I had a recent chance to visit the Golden City of San Francisco. Being my first trip to the United States, I was all excited to experience the greatly celebrated American dream. The city however shattered my very imagination of the rich and prosperous face that it is famed for. I was shocked to see the huge number of homeless people all around the city struggling in absolute poverty and horrible conditions. Though I knew that homelessness was a big issue faced by cities like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in the US, I had no idea that the situation was so horrendous. From one of the 2019 statistics reports, there are more than 8000 homeless people in the city.
I was staying in a youth hostel much like how I was travelling in Europe, but the experience was not at all similar. I had chosen a location very close to the city centre and with good access to public transport. Contrary to how I was advised, I found that the city have an excellent public transport system and all the touristic locations could be conveniently reached with trams or buses. However, in most neighbourhoods, the streets are generally lined up on either side by many homeless people and I felt that most of them also had mental issues. It was the same for the locality of my hostel too.
One day, I was walking along the street from my hostel to take a bus. I saw one young guy walking aimlessly along the street towards me. He seemed to be in pain and his face and hands were covered in blood. He was talking to himself and looked extremely miserable dressed in rugs which were also having blood stains. I was contemplating if I should switch to the other side of the street. I continued but I couldn't look at him anymore and tried to avoid eye contact. As we reached close to each other, with a very sudden move he tried to strangle me and he screamed loudly. I was terrorised and as a reflex action, I screamed back and pushed him away and ran towards the end of the street. I could see that he just walked away casually after the incident. I am sure he had no intention of mugging but might be mentally unstable. It was however traumatising for me and I had least expected something like this.
Though it could be a very isolated incident, I can imagine such incidents happening to anyone given the state of affairs of that city. It changed totally my perceptive and now when I think of San Francisco, along with the golden gate bridge and other attractions, numerous helpless faces also fill that space.
As I researched, I could learn that homelessness is indeed a big problem that cities like San Francisco are trying to solve forever.
A city which was gold plated in my imagination surprised me with its rusty patches which is the reality, largely hidden from the outside world. It was an eye opener to the ignorant me who was also once captivated by the Land of Dreams.
