Ex-Tech –> Homeless in SF
Source: Hacker News
Wednesday – Berkeley → Tenderloin
The rain was rushing down as I exited the Civic Center BART station. I walked past the Main Library and water started filling my shoe through a hole I didn’t know existed. My sock got heavy. My foot got damp. Is there anything quite as awful?
The discomfort catapulted me back.
March 2025
I stepped off a Greyhound into the shadow of the Salesforce Tower—the second‑tallest tower on the West Coast. It’s a giant glass needle that penetrates the clouds, sometimes looking like the Eye of Sauron. It’s a monument to a corporation that monetizes human connection, a machine that measures a person’s worth based on how much money they can make you.
I arrived at its base with no money, no phone, and an empty backpack.
Time was ticking. The sky was gray. I didn’t want to sleep on the ground, venture to the airport, or nod off on short bus routes that ended at nowhere in the middle of the night.
I walked up Market Street to the Main Library. As I sat in front of a computer, it was the first time I truly acknowledged the harsh truth I had been avoiding: I was homeless.
Searching for Shelter
I found a list of shelters and started with what I believed to be the nicest one.
- Dignity Moves – Gough Street
- Seventy private rooms.
- A staff member looked at me through the fence as if I were an invasive species.
- “There is no one to talk to. You have to call the SFHOT line and wait for the van to pick you up,” he said.
“I am in front of you right now. I am a person. I don’t have a phone. I don’t want a phone. I am here. I am tired. This is a shelter. I need shelter.”
“Can’t help you,” he said, and walked away.
Did dignity move?
I drifted south to SOMA, passed a tent handing out clean needles, and thought of Huxley’s Brave New World: Soma—the government‑produced drug for artificial happiness, an opiate for the masses.
The next shelter asked if I was an addict. I told them I’d had a couple of beers in the past few months.
“This place is only for addicts,” they said. “Try the Human Services Agency.”
Sobriety was the disqualifier. And the Human Services Agency? The name felt wrong—like how aliens might describe us, or a department in a Kafka story.
It was getting close to dark, so I went back to the library, sat at the computer again, and found a temporary shelter a few blocks away at the Quaker Meeting Hall on 9th Street.
The Quaker Meeting Hall
I joined the line. These were odd folks; I suppose I was an odd folk, too.
-
A woman with purple hair held a clipboard like a shield and pointed a thermometer at my head.
“Ninety‑four degrees.”
“What?” I asked.
She wrote it down.
“Shouldn’t it be 97 or 98?”
“No. Ninety‑four.”
She didn’t recognize the disconnect. Her ledger showed temperatures ranging from 88 °F to 95 °F.
It reaffirmed a delusion that had previously gripped my mind and begun my psychosis: I must be dead—this place, purgatory. I prayed for a quest or for my retribution to be almost over, so that I could return to the land of the living.
I entered the hall.
The old ladies marched in, feeding us pasta, bread, cake, cookies, and Coca‑Cola. I ate because I had no choice, but I was suspicious of the sugar they forced on us.
We slept on green mats. Most of the folks drenched theirs in industrial Clorox. I thought they had it wrong—embrace the filth. Do you trust the chemicals?
At 8:05 PM, the lights died. No blue light, no screen—just exhaustion and the collective breathing of fifty souls. We slept as deep as we could until 5:30 AM.
The morning crew felt like NPCs (non‑player characters). They were sneakerheads—Starbucks, Air Force Ones, tracksuits, and the chit‑chat of urban culture. I wonder how much they were getting paid?
One man marched in every morning, repeatedly shouting, “Drago! Drago! Drago!” at an invisible enemy in the air. They brought French toast in white containers; some drenched theirs in mountains of maple syrup. Is sugar the enemy?
Mission Mode – 7 AM
I entered Mission Mode. Survival is a series of small, concrete objectives:
- Find a shower.
- Find laundry.
- Find food.
There was a shelter in the Mission that offered laundry and showers on Tuesdays—but only for women.
“I identify as a woman,” I said.
She smiled, said “Okay, you’re smart,” and opened the gate.
