His encampment was in a patch of Golden Gate Park where there were no bushes, just grass worn to dirt, with mattresses scattered about, and a little area where the residents left their shopping carts. Through Glenn I met a few of the inhabitants, and they all seemed to be at least 35, and, as Glenn puts it, they liked to get high. But in keeping with the San Francisco version of the alchie/junkie, they were incredibly nice. Upon meeting, they would hug you if they sensed you wouldn't recoil.

But one of these very nice people -- and who in Glenn's words is especially nice, who "just liked to get drunk and climb in his bedroll, never even heard him raise his voice" -- was, while asleep and restrained by his own sleeping bag, beaten about the face and head with a golf club. Glenn describes the guy who did the beating as a "serious asshole", who would get his veteran's benefits at the beginning of the month, be on a crack binge and stay in welfare hotels until about the fifteenth when the money would run out, at which time he would return to the park ranting and crazy.

After he beat this guy up (if so mild a phrase describes it), some residents of the camp told him to leave, so, when no one was around, he tried to torch the camp. Unfortunately for all parties, Glenn and a large friend were just returning. They chased the guy, caught him, and Glenn's large friend punched the guy until his fists and arms were bloody from punching.

About four nights later I met a panic-eyed Glenn who took me aside and asked if I could give him a ride. It seems the guy got back from the hospital, returned to the park, first with his wife who chased Glenn with a bottle yelling "you gonna die tonite nigga" even in front of the cops, and then later with his nephew, who is a little gangster kid, saying how they were "gonna bust a cap in his ass".

So I stuffed frightened Glenn's bags, blankets and shopping cart in my car and drove him out of the neighborhood, dropped him off in the business district. We hugged, and there he went into the still San Francisco night, just another homeless black man pushing a shopping cart.