There was a time when Shawn, the only name he reveals, was chasing a life of angry young dreams. He traveled the country following punk rock bands — immersed in a life of buzzing guitars, drugs and mosh pits. Eventually only the drugs remained — as his life spiraled into the streets in a blaze of homelessness where he remains.
Most mornings, Shawn can be found on a corner of a South of Market intersection holding a cardboard sign and chatting up anyone and everyone in hopes of inspiring a donation. His mother was a junkie, he said — family structure was never part of his life.
As if revealing a deep dark secret, Shawn leaned in, his voice dropping into a cigarette-blackened timbre to make a revelation; "Tell you the truth," Shawn said, "I hate being homeless. It's not a very fun thing."
Shawn has tried to get off the streets. He spent a year-and-a-half in the dodgy Civic Center Hotel, which he hoped would lead to permanent housing. When the housing didn't materialize, he landed back outside.
Last Spring he got an opportunity to move into San Francisco's temporary Pier 80 shelter. But the day he was to move in, his social phobia kicked in.
"Just going through the whole fences with the barbed wire and all that, I was like, 'I gotta go.' I couldn't handle it," he recalled. "I was feeling like I was getting sent to a concentration camp or something."
He struggled with depression over his situation, a bottomless pit of despair with no ladder out. But then one day two years ago, a friend who worked on Caltrain came across a small hungry beat-up dog on the train.
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"He looked so pathetic," Shawn said, "I said this is my dog."
It's hard to say who rescued who. Shawn nursed the dog back to health on food that was either donated or purchased with his panhandling proceeds. But in the process, it was Shawn who was nursed back to health.
"Then I got him and I started having responsibility," Shawn said, as his dog Ocito lounged in the shade of a nearby building. "Everybody I know, like my old friends, they say since I've gotten this dog I've changed a lot."
But Shawn's situation hasn't changed. Every day he scrapes up enough money for food and maybe a few cigarettes. He beds down at night in the streets in the South of Market area. He runs the figures: even if someone earned $900 a month it would be impossible to afford an apartment in the vastly expensive city.
"If they don't build subsidy housing," Shawn said, "there's no way homeless people are going to get off the streets."
After several hours panhandling on the corner of Howard and 9th Streets, Shawn had earned exactly one dollar and a salad, which he eyed warily. He collected up his backpack and called to Ocito and started walking down the sidewalk — searching for a better spot with more possibilities.
