Kings and I occasionally split up and take turns minding napping Rockstar in various hotel lounges while the other roams… I took this pic earlier when it was less crowded as it was raining) – I had been carrying all my cash everywhere <sheepish>
Anyway. Back to the original Guy With Remarkable Voice, Santa Hat, And Cup.
A passerby puts a dollar bill in his cup and his “AW, THANK you, sir!” sounds so….. Friendly. Warm. SINCERE.
It’s hard to imagine this guy doesn’t, I don’t know, sell vacuum cleaners or CDOs in a day job. Or have a talk show.
His voice is so charismatic Kings doesn’t just take some money out of his wallet, he follows him down the street a short bit (interestingly we parked almost right in front of his cardboard box and back pack but he didn’t ask us for money), tapping his shoulder til he turns.
His surprise, and his “God BLESS you,” reminds us we really are. Blessed.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter as much whether that guy could find work. We’d much rather be the people who can find jobs, work our butts off and be able to give.
For all we have, we will Praise the Lord.
It’s a warm feeling that follows us into some random cafe, pulls up a chair, and sits with us at the corner window table as outside, another seemingly random guy walks up and starts meticulously cleaning the windows (left).
The impressively articulate blond little girl at the next table having spinach omelette with her father and baby brother chirps “Hey… Someone’s cleaning the windows!” Then, spying the Van Gogh Starry Night Gelaskin stuck on my laptop as Rockstar puts a Little Red Tractor jigsaw together on cbeebies.com, “That’s from Classical Baby!”
“We get it on HBO,” her bespectacled father explains very patiently (because I can’t understand how to pick it up off their tv here) from under his baseball cap. “Van Gogh Starry Night (is this why everywhere I go with my laptop everyone knows this picture) is one of the paintings featured as they play classical music.”
“It’s better than Baby Einstein.”
We half expect Window Cleaning Guy to come in asking for tips, but he doesn’t – he carries on down the street out of sight.
