[PREV - UGLYBEAUTY] [TOP]
Dec 2 2003 - Jun 8, 2004
Usual tag: Homelessness.
Not clear that it's a *good* tag. Bum
Street Person
Gutterpunk
Homeless Person
Drug Addict
SELF
A parameter you can tweak in
visualizing what's going
on/understanding where
commentators are coming from:
innocent victims vs. lazy bums
of circumstance
Primary symptom, people
on the street who seem:
down-and-out unpleasant
and hurting undesireables
We need to get them
off of the streets.
We need to They're making
help them. tourists
nervous.
They are, They're
after-all, bringing down
human beings. property
values. (ha, as if
that were
possible in
SF)
Compassion is arguably
not what's going on here
precisely.
If every compassionate
liberal in SF invited a
homeless person to
sleep on their couch,
they would all be off
of the streets.
Whatever it is that
we feel for these
people, it seems too
abstract and
unfocused to call it
"compassion".
Myself, I don't even
claim to have a huge SCUMZOIDS
amount of sympathy
for these people. I've been known to
call them "scumzoids"--
What I do have So if you think this Another piece of slang
though, is a sense piece seems insensitive, I've heard: "sketchy"
of justice: I don't you should see some of or "sketch".
want to see the law my other stuff...
cracking the whip Suggesting
over the heads of "lightly
the weak and sketched in",
defenseless, just like an
because they And when you come oscillating
occasionally annoy. down to it, the speed freak?
street people
annoy people who
annoy me a lot
more than they (Maybe I owe
annoy me myself. them for doing
me a favor.)
It's pretty
clear that
the term
"homeless"
is favored
because it The way the
absolves argument against
them of all that goes:
responsibility.
It's just not
The older *that* hard to
terminology like survive in
"bum", has the modern America,
opposite even without any Provided you avoid
difficulty. heavy job expensive habits,
"It's all their skills... stay off the drugs
own fault, (including booze)
they're just Many of them and keep your
lazy." *could* have spirits up and
gotten their self-respect intact.
act together
Is it possible to avoid their
to resolve that condition. Doing that in
question in any the face of
sensible way? living a
bottom rung
(Possibly not. existance is
The idea of the trick, of
"Responsibility" course.
has some hidden
gotchas.) SELF
LETTERS_FROM_EARTH
Other problems (accuracy
quibbles?) with the
category "homeless":
"Homeless" might include
someone doing the couch
tour for six months, or
perhaps living in a van These people don't normally make
on the edge of town while it into our mental image of the
holding down a job. "homeless", though possibly they
should.
Conversely, gutter-punks
on Haight street may
return to their parents
house in Marin every At first glance, many people
other week. call them "homeless",
but if you knew their
background story it might seem
more complicated than that.
Similarly you might have
drug addicts (including
drunks) hanging around, who
you might loosely identify
as "homeless" without
checking whether they've
got places to live.
And there are cases
like, say, drug dealers
working on the street,
that some people might
look on as a symptom of
a "bad neighborhood",
though this has nothing
to do with "homelessness".
San Francsico has more of the
homeless/bums/unfortunates/scum
on the street that many other
American cities.
What is
The Source
of The
Problem?
(Aug 13, 2021)
I hear all sorts of answers to this.
Everyone knows, but they all seem to An interesting one: until a
know something different. few years ago, Nevada was
shipping them here, dumping
It's the weather. They don't the overflow of its mental
freeze to death here. hospitials on San Francisco
streets. They had to be taken
They're drug burn-out cases, to court to get them to stop.
hangovers from the sixties.
[link]
They're all mentally ill, but ever
since Reagan (governor, then president)
there's been no facilities for them.
Alternately,
"ever since
Proposition 13".
My guess:
San Francisco is a relatively liberal
town, and whenever the powers that be
try to pull a Giuliani and get medieval
on the homeless, then a mayor gets From a source that
chased out of office. I believe (but can't
reveal):
We (mostly) don't *like* to see street
people hassled by the cops, so they One year under
(mostly) don't, so we've got more Giuliani, the death
street people. tolls for NYC were
forged. Many more
So if you're feeling all people died than
virtuous that your town were officially
takes care of the reported.
"homeless", you might
want to look into how My theory: they
they've really been chased a lot of
"taken care of". people out of the
squats before winter
What I think you'll find: kicked in, and let
the politicians knew you them freeze.
wanted them to "clean up
the streets" (of human (I know one
trash?), and they also New Yorker
knew that you wouldn't with a simpler
inquire too closely into theory: They
how they did it. just killed
them all.)
Many a town has been
beautified with a
thoroughly ugly beauty.
UGLYBEAUTY
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