San Francisco is blessed with a large homeless population. When I moved to the Bay Area from Iowa in 2000, interacting with homeless people was a new experience for me. Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco at the time, was engaged in an active battle against the homeless. Millions of dollars were spent on things like confiscating shopping carts and removing park benches. There were no public restrooms and busking (street performing) required purchasing a permit. Meanwhile, housing costs soared, largely due to an influx of money from Silicon Valley, and the climate remained balmy year round, so the net effect of these policies were solely to increase the suffering of the homeless.
I couldn’t afford to live in San Francisco, so I lived in Richmond on the Easy Bay. When Amy and I moved there, I quickly got a part-time job as a barista at the coffee shop in Borders books in Emeryville, landed an internship at a recording studio complex in The City and joined a weekly jazz improvisation workshop. (For the unaware, “The City” is San Francisco’s rather smug and, if you live there, only acceptable nickname.) Amy got a full-time job in Berkeley. We shared a 1986 Toyota Tercel- she usually used it during the day and I used it whenever I had to haul my drumset somewhere. Most of the time, I got around using BART, the area’s monorail system, whose furthest north station was very close to our quadplex apartment, where rent was $800 per month plus utilities.
In San Francisco, I worked in the Tenderloin district, which is sort of in the middle of town but well removed from tourists, in a well-tagged (graffitied) area full of amazing Thai restaurants and taquerias. The recording studio was about four blocks north of the Civic Center Plaza BART station. The train ride took 45 minutes and costed something like $3.25 each way. The last train left the first station at midnight, and whenever I missed it I slept on a couch in a hallway of the studio.
One day, not long after I’d starting working at the recording studio, an engineer was chatting with me about the homeless in the area. He had a BMW motorcycle, and felt bad that he worried about parking it at the motorcycle parking area next to the BART station, because there were always so many people milling about it. What he would do, when he parked his bike, was give money to a nearby homeless person and say, “Could you watch my bike while you’re, please?” His worry was when he returned and if the same person was there, things could get socially awkward, because, well, dealing with homeless people is awkward.
During this conversation, I buzzed Paul Stubblebine in through the heavy blue door. Paul was a highly-regarded mastering engineer who had presumably worked at the studio for awhile, and was one of those guys who you immediately realized was highly competent. In truth, as I would find out later, he was an extraordinary human being. I’m going to segue a bit here so I can tell my Paul Stubblebine story:
On two occasions while I was there, Paul was hired as a recording/mixing engineer and I was assigned to be his assistant. During one of these sessions, Paul went to the restroom while the band was listening to a mix he had done. While he was away, one of the band members asked if I could turn the guitar up and vocals down a little. Strictly speaking, this was a major no-no; I had no business touching the famed Neve 8038 console. But, being a brash kid, I marked the location of the faders in question with a grease pencil and moved them both half a decibel. Now, answering the question, “How loud is a decibel?” is a complicated one; it doesn’t even make sense to describe decibels in terms of how far you move the fader. Roughly speaking, an increase of 10 decibels is twice as loud. (To truly understand how decibels are calculated, you have to understand the neper, and I don’t.) Half a decibel is about how far you need to adjust the volume to create a minimally perceptible difference. The minimum you can adjust most modern consumer volume knobs is a full decibel.
Paul returned to the mixing room, and while sitting down- so before he was even situated between the speakers- he nonchalantly reached out and adjusted the two faders back to where I had marked their original locations. Everyone who witnessed this realized the appropriate volumes of the guitar and vocals within the mix were definitive. I was too speechless to ever admit I had even moved the faders. It was, and is, the most superhuman thing I have ever witnessed a person do. The only other thing I can think of that comes close is watching Barry Bonds effortlessly crush a baseball.
Anyway, the engineer with the motorcycle asked Paul how he dealt with the homeless. Paul said he followed advice he had been given when he had first come to the area- find one homeless person that resonates with you and give them whatever change you have in your pocket every time you see them. When he said this, I immediately thought of a person who I had ignored asking if I wanted to buy a poem a few days prior.
The person in question was a gaunt, sickly woman draped in layers of rags who looked to be in her 50’s, with long, thinning reddish-brown hair. It was evident she had a drug problem.
People often say that they don’t like to give money to homeless because they will just spend it on booze and drugs. This rationalization hides behind the arrogant premise that we are qualified to judge what others spend their money on. These same people will then proudly explain that their concern is for the other’s health and safety. To follow this logic, the reason they don’t give is out of compassion and charity. They would rather give food, shelter or jobs to the homeless. They don’t do any of those things, of course, but that’s what they “would rather” do. It is telling of our society that those who have a place to sleep at night become so haughty toward those who don’t. I didn’t have food, shelter or jobs to offer, so I began giving this lady my spare change whenever I had it. When I did not have change, I would at least smile and say, “hi!”
In return, she would sometimes give me incoherent scribbling on scraps of paper. Some days, she would chat with me in slurred, garbled speech that I could barely decipher, and I would find myself struggling to stand, smile and listen instead of hurrying on my way. Other days she would be listless and sad and I would feel compelled to talk to her. I found out her name was Candi. I would not have pegged her as a Candi- those kinds of names were more common further up by Van Ness and Post- but I never did find out much about who she was or where she had come from.
One day Candi said she had written a poem especially for me. She fished through her pockets, found it and gave it to me. It was basically, “Andrew I love you.” I felt honored that she actually knew my name. For me, Candi was a face among the faceless. Until then, it had not really occurred to me that I was the same for her.
I would often see Candi twice a day for the next couple of years, and it was the thing I most looked forward to on my trips to and from work. Of course, sometimes she wouldn’t be there. If I didn’t see Candi for a week, I would begin to worry. She wasn’t the type of person about whom you’d think, maybe she found a place to live. In the end I was the one who disappeared for good- and I suppose this was something she was used to.
I have been privileged to meet many amazing people throughout the years, including Paul Stubblebine, but no one has been more important or influential on me and how I perceive the world than Candi. I wish I had thanked her.
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