A Glimpse of Society

Walking with my aunt, Molly, in the musty underground BART station beneath the streets of San Francisco just as I have done with her millions of times before, I felt a rush of energy and happiness that I have been longing for run through me. We came into the city on that chilly February afternoon from her home in Lafayette, California to escape the slow-paced drowsy suburbs in search of a vibrant and lively atmosphere. I remembered walking through the same station as a little girl in awe of my surroundings: the noisy trains passing through every minute, the dark luminous tunnel that looked like a threatening and ominous black abyss, the crowds of people that were entering and leaving and all going to different places. Yet this time, it is different, for I started to see and hear things that my eight-year-old eyes and ears walking through the same station would not have noticed; an exasperated mother trying desperately to keep all five her children from running off, a gentle looking man with eyes that looked like windows to his soul playing a smooth melody on the saxophone, a student in his early twenties kissing his girlfriend goodbye as she prepared to leave on a train headed for the airport with two large suitcases in tow. Amidst all of these images of humanity were what seemed like thousands of others, some going into San Francisco for work and others like Molly and Myself for pleasure, that were all in a rush, many even running up the stairs, all is if Jesus Christ was standing at the top waiting for them.

As Molly and I began to ascend the staircase leading up to Market Street, I felt like Persephone coming up from the underworld in the spring, excited and overjoyed at the world before her. The moment that we reached the top, I could feel the frigid air hitting my bare face like a pile of bricks, reminding me that my heart was still beating. We began walking down Market Street with no destination in mind, just taking everything in. The clumps of people walking down the streets and the magnificent buildings that seemed to reach the heavens surrounding me made me feel like I was being shielded from any harm that came my way, like I was protected from all the dangers of this world. There were skyscrapers everywhere: they were covered in windows and bathed in sunlight. It created majestic rows of buildings that made the skyline look more like a computer-generated image in a futuristic film than reality.

One of the first buildings we passed had massive windows that looked into empty office space. I immediately remembered it to be Stacy’s, my mother’s favorite bookstore in California that she took me to every time we were in the city. I would spend hours in the children’s section while she would be upstairs looking through novels and spending all of her spare Christmas money that my grandmother had given her on a new stack of books. Accept Stacy’s wasn’t there anymore, and instead the empty building just stood there. Saddening, chilling, depressing—the vacant space was a symbol of corporate domination and all that was wrong with the world.

Walking a little further down, there was a girl, looking no older that twenty, barefoot and wearing nothing in the cold but a worn-down pair of sweats and a dirty t-shirt. She sat in the middle of the sidewalk with her legs crossed and a face that showed nothing but a life of hardship, of instability, of unfairness.

“Spare change,” she yelled over and over again into the crowd of people in a groggy voice that was barely understandable. People were careful to walk around her as if she was radiating an infectious disease, hearing the sound of her voice but unable to listen to her desperate cries. “That poor girl was once somebody’s child,” Molly said solemnly. As I bent down to give the girl the three dollars that I had with me in my pocket, two friends that looked to be in their late twenties walked by her: one wore a beige trench coat while running her bony fingers through her unnaturally blonde hair while the other was walking a dog the size of a loaf of bread that was wearing a miniature pink coat; both were wearing designer sunglasses while carrying bags from Marc Jacobs. Needless to say, neither of them were barefoot.

It was not long before we were in front of the Westfield Mall, where on the other side of those heavy metal doors lay a consumerist’s dream world. There was Bloomingdale’s and Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss and Kate Spade and dozens of other clothing stores where you could by apparel and fragrances and purses and watches for remarkably high prices because we as consumers are told that there is something special and significant and luxurious about these products that they are selling. I, for one, wanted to get up close to this luxury. Pressing my nose against the window of Juicy Couture, I could see a denim jacket made for a girl of the age of about seven being sold for one hundred and forty eight dollars. The girl that would be wearing that jacket someday probably does not know where her local Goodwill is.

Just like it had been in the BART station, I saw and heard things that day on Market Street that my eight-year-old eyes and ears probably would not have been able to. The empty bookstore, the oblivious rich girls, and the denim jacket were nothing but cold and eerie reminders of a world that I had no interest of being a part of, a world that I wanted so desperately to change. Yet I also realized how important it is that one has the ability to see and be aware these things and the world around them; no one has the ability to fix what they do not know and by seeing the harsh reality, it becomes easier to make the changes that are necessary.

-Rachel Jane