Dear Diary,
It was too late for me to write the entire second page of this series last night, or even half the page, and that alone has wrecked my schedule. I would be writing all Christmas day, except that I incurred an obligation last night, but obviously I want all this done so I can spend at least some time at home.
My family all live far away. I have aunts in West Coast cities, but have never known them well. My siblings are all in the Midwest, and I haven't seen any of them, nor their children, face to face since I came here fifteen years ago. Although this December, thanks to Seattle's wonderful minimum wage, I have more money than I've had any of those previous fifteen Decembers, it isn't enough, nor is the COVID situation promising enough, to make travel doable. So at this most sentimental of American holidays, sentimentality being one thing I like much better than many modern Americans, I don't actually have much to get sentimental about.
So yesterday morning I ate a Safeway deli salad bought with the last of my food stamps, and then ate tons of carbohydrates, just as I had while homeless. Then I listened to the undeservedly unknown sad R&B songs of BGH4 (link in Korean). Most of their best songs are at YouTube, but not all (link in Korean); in 2015, probably, I downloaded them from a since-departed illegal site, but in 2021 I was able to buy them lawfully. I think BGH4 remain my favourite of the Korean idol girl groups I've encountered through Korean TV dramas, despite the competing claims of Melody Day, Bebop who went busking (the recorded version does have better sound), and even 4minute and their subgroup 2Yoon (17 min). (Those groups' drama songs that led me to research them: Melody Day, Bebop, 4minute. I'm pretty sure I researched 4minute early in 2016, the others later that year or in 2017. Some linked uploads have English translations, most don't.)
Anyway, after the BGH4 albums, fully stoked with sentiment, I shaved, showered and changed - something I'm guessing most homeless people in Seattle didn't get the chance to do yesterday - and went hiking back to the places I slept while homeless. It had occurred to me that the evening of Christmas Eve offered an ideal chance to visit and photograph those doorways without staying up too late, and without worrying about the businesses still being open. (Only three, in fact, were, in the whole catalogue.) Or for that matter about homeless people already being in possession. (Only one, actually in a doorway of one of the open businesses, at that.) It had also occurred to me, dear Diary, that you deserved more details about my homelessness than the "eight years" (actually eight and a half) with which I usually dismiss most of it.
So while I listen to the also undeservedly forgotten hard rock of The Swimmin' Fish, whom I researched in 2015 before even finding BGH4, only a few of whose best songs are at YouTube (a counter-example, link in Korean), and who actually recorded a Christmas album I now legally own, let's stroll down memory lane...
To start, I should note that I was both homeless (which has a more capacious meaning) and actually on the streets for a month or three of 2003, in the autumn, in Madison, Wisconsin. I was really bad at it. At the beginning, I spent much of my remaining money on a one-week stay at a legal campsite on the outskirsts of Stoughton, which small town turned out to have no jobs. Then, back in Madison, I spent most nights wandering aimlessly, trying to convince myself that this doorway or that would serve for sleep. In Madison I actually visited a shelter, only to flee in horror. The second time I was caught sleeping in a university library, I was punished by being denied permission to enter without a lot of rigmarole. Fortunately, my social network wasn't then the wrecked thing it is now, and I stayed with two friends for a month each (still within many definitions of "homeless", but definitely not on the streets) before going back home to Mom.
So when I realised I was going back to the streets in August 2012, I was determined to do a better job. For example, among the first places I went were DSHS for food stamps, and the Urban Rest Stop to find out how I could shower. I was just too tired at first to figure out how to do what I hadn't planned ahead. I knew people weren't allowed to sleep in parks, but anyway crashed on a hill in Cal Anderson for a few minutes before being woken. I tried sleeping on the stairway in the Streissguth Gardens, which may not then have been an official city park, but anyway was a stupid place to try to sleep, since people, against my expectation, actually do use those stairs all night. I'm not sure how long I stayed confused, but the first place I remember going more than one night was on Broadway, and on Broadway I stayed thereafter, as long as I stayed on Capitol Hill.
