I witnessed all of this today, and because I don't know how else to process the experience, I'm passing it on here.
Context: I live in the Castro district of San Francisco: the centrally located and long-standing gay neighborhood. The old Victorian houses have all been renovated in the last 30 years. Property values have risen, and the neighborhood is now solidly uppermiddle or lowerupper class. It's also pretty white.
I met a friend tonight for dinner -- a gay servicemember, actually, who is on his two week R&R break from a one year deployment in Baghdad. That's another story.
On the way to dinner, walking three blocks in the aforedescribed residential neighborhood, I passed:
A 45 year old man talking into the air about a woman with split personalities. He obviously had split personalities or some very similar cause-you-to-talk-for-hours-into-the-air-nonsensically-to-noone disorder. Six doors down from my house. With a large Home Depot style pallet mover cart. Which included an empty 24pack box of Corona, which I noticed cause I work with those in a bar. Not that I think he drank the contents of the box; I break down and throw away those boxes every night, and I think he scavenged it like everything else in the cart. He wasn't doing anything at the time, although I'm sure he was going through garbage cans, more on that later.
On the way from dinner, now in a very cold January night, I passed:
Not one, but two people in the same very short residential block, going through the large blue recycling cans. Monday is trash night. They each had large garbage bags that they were filling with glass, to turn in for cash. A nickel or a dime per bottle. These people, a man and a woman on opposite sides of the street, are doing hard, time-consuming work in cold weather. In fact, since trash goes out on every weeknight somewhere in the city, this could be their functional job. Taking bottles that have already been deemed valueless to the owner and sent to recycle, and sorting them from the other stuff also in the can, and taking them separately to a recycle center for the marginal return price, nickels and dimes that were meaningless for the house occupants but which these people were working hard in the cold night to get.
I don't know if the man and woman were together or not. I didn't look closely at the guy. The woman said "Hi" to me and I said "Hi," and continued walking forward in the middle of the street, where I always walk at night, because there are few cars on the road and there have been rapebashings reported on this and nearby sidewalks.
There was a third guy with a garbage bag, but it looked too small to be full of glass and he was a ways away, walking down a side street, when I saw him.
Then I get back to my street, one block from the homeless recyclers, 20 yards from where the split personality guy had been, where a different mentally ill person is now being arrested by three cops in three cars. This is a 60 year old whitehaired woman who panhandles at the corner of Castro St and 18th St routinely. She always says the same thing, "I'm very hungry," and reaches out with her 7/11 cup. She is short and stooped and quickmoving and wideeyed and pretty loud. She was screaming as she was plasticuffed, up against a fence. "I dont wanna go to the airport" and some other similar stuff. Fearful screaming, not angry or bitter protest. The cops were embarrassed but taking it in stride. There was also a black guy with a long beard using the cops' maglite to indicate a certain apartment to one of the officers. This seven story building used to be senior public housing but now has a couple drug dealers mixed in, which is why there's a cop car parked on my block most nights now. Though the cop didn't start showing up until after the rapebashing was reported last fall.
Why the cops were arresting a woman that is obviously mentally ill and panhandles major pedestrian arteries regularly is unguessable to me.
Two very mentally ill people, three homeless recyclers, and one arrest, all basically in the same spot at the same time. While this was going on I ate a $6 spinach salad and a $10 chicken pot pie.
This is actually standard for Castro, except for the arrest.
So. The way we handle mentally ill people in this country is to throw them on the street, book them if they get out of hand, and presumably give them stitches at the ER if they turn up bleeding. Meanwhile other people are spending hours systematically retrieving the more useful stuff out of recycling bins to get cash. And other people are living in the houses, paying for the cops to cart away the mentally ill people, and dropping $25 each on dinner, $50 with drinks.
I apologize, this may be the worst diary I've ever written, but all I've got at the end is, what the hell kind of country is this?