Everything is free now

I've been to two new places since we last spoke.

Yesterday, I discovered an amazing place full of free books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, and even sheet music! And you can take it all home! Yes, the public library is no longer just a place to sleep off your crack high and urinate on yourself, it is also a place to rent books on gardening, which is what I did. I also got Eric a book on how to win at Blackjack, per his request.

Then this morning at 8am I went to another place that is no longer just for homeless drug addicts: the local free health clinic*. There is a program here called Healthy San Francisco that provices free or extremely discounted health services to people living at 300% or less of the federal poverty line who have been uninsured for more than 90 days**. The trick is that you have to be enrolled in the program and have a card***, and it is only valid within San Francisco. The non-bonus of living a block from "crack alley" (~6th & Mission) is that you get to go to the same free clinic as the guy screaming at his beer and telling it "you're fired". I am now officially enrolled and officially terrified of ever going back to the clinic.



*Upon closer inspection, it actually still is pretty much exclusively for homeless drug addicts.
**That's me!
***This isn't a health insurance program, so does that make it an uninsurance card?