Pointy-headed Little Bureaucrats...

...Gotta love 'em:

He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It's a reminder of how he has turned things around.

In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then...an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month's rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit....

Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for Public Works, said the department's contact with Moore was meant to be "educational."

Well, it was that.

When Moore found the permit application, he got a money order and headed down to the appropriate department to pay. But because he didn't have a valid ID card, they wouldn't take his money.

Probably a Department of Homeland Security requirement. Those cans of shoe polish could contain explosives. IDs prevent that. Ask anyone in Public Works.

...Moore...insists that city functionaries are giving him a break because they are letting him continue to shine shoes while he waits for a copy of his birth certificate to be sent from Kansas.

Now THAT'S going way out on a limb for a common street criminal.

C.W. Nevius has the story in the San Francisco Chronicle.