Street Photography

I don't often rarely almost never do any sort of street photography or shots of people in general. But I went to the Charlottesville Downtown Mall today to meet #1 Son for lunch and was struck by this woman who was camped out next to a bank building. It turned out she was only one of several people who seemed to be sleeping along the side streets with all their stuff next to them. This is new - in my experience - for Charlottesville. And very definitely not a good sign regarding the dire economic straits people are finding themselves in. To be fair though, I haven't been downtown very much since I stopped volunteering at Live Arts - so it may be entirely normal. Then again, I ate downtown a couple of weeks ago with my four lady friends who lunch together (used to be dinner, but we switched to lunch) and didn't see this. So. There have been panhandlers at various intersections for years - mostly men, but a few women - and I know of a couple of places where there are apparently encampments in the woods. But not people camped out on the city streets. And the two I saw most clearly today were women. Do they feel safer where there are other people? While we were eating, there was a man sleeping on the sort of porch/front steps outside a big ex-bank building and one of the people who apparently worked inside (it's now a fancy "event space" evidently) came out to try to talk him into leaving and then seemed to be calling the police. This got #1 
Son's attention because he has become quite a local activist and one of his *harm reduction* jobs is to bear witness, take video, and possibly intercede if he sees the police harassing someone. So as we got up to leave I gave him a $20 bill and he took it over to the guy (who was once again sleeping) and he asked the guy if the man from inside had been harassing him, and suggested that he might want to move on before the police arrived, and then offered him the money. The guy apparently said "You don't need to do that" and then "Okay, it's your money!" and took the $20. And then got up and moved off the steps. As we walked away we saw a policeman approaching. By the time he got to the building the homeless man was gone - so that result pleased #1 Son.

Meanwhile, #2 Son is away on walkabout again this summer - hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. He is currently in Portland, Oregon - having made it to the Canadian border (he started in mid-California) and then started back. He's now going to go back to where he started and hike south - taking a train from Portland to Reno, Nevada and then a bus (?) to Truckee, California, and onto the trail again from somewhere near Truckee. He's attempting - among other things - to avoid wildfires. There's currently a big one on the CA/OR border - so he thought it best to get off the trail and hop over that part (since he already hiked it going north anyway). He reports that the situation with homeless people camped on the streets in Portland seems to be totally out of control - along, he says, with open drug use. I know this from Blippers who live in Portland, but it was culture shock for him both having just come out of the woods, and also coming from here where the homeless situation is much less severe. So far. But what I saw today isn't encouraging.