Broadway E
611
Then: Under renovation
Now: Ishoni Yakiniku
Like many homeless people, I figured a vacant business site was more likely to tolerate a sleeper than an occupied one. In this case, I wasn't even actually sleeping in the doorway proper, which I already knew wouldn't work for me. Instead, I was sleeping on a ledge south of the doorway. This one:
As best I remember, during that renovation, it wasn't quite that narrow, but it was still a preposterously narrow place to sleep. However, note something important in that photo, dear Diary: the dry. "Dry pavement" is too long to think, every time I had occasion to think it, those eight years, and is anyway slightly imprecise, since some of the dry I've used has been bricks, a little bit, not included in either half of this page, a mat, and so on; in this case, not even pavement, but a ledge above the pavement. Anyway, in that photo you see some genuine dry, but far too little of it. I kept falling off, which was problematic even though it wasn't raining then.
Another illustration of dry, or why Seattle bus shelters are actually pretty bad places to shelter from rain. This, on the UW campus, is unusually sheltering.
To this day, I try to avoid walking with wet shoes on dry.
I no longer remember which came first, the new restaurant (Galerias, a Mexican place) opening, or the rain starting. I do remember that the new restaurant did something or other that actually narrowed the effective ledge; I doubt now whatever that was has been reversed.
My chronology is hopelessly confused here, because I'm positive I remember becoming homeless August 23, 2012, but I remember waking up after a very loud graduation night, at this location, and finding five $20s under my head. Makes no sense, but there you go. My best guess is that I came back here briefly after leaving the next place, and the graduation coincided with that return. Or maybe I've confused "graduation" with "Halloween"; I may have stayed there that late.
This is the first of the three businesses I found still open, unsurprising since it's where I started last night.
201
Then and Now: Rite Aid
I never slept here, or anywhere else besides 611 on the west side of Broadway, as best I can remember. I found the people who did sleep here, whom I usually categorised as "Wendy and Lucys", rather disorganised. I'm sure Rite Aid has, over the years, taken various measures against those people, but it hasn't, so far as I know, made any architectural moves, or anything comparably drastic. They don't actually sleep in the doorway anyhow, but in a large paved area off to one side of it, under a projection of the building.
Oh, also, I suspect Rite Aid was still open then last night, but I wasn't actually interested in their doorway any more than campers are.
Rather, my focus was a water fountain that, when working, ran at all seasons.
It isn't working now.
200
Then: American Apparel
Now: Kitanda Espresso and Acai
Broadway was pretty crowded with homeless people then. This had some comforts - in my process of learning how to be homeless, I could learn from others' experience - but also some drawbacks, one of which was competition for doorways. So I figured I was doing my bit by sleeping here. It's a very short doorway, actually short enough that even though I'm a very short man, I had to curl up in sleep to make it work.
Also, I don't know who else in town remembers this, but American Apparel stayed open late and often had workers stay after. So when I could sleep was unpredictable. As a result, I became one of those homeless people who would park on the benches in front of the Capitol Hill branch library for some time in the evening, leading to those benches' removal. Finally, although there's normally a fair amount of dry here, a sufficiently windy rain from the west reduces that, and would keep me up waiting for the space to dry. But I was doing my part in relieving the door shortage, and didn't leave until after some tagger included an image of a sleeper in his etching on the store's wall. (That wall has been replaced.)
People I saw sleeping there last summer followed a strategy I don't understand, but will explain as best I can with reference to the next doorway.
Nobody can sleep there now. Kitanda apparently decided it was bad for business.
202
Then: Vacant, then some tea shop
Now: Hi Tea Cafe
I never slept here, but the "courteous veteran" I mentioned in Stealing from the Homeless", a man rather taller than me? He slept here, but only in summer, when dry is abundant everywhere. At most, maybe he could fit his upper torso in there, as well as his head. This posture is how I saw people sleeping in what is now Kitanda's doorway, probably in summer 2020 when I was writing about Cal Anderson Park.
This would've been after I'd already moved north on Broadway, in summer 2014. He told me he normally lived housed elsewhere, but had decided to come visit his home town without bothering with a hotel.
