On Soledad Street, where junkies and angels reside, a clash is coming.

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We approach Chinatown carrying bags of clean needles, pouches of Capri Sun fruit drink and condoms. I am walking with two CSUMB students and Dennis Beasley, a former drug addict who is now an outreach counselor for John XXIII AIDS Ministry. We cross two lines of Union Pacific Railroad tracks, stepping on salt-and-pepper-colored rocks.

Catching sight of us, a dirty-clothed man with wild, dark hair stops rummaging through a shopping cart filled with scrap metal. He hands Beasley a handful of dirty needles. In return, the man receives clean syringes and a few small metal caps that he will use for cooking heroin.

Unlike several other drug addicts wandering along the railroad tracks, the 53-year-old man is sleeveless. His dark-skinned arms bubble with abscesses. The clean paraphernalia is meant to keep him from contracting HIV and other diseases that spread from sharing needles. The man is grateful. When he starts mumbling about a vampire doll in his shopping cart being his grandfather, we move on.

John XXIII staffers and volunteers walk the tracks about twice a week. They hand out alcohol swabs and crack pipe extensions to people who are too sick to walk two blocks to the drop-in center at the corner of Market and North Main Streets. An average of 2,000 needles a month are exchanged in Chinatown.

Walking southeast just above the Market Street underpass, we greet a short-haired woman who could be in her 50s—my mom’s age, I realize. Her skinny frame makes her jean jacket look extra baggy. She pulls out a black pouch and counts out 15 used needles. She also has a few syringe caps, and tries to barter a needle for each cap. Beasley agrees to give her one extra needle for the caps.

A Latino man with a white shirt tucked into his gray Dickies pants waits patiently. He looks like he probably has a job, maybe a family. He hands Beasley a dirty needle and accepts some graham crackers and juice.

We walk to the railroad bridge above East Alisal Street. A woman with a black Raiders stocking hat pulled just above here eyes grabs an armful of juice and munchies. She digs out her dirty needles with her other hand.

Both hands are dirty and oversized for her bony face. She points to the other side of the bridge where she says cops tore up her camp. Nobody else is around further down the tracks so we head back to Chinatown.

Beasley, who is African-American, says the demographics vary in the neighborhood,  from Latinos and Whites along the tracks to a mix of Blacks and Latinos on Soledad Street. Dealers from Black and Latino gangs are known to shell out heroin, crack and meth in the general area. Beasley warns us not to stare, recalling a comical instance when he had to tell a Black guy that a White volunteer was with him in order to avoid a confrontation.

At the top of Soledad Street, the same guy with the wild hair we saw earlier is cradled in a doorway behind a yellow shopping cart. When I see he is cooking up some heroin, I walk away. He calls me back and cordially asks me my name. I tell him I am a reporter and he just says, “OK.” He seems to be too high to register that he is shooting up in front of me.

Our last stop is behind the Salinas Train Station. Piles of feces and toilet paper are scattered along the rusted walls of the bridge over North Main Street. Thousands of cars pass under the bridge everyday. Behind these walls, just out of sight from traffic, people are shooting up and shitting.

While some people are trapped by poverty, addiction or mental illness, many others have found a path out. Joshua Bingham has endured the ugly side of Soledad Street and is now enrolled in a recovery program at Sun Street Center. The 23-year-old takes a break from painting a mural on the cement wall of Iglesia De Dios, a church across from the community garden, and rolls a cigarette.

Bingham looks at two painted words, “sobriety” and “music,” elements that he is trying to focus his life on following a spate of addiction. He tells me that after his mother and brother died in a car accident about two years ago, he hit bottom. He ended up living out of his truck and panhandling for money to buy drugs. Bingham says he would often come down to Chinatown to score crack or meth.

“I ditched all my friends and my family for this,” he says. “I was homeless by choice. You don’t know what the hell you are doing when you’re high. You don’t know the difference between right and wrong.”

Pausing to take a drag from his cigarette, Bingham says, “I’m doing the right thing now for sure.” Late last month Bingham celebrated his 43rd day sober.

He says Soledad Street is gradually getting cleaned up, and he has noticed more police presence and less filth. “Just within a couple years or so I’ve seen it go from real bad. Hope definitely exists.”