Earlier this month I witnessed the aftermath of a motorcycle accident here in Brooklyn. It wasn’t fatal, or even that stupendous: the biker was sitting up on the pavement, his bike dumped in the street where he had swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, and a small crowd was gathering, people on cell phones dialing 911. As I hurried past with my dog (“Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving”) a homeless guy came running up to the scene of the accident, yelling: “It’s okay! He’s a trained athlete! Mick Jagger told me this would happen on 666!”
Oh, good, the biker was probably thinking. Crazy man to the rescue.
My friend Charlie Haas has suggested that the mumbling schizophrenics of New York are the best at what they do, just as the actors, con artists, waiters and brokers here are outstanding in their field. but having just spent a week in San Francisco, my old home town, I have to say that the loonies there give ours a run for their money. Maybe it’s because they are revered in a historical context (Emperor Norton still gets a lot of lip service) or because most people there are still eager to show tourists, yes, even folks from NY, that they are more tolerant than thou. The guy with the five o’clock shadow in the miniskirt waving at passersby at four pm may be amusing to the squares from elsewhere but people in SF smile at your concern or outrage, defending the right of people to go crazy in public.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s once controversial care-not-cash program (which was instituted last year and provides shelter and health care for homeless men and women, instead of the cash outlay the city used to provide) seems to have reduced the actual number of street dwellers while leaving some of the most delusional to roam around town — and visitors from Boise and Brooklyn something to talk about back home.
Walking out of my Nob Hill hotel last week I saw a man in what I assumed to be his karate clothes standing at a crosswalk, giving the air a kick. I hadn’t had my coffee and was disinclined to look too closely but when I did I realized that he was actually wearing a hotel bathrobe and nothing else and that he was young and in good shape. Stepping out into moving traffic he shouted, “The first car that runs into me explodes!”
Need I mention that the traffic all parted for him?