World surreal for homeless

In the early morning, the Monongahela Wharf does not seem of this earth.

The broken asphalt… In the early morning, the Monongahela Wharf does not seem of this earth.

The broken asphalt that sits mere inches above the water level is covered with dried mud, shattered in place like old clay. The roar of traffic from Interstate 376, directly above, creates the feeling of static in every other sound. And as the sun rises from the east, turning the dull green surface of the Monongahela into a precious few moments of gold, the wharf is still darkened in the shadow of the highway, plagued with a gray gloom.

The people under the overpass also seem otherworldly. Many are talking in their sleep, or talking to themselves while rocking slowly back and forth, purposeless smiles on their lips. A few men stink of alcohol, or marijuana. Some are yelling at each other, and others are quietly shoving every possession they have into shopping bags.

The Monongahela Wharf parking lot is a nightly residence for a handful of the more than 2,000 homeless people in Pittsburgh. As the day comes and the bitter chill gives way to slight warmth, the men who stay there get up, stow their things on the concrete pylons that hold up I-376, and head Downtown as if in the regular work force. But for these men, their incomes are incurred on a day-by-day basis.

Ray, a slim man in his 50s, wraps himself in a stained, green coat and brown scarf, and ties a bandanna around his head, trying to control his furious mane of long, filthy, white hair. He attempts to pick dirt off a medal hanging on a dirty, torn purple ribbon from his pocket.

“I went to Vietnam in 1968,” Ray said. “I got myself shot, came back, tried to start my life up, and ended up down here. Go figure.”

He sorts through his bag, which contains a notebook, some pens and markers, a few worn photographs, a small roll of dollar bills, and various trinkets and mementos.

Although Ray usually tries panhandling in the Downtown business district, he is headed for the North Shore, where the Pitt Panthers are about to host a football game at Heinz Field. As he walks up the path to the surface, Ray shouts to two fishermen standing by the river.

“You’re kidding yourselves, man,” he yells. “You’d be lucky to pull a shoe out of there.”

The fishermen wave him on while muttering to each other, calling him a “river rat.”

Ray emerges at Point Park and stumbles past tourists toward the Allegheny River. His walk is slow, undetermined, almost lacking direction. Peng Zhou, a native of Shanghai, China, who is visiting Pittsburgh, holds his camera at bay while Ray walks in front of his shot.

“It is very strange to see men like that all over,” Zhou says. “They are like ghosts.”

Ray walks past a construction site and up the stairs to the Roberto Clemente Bridge, where another man is sitting. He is wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt and a torn, beige jacket, and he is writing on a piece of cardboard with a black marker. Ray taps him on the shoulder, greeting him as he passes, and the man returns the salutation. The two look like boxers bumping each other’s gloves.

“He’s not really begging,” Ray said. “He’s scalping tickets. Maybe even real ones.”

George Williams, however, is begging. He is perched on the north end of the bridge, jingling the change in his plastic cup as people walk by. Someone pauses and drops some coins into the cup, causing Williams to flash a smile, showing his remaining teeth and saying “God bless.”

“I usually hang out by the USX Building,” Williams said. “People are nice to me, give me clothes and things.”

Williams, 46, says his mother and father are dead, and the house they left him and his brother was seized by the city for failure to pay taxes. The property is now part of a Hill District housing development.

“The city is a damn money fence,” Williams said. “Whatever they can’t tax, they don’t want.”

With his brother now gone, Williams has no one to whom he can turn.

“This place was jumping, back in the ’70s. That’s when a man had a chance,” Williams said. “Now, businessmen only come here to relax.”

At the same time, nearly every street Downtown has a panhandler, and some streets have one on nearly every block. Their cardboard signs, crudely etched with markers, vary from liturgical to lyrical, including “Help the Homeless, God Bless You” and “Out of Luck, Need a Buck.” The history of Pittsburgh is not held in reverence: The sites of the first all-movie theater, the first World Series and the first oil well are all peopled by beggars.

One man is reclining in the doorway of 220 Fifth Ave., a closed storefront once home to G. C. Murphy and Co. The windows have posters from the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, showing a sun in front of a building. The slogan reads, “Preparing Downtown for a better tomorrow.”

“You want to give me a better tomorrow?” the man in the doorway said. “Make it warmer out here, man.”

As the sun disappears behind clouds and the sky darkens to black, the faint heat clinging to the ground evaporates. The panhandlers slowly wilt from the streets, some finding abandoned doorways and others returning to camps under bridges and overpasses. The night’s chill sets in, making the homeless wrap themselves tighter in discarded blankets, pull extra socks over their battered feet, and hope that they are warm enough to sleep until their next shift in the morning.