During the depth of the Holidays, a little over two weeks ago on the winter solstice (December 21, 2008), I decided to expand my monthly walking excursions around town and spend some time in some of the areas I don't often get to. Namely I was thinking, the back alleys and hidden areas of our City. This walk was also unusual from the walks I normally take around town in that it was during the height of our recent snow storms. A week before this day on December 14th, Jill and I had rescued our now named new addition to the family, Lucy the Cat out of the beginnings of the snow event when the temperature dropped from the high 20's into the low teens in about an hour. The weather that week got me thinking about the poor and the homeless.
Its nice thought to think that most of the homeless use shelters during these extreme weather events, but as i discovered, not everyone follows conventional wisdom. It also depends on how you see that trade for a bed for the night. Needless to say, I got my boots on, put on some extra layers and got out in the weather to slog it for part of the day. I wanted to see what those of us that were down on our luck (i.e. the poor and homeless) were doing as they waited for the holidays to arrive. It was an interesting walk, which I documented in digital photographs.
I started from my home on McKinley Hill, walked past McKinley Park, past the Tacoma Dome and down to the Freighthouse Square Light Rail Station. I took the light rail down past the UW Tacoma campus, got off at the convention center stop and walked up to Commerce and 7th at the bottom of the stairs of the old lodge building.
Along the way, I met a few interesting people. The fellow in the sleeping bag pictured above is Sonny. Sonny is a member of the first nations peoples. He decided that his sleeping bag would do just fine in this weather. Up in the north country, he had camped in worse. He told me about his 'old lady' who had gone to jail last night in a neighboring City for trying to get a date so they could have some money to get a motel. He offered to hook me up when she got out, but I politely turned him down. He was a funny fellow. He laughed a lot for a guy who had been woken up suddenly by the sounds of boots compacting the airy cold snow feet from his sleeping place under a balcony. I asked if if he planned to get something to each later, he looked looked away for a second and then looked at me and said "I'll find me something, but first i got to go see about my old lady". That man sonny had his priorities straight as he say it. Who cares about food when your other half is in the tank.
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