"Let the cops go in first," my supervisor says. "Then move in with your bags and pick-up sticks." We are General Assistance recipients doing our workfare in the parks. Up to now, we've been pruning, mulching and clearing paths. Today, we will add a new skill to our resumis: busting up homeless camps.

They tell me Matrix (a San Francisco program aimed at clearing the homeless from public places) is dead, but as far as I can see, it's business as usual. Call it Stealth Matrix. The cops go in and roust the campers, telling them to pack up and blow. No arrests are made.

We follow to clean up and immediately realize why the city's Parks and Recreation department is so keen on evicting these campers. These folks are slobs. In the course of our rounds we find used needles (my partner stuck himself on one), maggot-infested cartons of rotten Chinese food, rain-soaked clothes and bed rolls, condoms (new and used), shopping carts loaded to the brim with gay pornography, a reindeer hand puppet, human excrement, one Krugerrand, two traffic cones, a stun gun, a tent, a VCR, zillions of little plastic drug bags (empty) and enough dead wine bottles to construct a life-sized statue of King Kong.

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