A city like San Francisco is a thousand things — buildings, streets, seasons, parks, neighborhoods — but mostly people that you see and do not know. The man down the street who walks his dog every morning, the usher at the ballpark, the driver you see on the bus from time to time, the mail carrier who is there every afternoon, the couple who run a sandwich shop, the bartender who remembers your name, the UPS driver who came by twice in the same week, the lady at the dry cleaners, the guy at the butcher shop who always has a pencil behind his ear, the man who sold poems near the Embarcadero BART Station. They are all people you know and don’t know — part of the fabric of the city.
I remember a street guy I used to see nearly every morning on my way to work, back when I went to the office every day. He’d sit on a little box he had on Fifth Street near the Old Mint and say something most every morning, “Good morning,” mostly, or “How are you?” Something small. He never asked for money, but seemed pleased for an occasional donation. One day he was not there. And the next few days, too. Just gone. I asked around. “Oh, him,” the Fifth Street types said. “He passed away, we heard.” I never knew his name or his story.
They are city people you can never quite recall, as the song goes, but when they are gone, you notice. It’s a change, a difference, a piece of the city that has faded away, like an old photograph…