206
Then: Castle Megastore and The Highline
Now: Blade & Timber and The Highline
There were usually multiple homeless people hanging around this very large, complex dry, waiting for the bar to close. Sometimes there were conflicts between them and musical performers' roadies. Unsurprisingly, this was the result:
212
Then: Newly built and vacant
Now: Post Pike Bar
I'd expected, in this middle part of this series, to complain about how builders have adapted to the rise of the "new homeless" (that is, unhoused people; the "old homeless" were usually housed in poverty housing that's no longer allowed to exist). Adapted primarily by eliminating old-fashioned doorways. And there are examples in the areas I discuss; for example, the new building at the northeast corner of University Way NE and NE 50th St. But there are also counter-examples. In Sound Transit's new construction at both the Capitol Hill and the U-District stops, there are doorways, and the one H Mart plans to move into looks promising:
Well, years earlier, there was a new building at the southeast corner of Broadway E and E Thomas St, it was built with one vast and several large doorways, and according to a man I first met in the vast doorway and mentioned several times in "Sleepless", a man I now haven't seen for years, the owner would, then, even let homeless people sleep in the heated garage out back.
Times have changed. There are certainly lots of barriers to all the merely large doorways. There's also been a gate at that vast doorway for some time now. I found it open, but then I found the bar open too. This is the first (southernmost, basically) of three places I went back to this morning to re-photograph.
I can't photograph it for this page, dear Diary, because I never slept, or noticed anyone who slept, in the medium-sized doorway at 224, now the doorway of Rondo Japanese Kitchen, but I can certainly express my approval of that ungated, reasonable-sized patch of dry.
300
Then and Now: Julia's
My first Christmas homeless, I fasted as much as I could, but by evening still needed to find a restroom. I found one here, and my money was refused. So I was disappointed, though not surprised, to find this:
"Bathroom for Customers Only". Well, at least it isn't as stereotypical as "No Public Restrooms". Julia's is far less a presence on Broadway than it was a decade ago, but even now it can do tired cliches with a little flair.
312
Then: Red Light Vintage
Now: Lifelong Thrift Store
I never slept at the main entrance, that I recall, though I think I tried to sleep once at the side door. I never got the impression that it was a place people could sleep the night through (on occasions when I didn't sleep much, and there were people there at, say, midnight, they wouldn't be there at 6 A.M.), and the main entrance didn't meet my evolving criteria, notably for a right angle into which I could nestle myself. But anyway, with Lifelong's arrival came gates.
No address
No shop
At the northeast corner of Broadway E and E Harrison St stands a shelterish-looking thing that has confused many naive homeless people:
However, dear Diary, that narrow patch of dry you see in back is all anyone gets. This is strictly a summertime place.
400
Then: Not sure
Now: Mattress Firm
At the time I'm thinking of, 2013-2014, this was definitely a mattress store, but I think the name was different.
Homeless women who sleep in doorways normally make efforts to make their sex indiscernible. So I tend to assume that any doorway sleeper whose sex is indiscernible, such as the only person I ever saw sleeping at this doorway, is a woman. But I never saw anyone enter or leave that sleeping bag, so have no way to be sure.
412
Then: Samurai Noodle
Now: Due' Cucina Italiana
This is where I slept for over a year, my last continuous stretch on Capitol Hill. It had so much to recommend it. It was deep, and almost always mostly dry. (It sloped downward, so the mortar between the tiles channeled water, for example from customers' boots, back toward the street.) It had an overhead light allowing me good light to set up my bed by, but that consistently shut off, at 11 P.M. I think. I was able to work - paid employment - from this doorway from January to April 2014. For the first year I slept there, nobody stole anything from me.
I remember that once in my homeless life, someone asked to sleep adjacent to me, a pretty young woman. I think it was here, but just possibly I'm wrong, and it was much earlier, at 212. I think it was here because 212 was always lit, and I think it was dark when she arrived. She had left by the time I woke.
