Nicholas, aka Poodle, 29, ran away from his Oceanside home at age 14.
He’s been living in Balboa Park pretty much ever since. And it’s been a good life, according to Poodle.

In describing his life growing up, Poodle said he was always just a little different than his siblings, a little less serious. He said he was disinherited by his family because he wanted to be an artist and his parents didn’t support his less-than-conventional lifestyle. He loved fashion and makeup. His parents wanted him to be a businessman.

In San Diego’s vast urban park he met other runaway kids and they formed their own tight knit network. “Poodle, Lucky, Glitter, Salina, we would get drunk, smoke meth, we were a family,” he said. “I learned how to make money and survive. It was fun.”

Clearly not everything is fun about living in the park. There was the time he stood up to protect a female friend who was being assaulted by a man who wanted to kidnap her. Poodle got stabbed in the process, spending a week in the hospital healing from the wound.

Then there are the self-inflicted wounds brought on by drug-induced bravado. “I’m invincible, I am,” he said. “That’s why I jumped off the Prado bridge last year, twice. But I survived.”

Mid-sentence, Poodle disappeared to get himself a tray of food in a church courtyard. He came back with a sweatshirt someone else threw into a lost and found box. Poodle decided it would look better on his head than on his back. With three swift strokes it becomes a head scarf, no evidence of dangling arms or zippers.

The park is his home. He would feel uncomfortable indoors at this point. He’s not even trying. He is trying to wean himself from heroin, however. It’s the biggest challenge he’s ever faced, he said. “I used to have a three gram/day habit. I’m cutting back now, I really am.”

Asked if he has any children, Poodle didn’t look up from the leaves he was burning in a pattern of random holes. “I don’t know. Actually, all the street kids are my children. We are all children.”