On a sunny Tuesday morning, at the intersection of Larkin and Cedar streets in the Tenderloin, Travis Foster greeted passers-by. “Hey, fellas. How y’all doing today? Good, good. All right, take it easy.”
Dressed in reflective purple vests and equipped with grabber tools, Foster and his colleague Tyrone Kilson plucked litter off the sidewalk, tossing it into a wheeled trash can.
“First we go around and we clean up, because you see, there’s a lot of stuff going around, feces, trash, all of that,” Kilson said, pointing to the road.
Both are community ambassadors for GLIDE, a church that runs an array of social service programs in the neighborhood.
Cleaning the streets serves a larger purpose — the pair also keep an eye out for people who look like they’re in need, so that they can direct them towards GLIDE’s resources, which include free meals, as well as help with housing and employment, Kilson said.
“Nobody gives them a hard time,” said Foster, about the people that he reaches out to. “We’re trying to be helpful and give our resources— as well as, you know, seeing how they’re doing in that part of the day.”
Foster and Kilson are new to the ambassador program, having both joined in recent weeks. The realities they confront in their work each day — homelessness, poverty, and addiction — can be difficult for the men to witness.
“I mean, seeing some of the stuff sometimes can be like, you know what I mean? Get in your head, but you just gotta stay determined,” Kilson said.
As the clock neared 10:30 a.m., a man approached the pair and introduced himself. “I live on this alley,” the man said, pointing to the graffiti-lined street behind him. “We appreciate it,” he added, alluding to the men’s work.
These interactions are not uncommon, according to Foster.
Foster and Kilson described their pasts as “troubled,” but in this kind of work, it can be a helpful connection.
“Somebody who’s never been where they are can’t come up and try to get them to go somewhere they ain’t been, you know what I mean?” said Kilson. “It has to be somebody who’s been down where they’ve been, been down bad, been on drugs, been homeless, been all in the same situations.”