A chick....

Pretty sick out there.
When I was working out of San Francisco a dozen years ago I remember two street corner panhandlers being shot and killed by others wanting "their" corner. Seems there was an unofficial union of sorts that "gave out" specific corners and shifts according to how lucrative a particular corner was at any given time of day and you went against the pecking order at your peril.
One day I struck up a conversation with one in the Mission. He lived outside the city and commuted by car in to his "job". He said he only had to "work" four days a week and took the same days off every week. Just before he quit and started walking to his nearly new Cadillac a couple of blocks away he revealed that he made about 1400 dollars in a 12 hour "shift". This works out to over 72,000.00 a year TAX FREE! Remember, this was twelve years ago!
Last week I was standing at a "light rail" stop in front of the local Greyhound station. A pair of young punks walked up to me and one wanted a cigarette. Being a nonsmoker, I asked if I looked like I had any cigarettes. He launched into a string of expletives and I looked away, thinking when I disengaged they would move on. BIG MISTAKE! He hit me in the temple so hard it knocked me down and sent my glasses flying about 20-25 feet. I stood up to give him my full attention and found he and his buddy suddenly putting distance between us. With me three times their age and horribly out of shape, they easily ran to the nearest corner and disappeared.
I have to deal with punks like this almost every day in my job so it's time to get my *** back to the gym because this isn't going to go down the same way next time.