The problem with this film is, that one can watch the characters day by day walking around in this country. It’s not fiction, that’s why Import Export is so disturbing.
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Tag Archive for 'Poverty'
My arrival here in S.F. didn’t work out as intended. The plan was that after arriving at S.F. international airport that I take the BART to the city (Civic Center) and call my friend on the way to pick me up there at the station. Ok, so far so good.
The problem was that for some reason I couldn’t call the cell phone number from my (European) cell phone, every other number worked just fine. Unfortunately I only had his cell phone number saved on my phone. Because of the lack of coins in my pocket, the use of a public phone was no option either.
It was about midnight, I was standing there somewhere at Market St close to Civic Center. I remembered that Larkin St was crossing the street where my friend lives. My GPS helped me out to find Larkin and indicated the direction I had to go.
What I didn’t know at this point was that I’m going to cross a quite strange neighborhood of San Francisco. I went through the area between Market, Turk, Hyde, Larkin and O Farrrell, around midnight. It was, after the digital registration at Homeland and some terminals at JFK and SFO, the first thing I saw of the United States
Oh my god!
Shocking!
I made my way through poor, homeless with shopping carts, junkies, prostitutes and drug dealers. There were so many! I’ve never seen so many before!
They weren’t bothering, some were yelling at each other, not at me. So I didn’t get scared, but it was indeed a very strange situation. I didn’t know where to look at. I tried to avoid staring at them. I think I went through with my mouth open. It was so shocking!
Most of them were black. Of course. I guess I saw a major part of the social problems in the US. Black, poor and homeless.
Another day I went through this area by daylight. You see even more of them when sun is shining. Outside, sitting on the sidewalk. A guy in a wheelchair with only one foot left lighted his crack pipe right next to me. I suppose it was a crack pipe, a glass tube in his mouth and lighter in his hand.
Bloody hell! In which movie am I?
Walking through the financial district I took the picture above: a homeless sleeping on the sidewalk, not more than 10 meters away from some shiny Cadillacs and Lincolns.
Coming from Europe, growing up in a system where the public cares (in some countries more than in others) for the weakest of the society, all this seems very strange.