Geary Street Shop Trip

I would often visit San Francisco to visit nearby family. I would also use these opportunities to roam around San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown area. It was during one of these excavations that my perspective was opened up to a rather ironic stance that many citizens take about modern political issues.
One afternoon, I stood outside at Union Square after a successful, impulsive shopping trip. I had about thirty minutes left before I was supposed to regroup with my family to embark on our journey home. Rather than leaving early, something compelled me to explore the city more with my remaining time. I began to briskly walk down Geary Street. The street was bustling. Other impulsive shoppers strutted down the far-reaching street, each …show more content…
I stopped and decided to survey the street further. The moment I stepped off the bustling Geary Street onto the nameless, one-way street, the deafening sounds of the city faded into insignificant background noise. The street was so narrow that it almost felt claustrophobic. The furious gusts of wind that had made me wince every time they hit my face had died down to a pleasant breeze. Even the sun seemed to shy away from this forgotten alley of a street. The nameless buildings that bordered the street cast shadows over the whole street, segregating the dreary street from the rest of the vivacious city. It was as if this single street was left in the dust and abandoned by the fast paced city around it. I began to walk down the street. Discarded newspapers and magazines, laid to rest here by the wind, crunched like leaves in the fall as I stepped over them. I came upon a homeless man taking refuge in a recessed doorway that belonged to an old, abandoned warehouse. A cardboard sign that read “Couldn’t afford medical bills. Anything will help!” lay face up at his feet. His gnarled hands clutched a thin jacket that he was using as a blanket, holding it just under his scraggly beard. He was sprawled out, asleep, on layers of newspapers similar to the ones I was stepping over. “Basic Healthcare Is A Human Right!” one of them read. I passed another …show more content…
The sunlight shining on my skin made me feel a warmth I hadn’t noticed before. The sounds of cars honking and indistinct chatter rejuvenated the air. As I stood there experiencing the atmosphere of the city for a second time, a well dressed woman walked up to me and handed me a pamphlet. Like the poster on the wall, the pamphlet advertised that guns needed to be banned entirely because the easy access to them caused more mass violence within recent years. While she elaborated, I suddenly noticed a lot more people experiencing homelessness on the streets. There were some seated against the walls of luxury stores. Their presences almost completely concealed by the unending stream of shoppers, and families in front of them. Others sat out in the open with signs and donation containers, creating dead spaces in the crowds of pedestrians. It was then that I realized the irony and juxtaposition of these displays of pursuit for additional rights and reforms right in front of all these homeless people. These well-off citizens were speaking out in order to enhance their lives with more rights and reform. Meanwhile, there were people who lived in the United States, a first world country, who were struggling to survive in it as if it were a third world country. This is a result of well-off citizens, who are able to project their voices, actively trying to improve issues that would only benefit them and not the groups