Slices of San Francisco, From Recession to Absolutely Fabulous

I.

A spectacled young black man in a bulky jacket and neatly trimmed beard sits down next to me on the 49 Line.

"3 bucks for the whole bag," he announces.

"What?"

He lifts a grocery bag from the floor, sets it down between us.

"All this," opening the bag to reveal a cornucopia of potato chips and Hostess pies,"for only three dollars."

"Oh, no thanks. Don't need it."

"You sure? Okay." He turns away, moves the bag into the aisle, turns to the old bearded ex-hippie with the beret and the long beard.

"What have you got in there? Magic?" The hippie laughs, savoring the sound of the crinkle of the cellophane bags.

They fall to talking about growing up in the city, and the young black man, Nate, tells the old bushy-bearded bohemian about his temporary job, cleaning buses.

"You mean cleaning off this poetry?" he gestures at the scrawling tags of graffiti on the floor and the back of the seat

"Yup, and scrubbing the metal, peeling off the address labels."

A block on, Nate disembarks after asking for the nearest liquor store.

"What a beautiful child," the old man muses.

II.

Say what you will about recessions and economic woes in general: they do bring out the resourcefulness of the individual.

In addition to the story of Nate, the Public Transit Peddler of Junk Food--have to wonder where he got that and why he was selling it for $3--I have within the last five hours witnessed the following:

1) on the platform of the Civic Center Bart Station, a homeless man wearing a rust-colored jacket almost bigger than his body trying to sell a sealed FedEx package that he acquired somehow, somewhere, presumably illegally, to other passengers;

2) a wiry-haired gentleman in worn-out coat like a khaki army blanket and well-cared-for glasses asking for help for food in light of the economy and the historical re-occurrence of the rich exploiting the poor;

3) a young lady in newsie hat, denim jeans and jacket and scarf swiping a hunk of food off an abandoned plate on an outdoor table at Boogaloo's on Valencia.

I also heard a pedestrian telling his companions how he had just sold a van to a 50 year old man who was planning on overhauling it as a place to sleep. Shelter is shelter, and it is a pretty simple concept at its heart.

III.

In further news, I saw an office on Valencia that seems to be offering Confidential Marriages. I'm not sure what this would entail, but I like the connotations, which seem to harken to the jazz/noir age.

I also saw a poster advertising the California Lottery on a Muni shelter, written in Spanish, but I think it was saying, "If $27 million is muchmuchmuchmuchmuch money, is $12 million muchmuchmuch money? It's still plenty." The implication being, why wait for the jackpot to grow larger? Play the lottery now!

IV.

Riding the 24 Line last night, I saw a posse of five young people, three boys and two girls, all primped to look older than they were, disembarking from the bus, with talks of parties in high-pitched voices of excitement. The girls were also talking excitedly.

After the doors slid shut with a hiss, a cadre of four hip older kids, three latinos and one blonde woman, discussed the probability of the previous group being 18 or older. "And the girls probably think those guys are straight," they added.

A few minutes later, they started talking about which Absolutely Fabulous characters they would be. The guy in the baseball hat leaning against the blonde's chest said, "I would be Patsy, I think. No, wait, I'd be Edina."