Tenleytown community staple Duane Foster reflects back on 50 years of life

Anyone who’s spent considerable time in Tenleytown knows Duane Foster. Maybe not by name, but by sight. 

He’s worked in Tenleytown for about a decade. His office stands out. 

He can be spotted in front of the Wisconsin Avenue CVS parking lot every weekday during working hours. A bike rack serves as his desk, and a crate replaces an ergonomic chair. His wares are unique. It’s not clothing nor food that he sells but a digital newsletter, “The Hobo.” It can be purchased for $5 and downloaded via QR code. 

Foster has spent much of his adulthood homeless. In his newsletter, he writes about life on the streets under the guise of the fictitious character Black Fields. 

Earlier this fall, Foster turned 50 years old. It’s an age he wasn’t sure he’d reach, but he feels it in his back, ankles, knees, his stamina and his outlook on life.

“It’s a lot of guys out here, man, in their 40s and 50s that’s passing, so each day is like man… this might be it,” Foster said, adding that aging involves “just constant awareness of your mortality.”

He first became particularly conscious of the fragility of his life and body on September 18, 1992, his golden birthday. 

He got into a fight with a college peer when the other student closed the door on his hand, slicing off his finger. 

Had the incision been a quarter inch deeper, it would have impacted his artery and led to severe blood loss, the emergency provider told him in the ambulance.

“That was my first kind of instance where it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m mortal. I could die out here,’” Foster said, gesturing with nine and a half fingers. “You start thinking about consequences.”   

Within days, he began using drugs for the first time in his life. The habit would persist for years. He wouldn’t understand the correlation between the events until about seventeen years later in a drug rehab program. 

As he ages, it becomes harder to contend with the challenges of homelessness, he said. Each year, it’s more difficult to bear through the cold, defend himself against adversaries he encounters on the street and compete with panhandlers. He said he feels “vulnerable” sometimes. 

Fortunately, others look out for him. 

On an October afternoon, CVS security guard William Jones stopped by to say hello and give Foster a fist bump. Foster broke into a smile.

“That’s the head of my security team right there,” Foster joked.

Jones said Foster adds a nice bit of variety to the suburban neighborhood, even as far as the local homeless population goes. 

“He’s different from the rest of the homeless people,” Jones said. “He has a product for sale and it’s actually a cool product.”

Jones said he enjoys having Foster around the corner every day and reading his newsletter every so often. It reminds him of “The Boondocks” TV show, he said. It’s fun and unique.

Homelessness isn’t ideal for Foster, but he isn’t ignorant of the challenges of participating in the housing market. In order to afford a comfortable, well-insulated and clean home in the Washington D.C. area, he’d need a much higher and more stable income than his business brings in now. 

“All the discomforts that I would experience outside, I’m going to experience in the type of place that I’m going to get,” he said.

Unless he stumbles into a fortune, the Tenleytown block where he’s become a mainstay will remain his makeshift office for the foreseeable future, and that’s alright with him. He feels lucky just to be waking up each day.

“The lifestyle I lived, I really probably should have been dead in my 20s or 30s,” he said. “It’s just God been walking with me the whole time.”