The Jumper

While I was in San Francisco I had a weird experience. I was coming up from the Metro, (Powell St. Station), on the escalator and saw a funny thing, and a scary one too. There was a woman standing there at the base of the second set of escalators and starring out with a funny look on her face. She got a cue from someone and started walking towards me, past me in the opposite direction. I look back and there is a man doing the same thing but following me. At the top of the escalator I look around and there are cameras and people with mics, booms, and such, they are filming something. So I step aside and watch. I see the woman get back into position, the man take his position and then do another take. This time I decide to go back down and come up again just to get into another take, because I think that I was in one the first time I came through and saw them. I take my position and wait. There is a delay, so I go over to the man (he does not look famous) and ask him what they are filming? He says a commercial for a phone co. Now he gets his cue and off I go, right behind him. We pass the woman and up the escalator we go. I try to look nonchalant and casual hoping to get in a final take, since they are doing so many. I figure, at this point, that I am in two takes so will now go about my thing, watching as I leave I notice that they have all stopped and are all looking up in the same direction. So I look up too and there is a building there with a man on the ledge. WOOOH! A jumper. Really? Is that what he is doing? He's in a pair of blue underwear and nothing else. YIKES! Really? To go to where I am headed I need to jump on a bus and right now the bus I need is pulling up. I get on and tell the driver that there is a jumper, she says that she needs to call it in. Everybody on the bus looks and announce that the cops are all over the place. So we head off, comments of all kinds are being made. It is the first time I had ever seen this kind of thing and am so glad not to see if the guy jumps. I know I could not bear to witness his death. (in this picture you can barely make him out, I took this with my little cell phone camera while on the bus, second window from the top right. Directly above the location the filmcrew was using)
On my way back to our hotel and to meet Steve and his co-workers for after work drinks, I mention to the guy next to me on the returning bus that earlier there was a jumper on that building I am pointing out. He tells me that he saw it on the news. The guy jumped.........
Wow!!! I am so glad I got out of there and didn't see it. It would have been awful. Poor guy, who knows what would make someone do this, but to jump off a building in such a public place, that is just too much and puts others in the way. I don't mean that he'll land on someone, but that he is involving all others, being there or not, like it or not. I believe, a person may make ones own decisions, but if you choose suicide, do it in private. Do not force this on any other. It is ones own private act, not mine. I don't mean to be cold, but what was he doing? Trying to dye in a TV commercial just as I was trying to 'jump' into one? I have no information about all this because, truly, I was just passing through.
I do hope I made it into a TV commercial, that would be fun. Not into this TV drama, that would be not.