Working in the Mission district of San Francisco means I pass a lot of homeless people on the street every day. Sometimes it's actually scary, such as the other week when a man was freaking out on some drug, making "hnuh, hnuh, huhhhn!" noises while flailing about on the sidewalk. Everyone walks faster, edging over away from him and trying not to make eye contact while still keeping an eye on which way the guy is flailing; it's one of those situations where you just *know* if they guy decides to come at you that you're going to have to deal with one whacked-out, crazy motherfucker with no sense of anything, that you're going to have to fight as dirty as you possibly can just to stand a chance. He didn't lock on anyone. There must have been some bad black tar heroin going around, because I saw another one, a young woman, the next day. It's so sad.

Anyway, there are a couple of people that I recognize and have internal nicknames for. The latest one, book man, is one I'd adopt if I had any kind of money. Not adopt as in come live with me, but adopt as in buy him a room for a few months so he could get a shower and maybe even find a job. I have these sorts of philanthropic fantasies sometimes...

The reason I like book man is because, you guessed it, he reads. The first time I saw him he was reading Red Dragon, which I haven't read, but of course have seen the movie version of. So, we chatted about books. He reads whatever he can get his hands on, finding discarded books and reading them in between his panhandling. I've never seen a homeless person do this before. He's sometimes outside the Safeway, and I've taken to giving him a dollar or two when I see him; once he was behind me in line, so I just bought his stuff along with mine. He said he could then start on lunch, and I almost gave him $$ for that as well, but decided against it; I'm not exactly flush. Still, I don't mind giving money to a homeless person who I'm pretty sure is actually buying food with it, instead of drugs. I keep meaning to bring him books that we have more than one copy of, but since I never know when he'll be around (and my backpack is already always overstuffed), I haven't managed that yet.

I saw book man on the bus this morning and his face was a painful, bright red. When we made eye contact and I asked him how he was he said, "Sunburnt. I fell asleep in the park yesterday." I felt so bad for him, poor guy! He looked just miserable, and I also noticed that instead of his usual worn luggage, he was carrying his stuff in big garbage bags. I almost gave him the sunscreen I had in my bag, but it's really expensive, "dry touch" sunscreen and I don't have the cash to buy more before I go to North Carolina next week.

Book man said hello to another homeless man I see around a lot, whom I think of as "Bird Man". Bird man snarled and scooted away from Book man when he spoke to him, but then again I've only ever seen Bird man talk once, and that was to a student with a video camera. Bird man is almost magical to me -- as you can probably guess by his name, he has an affinity for birds. The local pigeons are fatter because Bird man uses his panhandling money to buy huge bags of birdseed. I often see him sitting on the steps of the nearby park, scattering seed, covered in pigeons. They know him; they sit on his arms and eat out of his hands. It's an amazing sight to behold, this old, weathered man with long gray hair and a beard, covered in spotted gray pigeons.

He got off the bus right behind me, and as soon as he did, even before he could scatter seed, the pigeons took flight from a nearby powerline and flocked to him. I looked back to see him standing in the middle of a nebula of birds, their wings flashing lightdark as they fluttered and vied for better position. He stood there for a moment, a dark figure in a glimmer of wings, looking happier than anyone else on the street.