Larry Moore shined so many shoes on Thursday that he ran through two bottles of polish.Then there were the women who walked up to give him a hug, the tourists who had their photo taken with him, and the people - more than one - who stuffed $100 bills in his shirt pocket.
"Honestly," Moore said, "it is probably the best day of my life. And not for financial reasons. It just means so much to have people come out and recognize someone working hard."
On Thursday, we reported that a city worker told the homeless shoe shiner that he had to fork over $491 for a sidewalk vendor permit. And that was roughly how much he had saved for a first month's rent that would get him off the streets. The city's inane bureaucracy put him back to square one.
Moore wasn't terribly upset. After all, he has lived under a Bay Bridge ramp for years. A few more months wouldn't kill him, he reasoned.
But San Francisco got outraged.
Workers and residents were furious at city government for making it so hard for Moore to pull himself up and out of the streets. They were also eager to lend a hand.
City officials got the message. It may have been a misunderstanding or miscommunication, but there was only one bottom line - taking almost all of Moore's money to pay for a permit was a boneheaded idea of epic proportions.
That would make them "progressives".
Article here.
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