A walk after midnight...

by Carol Harvey

On Saturday, August 3 at 1:00 a.m. I emerged wide-eyed from "Signs" at the Coronet on Geary and walked down to Cala Market for an Odwala. In the check-out line was a skinheaded-looking blond guy and his spikey-headed girlfriend.  She giggled, "I have to take out a loan to live in this city."  He commiserated, saying something about her staying at his place for the time being. 

Out on the street with my drink, I passed a hooded young guy on the corner.  A perfectly curved stream gushed copiously upwards from his pants into the street.  His friend, hands slung in pockets, slouched idly a few yards up by the bus stop, waiting.  The golden stream guy finished and stepped past me spritely saying a bold, "Hello!"  "I just peed in front of you in the street, Lady, and you can't do nothin' about it," smirked all over his face."

I walked a few yards East up Geary.  The skinheaded-looking blond guy emerged from the bushes pulling up his zipper.  He joined his girlfriend.  I called as I walked up behind him fast, "Are you homeless?"

"No."  He said, turning.

"They are arresting homeless people for what you just did in the bushes."

"They can arrest me," he screamed. "In fact, you can tell them my name," and he hauled up the front of his shirt.  Blazoned across his very white chest in huge Gothic letters was the word, "Stortz."

"What's that?" I said.

"My name, Bitch!  You can tell the police, and they can come and get me."

"You make it hard on homeless people," I said.

("Note to self: I'm mad enough about the unfairness of this that I am willing to commit the foolhardy act of confronting a nonhomeless skinheaded-looking guy in the middle of Geary at 1:30 a.m. on a dark Friday night.)

He's not alone.  They do it outside the bars in the Marina. Their kids do it behind the trees in Alta Plaza, and in the street next to their cars on Valencia in the Mission.  Some of them are adults, some children.  Most have homes.

So, send out the SFPD with the quality of life citations!   It's "Storz!", folks, and he ain't homeless.  He's a housed San Franciscan, a guy with the Goth tattoo of his name on his chest, over there right now doing his civic duty by watering the bushes. 

And, me, I'm over here trying not to drag it home on my shoes.