'Late Sleeper at the Sidewalk Palace'

The bed is more than a bit lumpy, the air conditioner is stuck

on 'cold', but the decorator has gone all out at these sleeping

accommodations in San Francisco in the famous Tenderloin, once

the haunt of ship captains who, needing crew, kidnapped street

drunks to their ships and found themselves far at sea when they

awakened, indentured for months or years long voyages under

sometimes cruel masters. Community kitchens/social workers

and 'street artists' have made the plight of the homeless and usually

mentally afflicted a touch more accommodating a century or so later,

but not by so much, I think. Your ratings, critiques and observations

are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly, very critically or

wish to make an observation, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment. Please share your photographic knowledge to

help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

San Francisco's 'Barbary Coast' where rowdy sailors and others would go to imbibe, get thrown in the streets when they passed out, and get picked up by unscrupulous men putting together crews for sailing ships departing from San Francisco, gave us the term 'getting Shainghaied'.

Especially during times when the gold mines of the Sierra and the Comstock of Nevada were starting to take off, ships lost crews, and often times entire ships were abandoned to 'gold fever' and left to sink and rot in San Francisco harbor (and often their timbers are found when they excavate for high rises many, many blocks in from the waterfront now), the ships frequently lost crews in California which was a destination for many crew, so unscrupulous captains sent seedy individuals to get a crew, any crew members they could from the drunk and passed out on San Francisco's streets, and in those times getting drunk and sleeping it off on the streets was pretty typical not only in San Francisco but in America (source, Ken Burns, filmmaker in his series on alcohol in America).

So, if an able-bodied man got drunk, passed out, he might find himself many miles at sea when he awoke, indentured for the length of a voyage,  said mythically (and actually many times) to be 'to Shanghai (China) or other parts, and might not be released from his indenture until the ship's crew was disbanded months or more than a year hence.

If the master was cruel (and what were the chances if he picked up drunks off the street?), so much the worse.

In that sense, this photo depicts a sense of history that has not changed as much as some might hope, except there no longer are any sailing ships, and regrettably precious few jobs for those who sleep on the streets, passed out or just sleeping.

In this district of San Francisco, the Tenderloin, little has changed in my lifetime, except for one thing -- the wall decorations have gotten much more colorful recently, and the poor and down and out are eating somewhat better, taken care of by the lead of community feeding programs pioneered by the Glide Methodist Church led by the venerable Cecil Williams, a San Francisco institution.

A temperate climate, not too cold in winter, almost never hot in summer, and a tolerant attitude (in this neighborhood) toward both the homeless and their afflictions by San Francisco's large alternate culture, has helped attract a large homeless and mentally afflicted population.

(first hand historical and contextual analysis by a former resident)

john

John (Crosley)