Over the Labor Day weekend Keith, Mark, and I were coming back from New Zealand and we had to go the long way around from the airport as the Bay Bridge was closed. Here’s a time-lapse movie of the reason why. Pretty cool.

Just a quick one today. As I was walking down Mission Street from the

BART station (you see, I like to mix up my routes a bit to make it more
interesting and keep people guessing) I was witness to one of the most bizarre
sights I’ve ever seen. Now, I’ve seen people peeing between cars, smoking
crack, and probably having sex of some sort on the street. This morning though
pretty much takes the cake. Walking towards me was a woman with no pants on
(they were over her shoulder) and just a t-shirt, shoes, and jacket on. She
was following a fellow and kept asking him to let her give him a blow job for
a dollar.

Sometimes I don’t like walking through the Mission District, but then there are
days like today that make it interesting.

So, this weekend the Houston Astros got the
Wild Card spot for the National League. Eliminated in their wake were the
San Francisco Giants. The Astros really
turned it on after the half-way point in the season and deserve everything
they’ve gotten.

The funny thing is I grew up in Houston and I am still an Astros fan. Today
I’ve had many people at work get upset about the Astros clinching the WC spot.
Now, the Giants aren’t a bad team, but I mean, really, they lost it on their
own. They could have beat the Astros in the whole series when they were out
here. They could have not lost to the Dodgers. Oh well, they get to go home
early now. I just love the people coming up to me and saying “FUCK THE
ASTROS!” Makes my day. Now I need to find my Astros cap to wear around
one day.

So, normally my BART rides consist of me reading a book or magazine and
a little bit of people watching. The last week has had some interesting things
though:

• Last Tuesday I went home a little early because there had been a bit of
  flooding due to a busted sprinkler system. Thankfully nothing was wrong at
  the house, but on the way into the href="http://bart.gov/stations/stationguide/localareamap_16st.asp?ct=1"
  title="BART Maps!">16th Mission station the guy in front of me was walking
  on the left side of a small hallway. People had to move out of his way and
  one guy got particularly pissed that me, being on the right side of the
  hallway didn’t get out of his way. He did the ‘shoulder hit’ thing and said to
  me “watch it bitch.” Being the courteous bastard I am I replied with a
  “whatever cocksucker.” At this point he gets enraged and starts bumping into
  me with his chest (given that he was a good 6 to 8 inches shorter than me I
  found this particularly humorous) and repeating “what’d you say?” To this I
  decided to just stand my ground and stare at him which could have been dumb if
  he had a knife or gun, but it was crowded so I felt a little more confident.
  Now, walking in I had seen the BART Police standing at the station attendant’s
  booth so I also wasn’t too worried. Before I knew it the officers had moved
  down to where we were (you see, the “hallway” is actually just a concrete
  divider with a glass wall that doesn’t go all the way up). They asked if there
  was a problem and I said “I don’t have one, maybe this gentleman does.” When
  they looked at him he decided to take off running up the stairs, which was
  where he was headed anyway. One of the cops then ran to a nearby gate and was
  up the stairs after him. The other officer told me to have a nice day and
  that I could go. Amazing, had they guy not be dumb and ran (or caused a
  problem in the first place) he probably would have gotten to just walk out of
  there. I guess when you’re dumb enough to have a warrant or be wanted you’re
  dumb enough to run.
• The next day I was walking my usual route (yeah, bad idea, I know) from
  work to the BART. As I passed a low wrought iron fence that blocks off
  a small alley on the side of a house a man came over the fence. I freaked
  the hell out because, as is par for the course, people don’t generally
  jump over low wrought iron fences at me. As I was still walking down the
  sidewalk the man walked the same way I did. The first thing he said was
  “I hope I didn’t offend you.” So far, so good, he’s polite. “A man’s got
  to find a place to smoke his rock you know.” Oooookay. Now we’re on the
  same page. As I look over and down the small alley I see a woman pulling her
  pants up. Yup, smoked some rock and got it off too. Great. Anyway, for the
  remainder of the block we were on he proceeded to talk to me. Asking me
  if I wanted to by some 600mg Ibuprofin or if I knew if Codeine was better. A
  lovely conversation I tell you. At the next corner I turned and trucked it to the BART. Rude? Possibly, but the guy had a crazy look and little patches of hair that hadn’t been shaved off his head in an attempt at the Curly look. Eeee.
• On Monday I was doing the usual. Bart to 16th Mission, accend the stairs,
  and then walk to work. This morning however I got the pleasure of being
  accosted at the top by a lady getting in my face and saying “JESUS LOVES YOU!”
  at the top of her lungs. My reply? “Good for him.” That, apparently, was
  the wrong thing to say. At that she attempted to stay in my face as I
  walked off and started calling me a heathen and an unbeliever. Now, mind you,
  those things aren’t necessarily untrue, but I mean, come on. You like Jesus
  and that’s good for you. Respect my choice to be an atheist and leave me the
  hell alone. I tell you, people.

