The homeless couple who fell in love in the shadow of Silicon Valley

A ver­sion of this sto­ry appears in Issue 79 of Huck. Get your copy now, or sub­scribe to make sure you nev­er miss anoth­er issue.

When Irish pho­tog­ra­ph­er and direc­tor Niall O’Brien and his girl­friend Nik­ki moved to Sil­i­con Val­ley for a three-month work sec­ond­ment, they found them­selves in a non­de­script area called Camp­bell. They were liv­ing in a big, soul­less, emp­ty apart­ment build­ing where Niall would ride his bike around the space because there was noth­ing else to do while his girl­friend was at work and traveling. 

“The most excit­ing thing I had was run­ning to Whole Foods,” half laughs Niall. His sal­va­tion from bore­dom was Bas­com Avenue — a six-mile-long road that cross­es through three cities; Los Gatos, Camp­bell and San Jose. The dis­tance it cov­ered and the jux­ta­po­si­tion of well-off high­ly paid tech work­ers along­side huge num­bers of home­less peo­ple was some­thing he couldn’t ignore. ​“I just walked up and down that same road,” Niall says. ​“Nev­er turn­ing off it, try­ing to find some­thing, which was kind of hard but also inter­est­ing. I was there for three months and just kept pho­tograph­ing it.” 

These pho­tographs evolved into a project: Three Cities – named after the places Bas­com Avenue con­nects – show­ing how crazy the whole ​‘Sil­i­con Val­ley sit­u­a­tion’ is. The con­tra­dic­tions of how expen­sive the area is, the tech com­pa­ny employ­ees that are pump­ing prices up ver­sus an increas­ing num­ber of home­less peo­ple, many of whom are also in full-time employ­ment. ​“There’s a char­i­ty set up here for work­ing peo­ple called the Safe Park­ing Pro­gram,” Niall explains. ​“You have to have a job to apply for it, it’s for work­ing peo­ple who can’t afford to rent, so they have some­where safe to live in their cars. It’s crazy, you have teach­ers and nurs­es liv­ing in their cars because they can’t afford rent. I actu­al­ly met a guy in a dough­nut shop one day and he com­ment­ed on my cam­era and we start­ed chat­ting about this whole safe park­ing thing. He’s like, ​‘it’s fun­ny you men­tioned that as I’m actu­al­ly think­ing about it myself.’ He worked for the local col­lege dri­ving a bus. He’d just gone through a divorce and was look­ing at liv­ing in his car.”

One morn­ing, new inspi­ra­tion appeared: ​“I was look­ing over the bal­cony into this alley down the side of my apart­ment build­ing,” recounts the Irish pho­tog­ra­ph­er. ​“And I saw a home­less-look­ing man down there. He was a guy I had seen before in the alley and also singing for mon­ey by the Whole Foods. So when he looked up at me and waved, I was like, ​‘Hey, do you want break­fast?’ And I just went and got break­fast with the guy. Turns out his name was Blake and he’d cho­sen to be home­less — he was off the grid inten­tion­al­ly. He was such a clever man — real­ly smart and artic­u­late, and I start­ed to pho­to­graph him as we became friends.” The Three Cities pho­to and film project had become more than a sto­ry about the road and class divide.

As O’Brien and Blake’s friend­ship start­ed to grow, his new bud­dy met a woman called Dana and they fell in love — Niall doc­u­ment­ing their blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship and increas­ing reliance on each oth­er. ​“Dana had a seri­ous addic­tion prob­lem,” O’Brien explains. ​“She was in a very sad place, men­tal­ly — we vis­it­ed her kid’s grave at one point — it was pret­ty heavy stuff. But it was pret­ty amaz­ing to get to know them both.”

In the eye-open­ing, raw and ulti­mate­ly uplift­ing short film Niall made as part of Three Cities, Dana cred­its Blake for chang­ing her life. ​“I’ve changed my ways now,” she admits. ​“I learnt from him, to not go back to none of that.” From ini­tial­ly liv­ing rough in an alley­way, Blake and Dana man­aged to buy a van halfway through the project, which they lived in. Niall isn’t entire­ly sure where they are now. After three months it was time to move back to LA. ​“I did stay in con­tact with Dana on Face­book,” O’Brien says. ​“But we’ve lost touch recent­ly, but I will see them again. It was a beau­ti­ful way to pass the time for three months. ​“For me, it’s the con­tra­dic­tion of Sil­i­con Val­ley and all its over­priced banal­i­ty ver­sus the bur­geon­ing home­less sit­u­a­tion that is told as you trav­el along Bas­com Avenue, which is the essence of Three Cities.” O’Brien concludes.

“But it’s also a love sto­ry. The human­i­ty of the love sto­ry of Blake and Dana is impor­tant. When I met Blake, he was push­ing 60 and alone. Hap­py, but alone. So it’s a sto­ry of a near­ly 60-year-old man meet­ing some­one and falling in love. On the street. It’s kind of amaz­ing.”

See a full gallery of the Three Cities project here.

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