Charles  Franks and Richard Preston are 60-ish guys (Richard simply over, Charles just below,) so the speak turned rapidly to their knees. And one other shared ache: Mission trash.  

Throughout a latest  stroll alongside Folsom Avenue, the 2 commiserated and traded ideas:

  “I  used to choose up by hand sporting gloves; I believed selecting up trash could be good for my again, all that stretching and bending, however I reduce my hand. So now I exploit a grabber that goes below vehicles. However,  oh, my knee…” Preston, grimacing, admits he’s going through knee surgical procedure.

Franks grins with sympathy and reassures him, “Come on now, man!  It ain’t no biggie, I received my proper knee substitute awhile again, and now I can scoot down the road with my cart and my picker! “

Franks is a local son of Bayview Hunters Level, nicknamed “the Black cricket” by his grandma, who raised him, “trigger as a child I fell asleep on all fours, with my butt within the air.”  

He has rebounded time and again, from durations of incarceration, homelessness, and just lately, the loss of life of his beloved spouse, Ritza, to most cancers, in 2019. He stays heat, humorous,  insightful, and passionate. Particularly about trash.

Each morning he takes his crew of two, his picker, his cart and his broom, and does two shifts of trash assortment, morning and night, from 16^th to 24^th, alongside the Valencia/ Mission hall. He works for the nonprofit Downtown Streets Group and spent the pandemic as a volunteer selecting up trash, for present playing cards, on the very streets of his hometown, the place he lived unhoused for a number of years. In March, he was promoted to Group Lead, and have become a paid worker. 

Preston, born in  Virginia, just lately retired as Senior Trial Legal professional, Workplace of Worldwide Affairs,  within the Prison Division of the U.S. Division of Justice, the place he dealt with extraditions. 

An avid hiker, he trekked the mountains in  Chamonix, France together with his sons this summer time.

Lately he hikes, and extradites trash from the Manilla Market (Mission close to Silver), down Mission to 24^th and all of the facet streets – “about two hours a day when  I’m on the town.”

He and his spouse, Judy, who retired as Deputy Chief within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, moved to San Francisco in 2020 to be close to their sons and grandkids. 

Preston explains,  “We left D.C. and drove throughout America, stopping to see associates in New York, Windfall, Montpelier, Chicago, Madison, Detroit.  This was palms down the dirtiest metropolis we had ever seen in America. I simply by no means noticed a lot trash! I don’t know what it was like earlier than the pandemic however after we received right here, there have been merely tumbleweeds of trash, the winds blowing it in every single place.”

Franks nods in assent, “Once I was rising up right here on Mendell  Avenue, it wasn’t like that,  I inform you.  In these days there have been much more individuals working within the parks, cleansing the streets. I used to chop college ( I performed left discipline for the Balboa Excessive Buccaneers ). Me and Lorenzo and Boris would exit and promote weed, all three of us, up on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. Roll 20 joints within the morning and promote all of them by night. We have been so good, the cops by no means noticed. However they received us for truancy, sat us within the patrol automobile couple of occasions, me and ’Lo, and drove us again to highschool. GG Park was clear then!”

“Nicely I believe the parks are nonetheless fairly clear, it’s the streets,” says Preston, “so we joined Vince’s group (Vincent Yuen, founding father of Refuse Refuse see Missionlocal), when he was doing the Mission.

 However there are lots of novices. He imitates a finicky squeal. “ ‘Is this okay to choose up? Is THIS okay to choose up?’ If it’s on the bottom, decide it up! Choose all of it up!  I say. I decide up meals, books, moist stuff, dry stuff, stuff I can’t even establish.”

He takes out his telephone to indicate Franks a proposal he wrote to Supervisor Hillary Ronen:

 “If Recology gave trash grabbers to every home with an account, all of us might decide up unfastened trash close to our residences earlier than (and after) trash assortment. The grabbers might be bought for about $10-$15, however I believe they need to be bought in bulk for much much less and broadly distributed together with the bins. This might encourage canine walkers and folks out on a stroll to hold them when they’re out. “

Franks nods and grins like, yeah, that’s actually gonna occur. 

“Nicely, my pet peeve is across the faculties. I don’t suppose it’s proper that children need to step round damaged glass and all of the crap. So I pay additional consideration across the faculties, me and my crew.”

Preston: “ I are typically a lone wolf selecting up trash. I take heed to podcasts, I get in a zone, I don’t need individuals to get offended so I anticipate them to maneuver on earlier than I can decide up round them. And I don’t put on these reflective vests, I don’t wish to give the impression that I work for the town, I prefer to be invisible.” 

At  6 ft and 6 inches tall, he’s not precisely wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.

Franks, alternatively, works intently together with his crew. They’re a trash ballet, crisscrossing Valencia at an angle , do-si-doing round one another, trailing their spherical carts like little cabooses. However they’re selective, he notes.

“One homeless Latina girl, we name her Mama Cuba, I by no means take her cardboard: that’s her mattress. You know the way exhausting it’s to seek out good, sturdy cardboard? I been on all-day hunts for good cardboard to sleep on, after I was on the streets, come again to seek out it gone. Oh man, your coronary heart simply sinks.”

Preston  asks, “Have you ever had any luck discovering money on the road?”

Franks: “On a regular basis, on a regular basis. We commonly discover payments: twenties, fives, plenty of ones.”

Preston: “Me too, I discovered $350 complete, even 100 greenback invoice. My spouse seemed up the serial quantity to ensure it was legit.”

Franks: “I believe it’s from the dispensaries, trigger individuals pay in money they usually may be just a little, you already know, spaced out. A whole lot of our route is high-end retailers as effectively, so there’s all the time  cash on the bottom.”

They see the identical individuals littering, day after day. Town wants extra anti-littering campaigns, Preston says. 

Franks seems to be skeptical. “There isn’t a method to inform a homeless particular person what to do or not do with their trash. If you’re on the market on the streets,  you going to sleep the place you lay your head. So I simply decide up round them, they know after we are coming by. Town ought to present port-a-potties and trash cans for homeless.”

However, he notes, “I get ‘thanks’ on a regular basis. Proprietors. Pedestrians.Mariah, who manages lots of condos on Valencia. She requested if we might concentrate round her constructing, reason behind homeless encampments across the again alley.” Franks brightens as he provides, 

“ I’m going to be the perfect man at Mariah’s marriage ceremony, I solely know this household six or seven months, since I been serving to round her constructing.  Her fiancé and her received many associates, however I’m going to be the perfect man. It’s an actual honor.”

“I  agree, it’s satisfying, the grins and thank yous,” says Preston. “I’ve met plenty of my neighbors. Plus I  have all of the cash I want for the parking meters.”

Franks gestures to his bike parked close by, “Me and my Cadillac right here, we don’t have to fret about that.”

Franks has lived for a lot of the pandemic at a Navigation Middle, however his case supervisor is engaged on getting him housing, perhaps in Polk Gulch. “ I can’t wait until I’ve my very own house once more.”

Preston shakes his hand, “Good luck. Judy and I are going to take a break and go to France for a month. See you in June. “

“Wow, how will you? I imply, how will you simply decide up and go to France? Have a superb time, man. Me, I’m a California child. Every part I need and every little thing I want is correct right here. I’m going to remain proper right here and combat the trash!”