Matt Williams: The pitiful sight of mass homelessness on San Francisco's streets a long way from the American Dream
I was more than shocked at witnessing people camped on the pavement, cooking up drugs and sharing needles as they injected themselves, in conditions that I can only describe as deep filth.
There was a small but visible group of dedicated volunteers who were walking the streets, attempting to bring an impossible reservoir of calm into the tsunami of chaos. They were vainly trying to ease the pain of those who appeared to be in the vice-like jaws of brain-altering addiction, mental illness or a combination of both.
Early on a freezing Sunday December morning a young man, dressed only in his threadbare underpants, stood on the corner of Bush and Hyde streets. His emaciated physical appearance made him look like an inmate from a second World War prisoner of war camp. The iron bars of self-administered addiction, leading to mental oblivion, were evident on almost every street of San Francisco. Whether self-induced or driven by society, large parts of San Francisco are overwhelmed by a calamity of human choices.
If sport is the 21st century’s opiate of the masses it is working well on the San Franciscans. Their fanatical concern was not on the army of homeless but the ankle injury to their movie-star handsome quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo.
Be it the 49ers against Tampa Bay or Munster against Leinster on St Stephen’s Day, it’s all only a game. Grown adults chasing around an inflated piece of plastic. Lionel Messi’s triumph will not change the lives of those living in the open air of Union Square.
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