Close encounters in seedy San Francisco

My sister and I were shopping in downtown San Francisco in November while in town for a family gathering. Both she and I have no qualms with walking across the city rather than taking buses and cabs. We were in search of several bead and fabric shops that my sister wanted to check out. Armed with maps, walking shoes, and all our luggage (we had no time to return to the hotel that evening) we hiked through San Francisco.

One of our walks took us through a hilly and seedy part of town. We turned a corner and started up the hill following a middle-aged black man wearing frayed denim and sporting a confident swagger. He looked like he lived on the streets. No, he looked like he thrived on them. As another pedestrian (another vagrant we think) came walking down the sidewalk, the man in front of us stared him down. We glanced at each other with a look of curiosity and noticed that the man ahead of us followed the other man with his eyes for even a few seconds after he passed him. Then unexpectedly the man in front of us punched directly behind him. His fist came about 6 inches from our faces. We immediately gave the man another couple of paces distance and we stared at each other with disbelief. Just then he spits over his shoulder and narrowly missed my sister's shoe. We almost stopped in our tracks. By now the look on our face would best be described by the phrase "how the heck did you get that bean stuck up your nose?" At the next corner we waited until he decided to cross the street and purposefully made a right turn.

For the next block we made comments about how bizarre the whole experience was and guessed at how close we came to instigating a street brawl. By the time we got to the next store we were laughing about it and doing our best to immitate the swagger while punching out in random directions. I'm sure several of the pedestrians we passed were wondering how we got beans stuck up our noses too.