Do you find yourself harboring a slight fondness for someone who’s always at a certain spot at a certain time of day? A guy you might save a quarter for, instead of giving it to some random busker?

My guy stays at one of the PATH stations at night. He’s an elderly African-American man with this great poof of white hair. We usually exchange a nod or a smile. It’s nice that he always recognizes me, and that he’s always there to let me know that my train’s pulling into the station and I’d better run for it. I find him a bit interesting because out of all the homeless folks I see around every day, he’s the only one who has found a way to make himself helpful to people, in telling them the train schedule. The funny thing is that he sits around a corner where he can’t see the trains himself, and yet he’s always dead-on about which one is coming and when.

I’m asking because I mentioned I was giving leftovers from a drug rep lunch to my guy, and some other people in my office said they also had favorite homeless people. It made me curious about Fluther experiences.

Topics: Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York City, money, cities, Philadelphia, homelessness, Austin, change, trains, subway, routine, friendship, destitution, acquaintanceship, familiarity