The sad thing is I really like where I work, but I don’t like walking through
the Mission any longer. It’s mostly the distance, and while not too bad, it
could be better. It is, however, better than driving and trying to find a
place to park.

In my last post I
had mentioned that a park near work, Franklin Square, seemed to be one of those
detractors for a city that brings the neighborhood down.

It appears I was wrong. While I was out picking up some lunch this afternoon
I happened to be waiting on one of my co-workers and I looked across to the
park. From my elevated position I could see kids running around in the fenced area of the park. That leads me to believe that the construction that was or
is there is to rehabilitate the park and it is still used because it’s the only
thing like it in the area.

That doesn’t, however, solve the problem of homeless using the park and making
the public facing areas cast a pall over the entire park. The fenced area is
used and mostly hidden from the public. That fence only does one thing, create
a divide and force there to be essentially 2 parks. Now, without the fence
there would probably be not as desirable a usage of the field areas and quite
literally the park might be overrun by homeless (in fact, I suspect that was
once the case). However with the lax attitude San Francisco has to the
homeless it’s no surprise that the park appears the way it does.

I’m still not going use the park because it’s inconvenient though.

The first Tuesday of every month I attend a meeting of the href="http://sfobug.org/">SFOBUG. This month’s meeting was a speaker from
Sendmail, Inc. talking to us about a new
anti-spam/verified sending domain system called DomainKeys. The talk went
well, our questions were answered, and we had good conversation.

I left before the majority of the people because I needed to get back to the
East Bay and I was taking the BART. On
the way out of the Metreon (our meeting place) I saw a woman walking out near
me. She, however stopped to look at a movie poster so I continued on. As
I was walking down 4th street towards the BART station I noticed the
same woman was walking almost even with me. She looked cold because it was
chilly out and she had no jacket on. Only a grey short sleeve t-shirt and
tan pants. Once we walked through the approach to the BART station she had
to go buy a ticket and I went on down to the platform.

Eventually she shows up on the platform. At this point I’m not sure if she’s
following me or not, I mean, it is BART and many people use it on a daily
basis. So, I am hanging out waiting for a train and I notice she’s walking up
and down one side of the platform. Twice she walked right by me and looked at
me. The second time she acted like she was going to say something but didn’t.
Then she walked down the platform. At that point I figured I would say
something to her, but a train headed to Daly City pulled up and she got on
so I didn’t get a chance to (at least that’s where I think she went, I lost
track of her for a second).

At this point one could say that it was maybe a person on their way home,
nothing special. Well, I would go along with that, except when I talked to
a friend that was at the meeting he passed on some interesting information.
He said there was a group of women sitting directly behind me at the Metreon.
He’s a bit more paranoid than I am so he took more notice of that group (they
also weren’t directly behind him) and he said there was one woman that was
listening in on our conversations. He said she even seemed to laugh at some
of our jokes. Now, this in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad, except that
when he got around to describing her he exactly described the woman I had seen.
That actually freaked me out a bit. Was she stalking me
(not likely I’d venture) or did she just want to talk to me. Well, whatever
it was I may never know, but it sure did produce some excitement in me
this morning.

Imagine if you will a man riding the BART to work this morning. He’s reading
a book like usual. From his right he hears the sound of cards being shuffled
over and over: frip, schump, friiiiiip. He looks over and
there is a lady shuffling tarot cards over and over. She shuffles the deck
about ten times in a row, very loudly he thinks, and then lays the cards out.
When she’s done “reading” the cards she goes back to the shuffling routine.
The man thinks to himself as he’s trying to read “Golly that’s annoying!”

