Signs of Winter

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Sunset, or just before, when late afternoon soaks the storied street in its warmest, most yellow light, I walk through the upper Haight and see how the personalities, sitting on the ageing concrete, match the doors against which they lean. I always make eye contact, never lend cigarettes and try not to look down at them, even though they are usually sitting and I, unless particularly drunk, am usually standing or walking past; I have a personal interest in each of them; I’ve learned, through years of observation and innumerable return trips past the Stanyan St. McDonalds, to love the travellers and the street people, as my mother used to call them. Gibble, or so he calls himself, is nursing a brown paper bag with both hands today, guarding the entrance of The Citrus Club – a rather shady noodle house – with his legs outstretched, blocking most of the sidewalk. ‘Never again’ he mumbles to himself, rolling his chin back and forth against his chest. Smiling, I pass Gibble with an approving nod before I notice a group of girls in sunglasses and summer dresses, perched on a low wall, smiling too, watching my approach: “I like your sunglasses,” “You got any change?” “Cute shorts,” three of them said to me in tandem.

On a much different day, I walk with my hood up and head bowed, cursing the wind and my goose bumps. Franklin St. and I turn left off Haight because I am walking home and want to see if anyone is playing Frisbee or selling pot or drinking forties by a drum circle on the grass, but it’s late and no one is.

When finally the days reduce and the pavement in the panhandle gets cold and brittle, I look around and the trees surprise me with their lonely eyes; the grass has preserved its green but lost its sociability; and abandoned bushes cry out for companionship. Incessant traffic still surrounds the thin strip of urban greenery. Nothing of the city’s hurried life has left it, and still this incongruous instance of nature withers unaccompanied. The unlucky, the lazy, the doomed, the stoned and the hungry have all found warmer climate or accommodations than the doormat of a park in a city by a bay. Empty cans still lay in the shade of young oaks – evidence of erstwhile vagrant occupation. Ringmasters of the park in summer, the homeless withdraw with the flight of autumn.