Summer in San Francisco usually means street fairs. This means, that sections of the city often close down a portion of the streets for foot traffic. Its a place where people can come and sell their wares and listen to live bands. The more famous ones are usually the
Mission Street Fair ,
The Haight-Ashburry Street Fair, and the
Castro Street Fair.
There is also the street fair near
City Hall (near the Tenderloin district). Last year's fair was pretty typical except for one small event. Now, many of the street fairs often have food booths and one in particular was a food booth that sold barbecue chicken.
The booth had up a menu up, with chicken running for about 8 dollars, and I might add, they gave you a hearty amount of chicken. There were also side dishes like baked beans, potato salad, corn on the cob, bottled water, and sodas stuck in ice boxes for about a dollar a can. Like most of the booths, this one did quite well at the end of the day, financially.
However, as the night grew on, with the sun going down, and vendors starting to pack up for the day, they decided to do something very special.
Now it seems this particular vendor, had brought way too much chicken with them. So, as the booths were coming down, someone grabbed a black magic maker, drew up a sign saying, "Free chicken for Tenderloin residents!!",and rather then closing down, they spent several hours continuing to barbecue the remainder of chicken until it was gone. Now, the Tenderloin area in San Francisco, is one of the poorest districts in the city.
This was an amazing thing for them to do, to stay open and feed anyone who was hungry!
If people had asked to take some chicken for later, they were more than happy to bag up some extra chicken into plastic containers, with their famous BBQ sauce and throw in some left over
baked beans, and corn on the cob, without taking a cent.
Last year was not that particularly good in San Francisco for most people, financially, but for these people to stop taking money, beyond the time of the end of the street fair, and to continually cook chicken and give it away to anyone who asked, really showed the true spirit of the City, and the Street fairs.
I have been to many of these fairs, and quite often look forward to going however, in all my years of going, I had never seen such an act of random kindness. The looks on all the faces were truly precious to behold, and I will have to admit, it was one of the best Street fairs ever... I hope they do it again, this year.