4/12/11 - Week 15<br>There he was, sitting against a BART stairway wall on Market Street with a &quot;Smile&quot; sign. I obeyed and we began talking. I asked his name and told him about the $2 Portraits project. He&#39;d heard about it. He said, &quot;I&#39;m Harold. You haven&#39;t seen me? I&#39;m all over the internet!&quot; I told him I hadn&#39;t seen him but I&#39;d give him $2 if he let me take his picture and put it on the internet. He responded, &quot;Hell yeah!&quot;<br><br>Harold is 52 years old and is from a small town in Oregon. He&#39;s pretty happy right now because he&#39;s off drugs; been clean for 5 years. He likes living on the streets and likes playing characters and making people smile. This summer he&#39;s going down to Fisherman&#39;s Wharf dressed as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and make people smile. I chuckled and said, &quot;So you&#39;re an actor.&quot; He replied, &quot;Isn&#39;t everybody?&quot; Harold said he usually hangs out by Fisherman&#39;s Wharf during the day and sleeps by the Virgin Records on Market Street at night. I asked him how he ended up on the streets. &quot;Drugs, plain and simple,&quot; was his reply. &quot;I don&#39;t hang out with those people anymore…oh no.&quot;<br><br>I asked him if he had any family. Harold said he has a son, 22 who just got out of the army. He occasionally talks to his son but hasn&#39;t seen him since his son was 7 years old. Harold told me he had a long time girl friend who recently died of cancer. He also keeps in contact with a brother and sister who recently found him after 40 years. I asked him how that came about and he launched into a detailed story about his family tree that was impossible to follow.<br><br>In addition to his &quot;Smile&quot; sign, he had two others, &quot;Be Happy&quot; and &quot;Why Lie, I Need Beer.&quot; I told him that I met a guy down the street two weeks ago that had the same &quot;Why Lie..&quot; sign. Harold said, &quot;Oh, you must have met Brian. I gave him that sign. I&#39;m worried about him since I haven&#39;t seen him in a while and he&#39;s an alcoholic.&quot; Yep, same Brian.<br><br>Harold was definitely in good spirits. After taking a few pictures, I wished him good luck, told him to stay clean and gave him $2. As I stood up to leave, he told me &quot;thanks&quot; and &quot;have a good life.&quot;