I sat with older women who knitted and shared pizza. I felt a small breath of relief.
“Your turn.”
I had five minutes to shower. I shaved too fast and cut my face, watching the blood mix with the water.
Mission accomplished: shower, laundry, food. I returned to the Quaker Meeting Hall that evening.
Side Projects
In the margins of the day, I started reading a lot and building a website for time travelers, hoping I might be able to communicate that way.
One day I went to St. Vincent’s clothing pantry and tried on Miami‑Vice‑like Hawaiian shirts that felt like Grand Theft Auto outfits. After a few blocks, I decided they were cursed—filled with the bad energy of their previous owners. I wore them for about thirty blocks, then donated my new clothes at Goodwill and reverted to my original avatar: jeans and a Marine Layer hoodie.
I needed a guide, so I stole Don Quixote from the library.
A Possible Sancho Panza
One night, in the Quaker Meeting Hall, I thought I found my Sancho Panza: an older Chinese man who waddled with three plastic bags filled with Pringles containers. I don’t know what he does during the day or why he always carries those plastic bags.
End of segment.
April 2nd, 2025
I stood in a courtroom. Four felonies.
My public defender reminded me of a woman I did ayahuasca with in upstate New York. But she didn’t like me the same as the ayahuasca friend. She hadn’t responded to my emails. She was never in her office. I didn’t like the lack of communication.
I told her I wanted to represent myself.
She looked at me like I was insane. “You might not even be allowed to represent yourself.”
If there is one thing to know about me, it’s this: as soon as the words “You can’t” or “You aren’t allowed” are spoken—especially when there is objective truth—it becomes my mission to prove the right way, to prove a truth. Purpose endowed.
The judge looked down from the bench.
“Are you sure? If convicted, you could spend three to five years in prison.”
“I am sure,” I said. “I am capable. I understand the charges. I understand the possibility of the consequences. And I understand the process. I want to represent myself.”
She said, “Ok. I’ll see you at the end of the month.”
I walked out of the courtroom, a homeless felon acting as his own attorney.
After the Hearing
I took the Caltrain back to Redwood City and went to the library. I saw an email from my mom:
Your grandma passed away this morning.
Twenty‑two days in hospice. Supposedly she broke the record in that hospice. She couldn’t die without winning.
I went to the Human Services Agency in Redwood City. My paranoia of the place had dissipated slightly as the idea of having my own room felt pretty nice, but they denied me from the LifeMoves Navigation Center. Instead they offered me a bed in a room with twenty men in Menlo Park. The worker pointed to three guys who were missing their teeth, and I summed them up to be probable meth users.
“You can join them. I’m calling them an Uber right now.”
“No,” I said.
I was done with barracks and shared rooms in homeless shelters. I walked out.
The Night I Chose Survival
I walked into a Savers. I didn’t have money. Since that 94‑degree reading, I had refused to steal, convinced I was in purgatory and that doing the “right thing” was the only way to pass the test. But standing there, the rules dissolved. The moral guardrails of our broken systems suddenly felt absurd. Today, survival wasn’t a sin. It was a step in this journey. I felt a wink from my grandma.
I took a sleeping bag and a thermos and left.
I walked into a Sports Basement and grabbed a portable stove and a small propane tank.
I walked into a Safeway and grabbed taro roots, tortillas, beans, and a steak.
I found a bridge in Redwood City—concrete, brutalist, a bit damp. I unrolled my sleeping bag on the dirt, the moon rose, and a raccoon crossed the river. I turned on the mini propane tank, cooked the taro, steak, and beans, and made myself some delicious steak tacos.
A couple of months earlier I had discovered that particular bridge was next to an office building inhabited by some of my old colleagues—a start‑up I had helped launch in New York, where I was the first employee and owned equity. They eventually sold for $350 million and were now raising $140 million to build robots for the future.
And here I was: a man facing felony charges, homeless, penniless, sleeping in the dirt just a stone’s throw away from a future that could have been.
It was funny.
I closed my eyes. I could defend myself. I could fend for myself. I could survive.