I think it is about time that I describe the Civic Center station, the station that I get off at in SF to catch the company shuttle.
It is a nasty part of town with high homeless population. The homeless there are not your typical homeless folks- these are drug addicts, drunkards, and the mentally ill. OK, I know you might be thinking now how rude and sheltered I am, but trust me, I went to undergrad in Berkeley, I have co-existed with the homeless for 4 years. I appreciate the color they add to the campus.
Civic Center station dwellers are scary! They scream at you, spit at you, throw bottles at you..etc. Whenever I get off there, I have to hop over puddles on the ground. Not rain puddles...but PEE puddles. It smells like pee (sometimes worse) the moment you exit the train. Every so often, you see more than pee. You see puke.
These folks mumble racist/sexist remarks, yell with fury, and purposely walk towards you and scream profanities in your face. I've experienced it all...or so I thought.
Today was a bit crazy. One homeless man took out a gun from his pocket and pointed right at my head. After 3 seconds of looking at the gun, I realized that it was just a toy gun, but gosh, for 3 seconds threr I thought that was the end of my life (Note: All I had on my mind was I hope my husband knows that I was onlying thinking of how much I love him during this time. Then I had a millisecond flash of my family, my dog....then I noticed the gun was fake because the homeless man made the shooting sound himself!)
He took this plastic gun, and pointed at me, clicking it, re-pointed the gun towards me. He was about 3 steps away from me...and just kept on following me with the gun! I kept on walking away, but he would not leave me alone. Then after 15 seconds, I realized maybe it was my fear that is egging him on. I decided to yell at him. "What are you doing? What do you think you're doing?" I forced myself to chuckle and said, "Have a good weekend too!" Finally, he turned away.
I've seen people drink and smoke pot right outside the station. I've seen people pee, puke, and even poop once. But this was a bit too personal. What if the gun was actually real? What if this homeless man just wanted to take someone's life before he takes his own and I happened to cross his path?
1 comment:
Born and raised in the Bay Area, never not once have I ever had any sort of the problems with homeless people that you describe. Yeah, I'm sure that attending college at Berkeley gives you a real good idea of how the rest of the world lives, but you might consider that the problem is you, and not them. Perhaps less sneering or air of indifference might not draw such behavior.
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