Book Review: The Mayor of the Tenderloin, by Alison Owings
Del Seymour’s journey from living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco
Momii Palapaz, PNN poverty scholar
I really like this book. It’s funny, heart aching, an easy read and full of gratitude. And full of stories. Stories of his experiences formulating into an idea and a plan made Del Seymour the Mayor of the Tenderloin. He had many jobs and professions, such as electrician, carpenter, public speaker, organizer, teacher, lecturer, Vietnam vet medic, plumber and fireman. He was also a pimp, drug addict and at different times in his life, houseless.
Code Tenderloin, Mr Seymour says, is like saying “Code 911” or Code Blue”. The immediacy of life and death service was initiated in a project called “job interviews”. Del gives confidence unlike what I had going to seek a job. He calls it a business meeting. Here’s a chapter quote from p.58. “ Let me say this first: This is the only day we use the word ‘interview’. From here, we call it a business meeting. We feel you are equal to that guy you’re going to talk to. You’re trying to see if your resume will fit his job needs. It’s an across-the-board business meeting, that’s all.”
I was never taught that perspective going to a job interview. I always went with the attitude of, i need a job. I need money. It was hit or miss. When Del Seymour talks about job seeking and preparation, he plans each and every step based on his knowledge of the community. Since he was living and working in the Tenderloin, he knew exactly what to expect from his neighbors on the streets of the Tenderloin SF.
Before Code Tenderloin, Del Seymour made lots of money, even invented an alarm system for cars. His design was then stolen by a major car manufacturer. (Evidence is in an installment of an SF Chronicle Herb Caen column) His “hustle” or entrepeneur working nature has kept his perseverance in the face of addiction and homelessness. With so many professions, Del made a lot of money. The one thing that didn’t seem so important to him was that he made a lot of money. He could take it or leave it. He proved that despite the drug dealing, pimping and addictions, he was not only a survivor but a leader for the most dehumanized and neglected.
When Del, who is from Chicago, IL, was living in the bay area, he had many creative ways to get business. He calls it a “hustle”. “I had my own plumbing company called Shitman Plumbing. People always laughed…It was Shitman Plumbing. Once I tell you my company name, when your pipe busts in the middle of the night: ‘a plumber, a plumber. Shitman’. This was a marketing ploy. You could only do it in San Francisco.”
In 1960’s Tenderloin, there were Newman’s boxing gym, Sam’s Hofbrau, movie theatres, the Downtown bowling alley and the SRO’s housing families of poor, Black and Brown working class, elders, immigrants, and the off Market Street entertainment trades. Many Saturdays, my friends and I would get on the bus and go to Downtown Bowl on Jones and Eddy. Right around the corner was Del’s and many other drug dealer’s offices on the street. Even younger, my family ate at the Polo’s Restaurant on Mason and Turk. Around the corner was Original Joe’s on Taylor between Turk and Eddy. It then became Piano Fight, and also housed the Code Tenderloin. Down the street on the Turk corner of Taylor was La Bamba Restaurant. Reading “The Mayor of Tenderloin” brought memories of days when the Tenderloin community, although poor and a drug destination, my parents never worried. It was safe enough. Homelessness had yet to be an issue. It was an era of working people, poor people, thousands who lived and worked in SF. You didn’t hear about people commuting to work.
One thing I realized reading Del Seymour was my own addiction to cocaine and liquor. I was and am still housed. I was never homeless, so the thought of having a drug addiction AND being houseless would send me further into a deep hole. I had already hit bottom as a housed person. My jobs went to drugs, liquor and paying the rent. Saving money in the credit union went to $0. But I was still housed. I did this for 20 years. I had to leave SF and move to Oakland. But to do this while unhoused? And have a job? In the depths of addiction, I was lucky to not get fired from a 5 and 10 cent store, FW Woolworth, a few blocks from ground zero; the Tenderloin.
“I served in the Vietnam War,” said Del Seymour, “served the streets of South Central LA as a firefighter paramedic. I saw a lot of stuff. You know what my nightmares are about? Being homeless in the Tenderloin. I think I’m homeless again...I wake up in a sweat, running out of the room. How can this happen? I’m homeless again. That surpasses all that trauma, is being homeless.”
Del Seymour taught me about resilience. It was the one thing that kept me from continuing on that dark bottomless path. At a meet, greet and hear him talk, I had that opportunity. Along with the author, Alison Owings, and Reverend Harry Williams, Tiny, co-founder with Mama Dee of POOR MAGAZINE, confirmed the scam of homelessness. The houseless movement to homefulness is deep and wide. The daunting work over the past years has come to bear fruit everyday. The houseless community found me as I was looking for them. Now it’s we.
If you have a home please consider redistributing
whatever you can so houseless peoples can build/house ourselves1)
$1.00 to 1 million
To build rent-free forever homes for houseless families, & elders www.poormagazine.org/homefulness -currently housing 21 houseless youth adults and elders in Deep East Huchiun (Oakland)
