Back when the economic recession started, I had just gotten a job, mere chance, doing IT Desktop Support for a large medical manufacturer (not sure if the largest in the city and if not the case, then second largest). The recession hit us hard down in Tijuana, downtown quickly emptied from the usual American influence it had seen for decades, and crime was at an all-time high (if memory does not fail me, it was either 2008 when we had more than one thousand murders related to drug dealing). All of this made it very clear that we were in for a rough ride yet I could not fully understand the level of the recession until I went to San Diego somewhere in 2009, I was going to see Testament at the House of Blues in Downtown San Diego, for whatever reason the ticket I had paid for did not go through (no charges to my credit card though) and I had to buy them on the spot, the concert was not as full as I had expected but this was in a way understandable seeing the current situation.
During my ride on the trolley, I saw two things that were so ingrained in my mind that even to this date I cannot forget them.
The first was this lady wearing a very expensive coat and a pearl necklace, she was carrying around a large trash bag but I could not see what was inside of it and then I see her moving next to a trash can, opening the thing and picking up and smashing aluminum cans and plastic bottles, the contrast of what I was seeing at that point made me think that even the mighty can fall hard and that humans will do everything they can to survive.
The second thing I remember was a sort of architects office inside Downtown, there was something akin to a rent for using a table on a weekly or monthly basis and the place was full of drawing tables all over the small place, when I looked slightly closer I could see some kind of bulge sitting on top of one of the tables, a coat maybe, and focusing on this particular object I noticed it was a person, but it wasn’t just one, it seemed other people had taken the same alternative of sleeping there, this got me thinking that they had probably rented the table and slept over the table because, well, it doesn’t matter what you use the table for if you rented it…