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Earlier the park teemed with the morning routines of the homeless. They slept, they bathed, they shaved, they had sex, they picked through trash cans.
An hour before police cruised through this morning, a man and a woman were having sex on a bench around 5 a.m. Both clothed, the woman was seated on the man's lap.
Two squad cars came through shortly before 6 a.m. Officers with nightsticks used bullhorns to rouse the more than two dozen men and several women - of assorted ages and races - sleeping on benches or the grass.
"They [police] don't come every day, but three times a week," said Dave, a regular overnight patron, who sleeps there in a business suit with his PDA. Dave, who did not give his last name, said he is unemployed and pretends to be a businessman.
Around 7:30 a.m., a shirtless, barefoot man began bathing in a fountain, using a bar of soap to give himself a thorough lathering - except for his short pants.
At 8:30 a.m. a homeless man was asleep near Stephen Starr's posh new restaurant, Parc.
"What are you supposed to do?" said Barbara Craig, a graphic designer who lives nearby. "As a resident, you don't like to see it. It's kind of gross. What is the city doing about this?"
John Anderson, 66, a retiree walking his Portuguese water dog, took the situation more in stride.
He hadn't seen bathing before, and he was concerned that children play in those fountains, he said.
But he wasn't upset.
"Philadelphia is the best city I've seen for urban living."
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