Two Americas Within a Few Blocks - Glide Soup Kitchen

The movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness" starred Will Smith as Chris Gardner, a homeless man in San Francisco, with a young child.  He ultimately became a very successful stockbroker for Dean Witter and later started his own firm.  Prior to becoming successful, Gardner lived on the streets.  For meals, Gardner and his son ate at the soup kitchen at Glide Memorial Church.

Since 1969, Glide Memorial Church has been providing meals for San Francisco's poor, homeless and hungry.  Today, Glide serves over 750,000 meals a year and is the only program that feeds the poor three meals, every single day of the year.

The dining hall is open to seniors only from 7:30-8 am daily, with breakfast served from 8-9 am, lunch from noon to 1:30pm and dinner from 4-5:30 pm.  Bagged food is given away for lunch and dinner on the weekends.  Glide has a relatively small kitchen and two dining rooms that can sit approximately 200 people at a time.

I volunteered to work the 7-9 am shift.  Breakfast today included eggs with ground meat, corn grits, a bagel, peaches, milk and juice - except for those who got there late.  First, the peaches ran out.  Then the scrambled eggs ran out and a hard boiled egg was included on each tray.  My job was to put 4 packets of sugar on each tray.  There was a sign that warned the poor people not to ask the volunteers for more packets of sugar.

People were already in line when I arrived at 6:45 am.   The seniors came into the dining hall first.  Handicapped people were fed in a separate room so they didn't need to walk the stairs to the basement. Then, at 8 am, a seemingly endless line of homeless people each took a tray and sat down at one of about 20 long tables.  Very little was said by anyone as they simply ate and left.  Three people came to me for an extra sugar packet (which I gave them).  At 9 am, the Glide staff closed the door to the dining hall.  At least a few people that I could see were still waiting in line and would not eat breakfast today.

Traveling the few blocks from Union Square to Glide, you rally see what John Edwards called "Two Americas."  In Union Square, women and men are fashionably dressed and vibrant and many have shopping bags in their hand (or both hands).  Most of the people in Union Square are white.  At Glide, people's clothes are old and ragged. There is little conversation.  Shopping bags, that you do see, carry many of there people's life possessions.  Most of the people eating at Glide were black and most were men.  Many of these people appeared to be physically or mentally ill.

The only way out for most people eating at Glide is a job.  But it's hard to imagine how anyone would give a homeless, down and out person, dressed in ragged clothes a job.  Chris Gardner's story seems unreal.  For most of the people I saw, the opportunity for a job does not appear to be a reality and they know it.  Their existence is seemingly to live on the streets and return to Glide for their food.

Fortunately, there is Glide.  Our government is not focused on our poor and organizations like Glide and community volunteers have stepped up to address this need.   I am not sure what the people I met this morning would do without this organization.