Had an interesting conversation with a man from Atlanta today. He was here on business for a conference on IT security. We talked a bit about that and then the conversation shifted to the ubiquitous presence of bums in the city. Many of them hover around downtown, but they can be found nearly everywhere. I know some of you are saying that’s mean, or not politically correct. Right. Well perhaps, but I’m getting a little tired of walking through Balboa Park and seeing them urinating in the bushes, farting, burping, drying their dirty clothes on the sidewalks, leaving all their trash and empty 40oz bottles everywhere, shouting aimlessly, shitting behind buildings, getting in fights with other vagrants, asking me for money, and perhaps worst of all attracting other bums. Many of them have fleas. Yes FLEAS! I don’t make this shit up. I’d hate be a business owner and have them sitting out front. There are certain gas stations that I don’t even go to anymore because I got tired of being hassled by smelly lazy individuals.
Anyways my passenger wasn’t too fond of them either. He told me an interesting story. Back in 1996 the summer Olympics came to Atlanta. In preparation they rounded up a large number of the bums in the city and told they that they could get a bus ticket anywhere that they wanted, but that they couldn’t stay in Atlanta. He told me that the City of Atlanta offered them a bus ticket to anywhere in the country. I’m not sure if this is true or not but it makes you wonder. If so, I’m sure that some of them were happy to leave. The man said that many of them migrated to San Diego before the Olympics took place. What a nice gesture of them, passing the buck so to speak.
This is a transient that I saw in Loma Portal the other day. He looks quite dashing in that girls high school cheerleading outfit with his greasy tattered hair. Before he walked past me he was just mumbling and cursing and I could smell his foul body odor from fifteen feet away. Disgusting.
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