Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in SF | The Booksmith

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The Booksmith—located on a homeless-filled Haight Street—continues to host community forums on homelessness.

This time they are hosting a free two-part talk with a person who’s spent countless hours with homeless and a group that gave homeless youth cameras to document their lives.

If you’ve ever complained about the homeless situation in San Francisco, you should make an effort to attend this event.

7 pm — Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Talk and Q&A with Teresa Gowan, PhD

While completing her PhD in Sociology at UC Berkeley, Teresa Gowan spent roughly 1,700 hours in the field with 38 homeless men living on the streets of San Francisco. They made camp, hawked papers, panhandled, dealt drugs, and sold dumpster treasures on the sidewalks. She followed them into emergency rooms, shelters, and soup kitchens. Twenty of her subjects were “pro” recyclers who spent upwards of 10 to12 hours a day loading hundreds pounds of cardboard, bottles, and cans into slender shopping carts and taking them into recycling centers.

8 pm — Through Our Eyes: The Cameras Were Disposable But Our Lives Aren’t
Slideshow, music and poetry by local kids, raffle, food, drinks, and a book signing with Homeless Youth Alliance

In the fall of 2008, Khristine Jones and Mary Howe had an idea: give disposable cameras to the homeless youth in Haight Ashbury and set them loose to take photos of anything and everything in their lives. Two years later, Khristine and Mary sorted through the 2,500 photos that had been returned and created a photo book: Through Our Eyes, a sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, always evocative chronicle of the lives of the kids on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury.

Caution: Some of the pictures in Through Our Eyes are shocking and provocative and may not be suitable for everyone.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.