A man, dressed in a suit. The suit, made of a light salmon/pinkish silk with
Japanese Maple, bonsai, dragons and some sort of logo stitched into it’s pattern.
A black shirt and silver-grey snake skin loafers rounded out the outfit. He
was one fly mutha on a mission. You can’t make this stuff up.

On the way home on Thursday there was a guy that got onto the BART at the 16th
& Mission station with me. He had a sleeping bag/bedroll and a backpack.
The first thing he did was set his bags in the four-seat (two sets of two seats
facing each other) I was in and start asking around for money. Spare change
is what he started with. While his bags were sitting across from me he started
to walk down the car asking people, realized his bags were unprotected, and
came running back to see if I would watch them. I said I wouldn’t and then
pushed the issue by asking if I was getting off soon. To that he only got
silence, which he must have thought I was going to watch his crap, because he
went down the car asking for money.

Then our next stop comes up and he sits next to me leaving his two items on the
two seats across from us. As people come in and are standing he starts saying
“I’ll give you my seat for a dollar.” No one is taking him up on it and he’s
hogging three seats at this point. Does he stop there? Oh no. He says, and
this is the kicker, “You can have this seat for a dollar. There ain’t no
negotiating because I’m not your prisoner. I’m not your prisoner. Well, not
yet.” The people behind us apparently have had enough and leave to goto the
next car. He quickly pounces on the open two seater by stuffing his bags and
himself back there.

One would think it would end there, but no. He starts hitting the car again,
fresh victims from the downtown SF stops of course. As he walks be he starts
asking people if he’s already asked them for money. My favorite reply was a
quite burly fellow with “Whatever it is you’re asking I don’t have it and I
don’t want any.” He said it with his eyes closed and his head tipped down,
chin to chest. As soon as he’s done with hitting up the car again he goes
into his sob stories. He’s trying to get to the house of a friend that
just passed away because the neighbors will help him. He needs money for the
bus so he can get there (unless of course he gets a FREE bus transfer at his
destination station in the East Bay). His girlfriend is in the hospital so
he wants to go see her. He’s broke and needs some help. It went on for a bit.

At some point this pan-handler starts rattling off his home page URL. I’m not
going to bother publishing it here because he doesn’t need any more hits.
Sometimes the length people will go to to get money for nothing. As readers
can guess I didn’t give him anything. I have a hard time stomaching
pan-handlers where there are jobs available, they just don’t want to do them
(and for the record, were I down on my luck I would do everything I could to
make ends meet, even getting taking a shitty job for little pay. Yes, there
are times when that’s not enough, but every little bit helps). I also don’t
like the way SF pays homeless people, but I’ll stay out of that one until
I live there and I’ll just keep bringing my lunch every day so as little of my
tax dollars go toward that as possible.

So, I get out of the BART station this morning, turn right, head for the cross
walk and then I hear the whining sound of a little gas powered scooter. Only
this time it’s not a scooter, it’s a 1/4 scale motorcycle. There was a guy
riding it. His knees were sticking way out to the side and his head was only
about as high off the ground as the bottom of the window on your average car.
So, dude has zoomed up the right side of all the vehicles stopped at the red
light and then the light turns green and he zooms off down the street. The
sight makes me wish I had a cyborg eye with a camera in it so I could share it
with all of you.

The other thing I saw was a few blocks down, two boys waiting for the bus
threw down their bags and started swinging at each other. There was an adult
there in his late 20s to early 30s. He was sort of encouraging the boys along.
at one point they got tangled up in a grapple and the guy split them apart and
said “One of you is gonna have ta whoop tha other!” and let them go back at it.
At this point they had moved to just a bit to an empty parking lot and one boy
was just bouncing around and away from the other with his fists up while the
second boy was moving his right fist in a circular motion like he was winding
up for a good punch. All the while the adult was repeating alternately to each
boy, “Whoop his ass!” That was all I saw as I then turned the corner and left
the excitement behind.

Ah Mission District, you never fail to amaze me.