After the first year, things started going downhill. My glasses did get stolen, in July 2014. This prompted "Stealing from the Homeless", which, months later, got my storage in Milwaukee (I then had two units) out of hock. But by then I'd started staying at the University of Washington all the time, partly to enable the mountain of criminological research that went into "Stealing". So when I came back in January 2015 to start another tax season, I was upset to find that someone with a key had taken to holding after-parties in the restaurant - after bartime, that is. Well, he had more right than I to be there, but I needed my sleep. So I moved north.
When Due' Minuti, now Due' Cucina, moved in, in 2016, I tried again, but Due' had arranged for deliveries from Charlie's Produce, which just happened to absolutely have to arrive at 3 A.M. when nobody from the restaurant was around. Also, those helpful tiles had become worn, some were missing, and Due', or the owner, just removed them; no more wicking. I had little reason left to be on Capitol Hill - I didn't know it then, but I wouldn't be employed again while homeless, wouldn't need to be close to the clothing in the Seattle storage unit I still have as I write this, on Capitol Hill. Since the new place I'd found was basically unsatisfactory to sleep in, I just showered less, until I found out about the Urban Rest Stop's new U-District location; after that, I showered weekly as I had while south, but changed clothing less often.
This is the second one I had to go back to, because my original photo or photos didn't take. I found that someone had moved a lot of stuff.
My guess is that the dumpsters were placed defensively, but whether by a camper or by the restaurant I couldn't say. But the cardboard in back looks like a camper's leavings. Probably someone's whom the Charlie's guy woke at 3.
414
Then and Now: Seattle Cigar and Tobacco
Two stories I told years ago were about this doorway. The guy next to me whose backpack had been stolen, in "Stealing", was sleeping here the night after the theft. And in my Reddit AMA, I talked about a guy I was certain had been slumming, probably to prove something in some conversation, and who left me two days' worth of leftovers - this is where he was. I never slept here because I never wanted my sleeping bag to come into contact with mats, carpeting, or anything else I figured was hard to clean. (I put up with a mat at the only place I could find within a mile or two of Seattle Pacific University, once when I needed to spend several days in its library to catch up on Jeffrey Overstreet's Christian fantasy series, but not that I recall anywhere else.)
This morning I found someone sleeping there, covered in a blanket, but I'm pretty sure the person was a black man. To find only one person sleeping on Broadway - admittedly as late as 7 A.M., but on Christmas, when there's nowhere to go and, in many cases, no reason to leave the doorway one's in - well, maybe there's been tremendous progress in housing the homeless in Seattle in the last few months, but I don't think so. Anyway, my guess is that the person I found here had been at 412 until Charlie's arrived.
424
Then and Now: Hardware Salon
This was a place I slept at least a few times when Samurai Noodle's doorway was unexpectedly unavailable. I was always nervous about it because it was posted with some sort of "keep out" sign, unlike, then, any of the other places I slept, except, if I did ever sleep there, what is now Lifelong's side door. Apparently they wanted me to be nervous, because they were the first store to put up a gate that I noticed.
It's still there. I doubt, in fact, that any of these gates will go away before the buildings do. After all, that would be wasteful.
This is the third place on Broadway I had to go back to this morning, because I'd confused the place next door with this one the first time round.
534
Then and Now: Hour Eyes Optical
This was my last outpost on Capitol Hill, the neighbourhood I've still lived longest in, in Seattle. I never stayed here full time; even during the tax season of 2015, I tried as hard as I could to get a schedule that would allow me to sleep north, then come in the morning to Capitol Hill and downtown to shower and change. This is basically because, like American Apparel's doorway, this one's dry is unreliable. Tonight I found it working fine:
But I remember one night (of, admittedly, epic rain) finding it flooded.
On the other hand, the employees of Espresso Vivace next door sometimes left leftovers behind for people like me, and one night when one of the employees of Hour Eyes Optical worked late, he actually apologised to me for having worried me about whether I could sleep that night.
538
Then: A succession of restaurants
Now: Star Fusion and Bar
The only real alternative I had to Hour Eyes Optical, an under-awning area north of the building, always disappointed me, probably for the same reason it's now disappointing the restaurant's employees: it offers much less and less reliable dry than it looks like it should offer.
Well, dear Diary, that's my Broadway story, and all for now. Happy hours until I can continue this page, let alone this series.
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