Christmas week
Posted By Dan on December 21, 2009
We went down today to Union Square to see the Christmas decorations and aww, cute over the kittens and puppies in the Macy’s window. It brought be back a bit to when I was very young and we used to cross over the Bay Bridge to see the decorations in December. What I remember most was the seemingly endless lines of people, sitting with their backs to the concrete walls with their hands out.
Now, most of the panhandlers have been forced out - the lines of people are gone. But there was still the old man who told me he was sixty cents short, the fast-talking con artist who called himself a “speed entertainer,” the sad-eyed man with the grey beard who held a sign and rocked back and forth on his feet (his shoes were black sneakers with velcro closures), and the two kids with a “travellers, looking for money for food” sign.
So it’s still there, just less overt. The other big difference between now and then is the aftermath; we went for sushi.
And…The Unlikely Disciple is over there on the right. A great book, and one of those that inspires envy because Kevin Roose had the guts to do what he did and then write about it at age 19. When I was 19 I was trying to write ghost stories about unscary dead kids, and failing. He spent a semester at a Christian college, learned quite a bit, and wrote well about it. Good on him.
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