They remember a good student with a sharp mind and unshakable integrity, a young man who already had a passion for the underprivileged. Together, the recollections of Siddiqi and other friends and acquaintances from Obama’s college years paint a portrait of the candidate as a young man. Obama’s campaign wouldn’t identify “Sadik,” but The Associated Press located him in Seattle, where he raises money for a community theater. His memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” talks about this time but not in great detail Siddiqi, for example, is identified only as “Sadik” - “a short, well-built Pakistani” who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party.
![snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago](https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2018/07/deutsche.jpg)
Obama spent the six years between 19 in Los Angeles at Occidental College and then in New York at Columbia University and in the workplace. It was a time well before the political arena beckoned, when his friends thought he might become a writer or a lawyer, but certainly not the first black man with a real chance to become president of the United States.
![snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago](https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2018/07/kennedy2.jpg)
There was a time before Obama wore tailored suits - when his wardrobe consisted of $5 military-surplus khakis and used leather jackets, and he walked the streets of Manhattan for lack of bus fare. ‘Hey, hey, hey.’ And the guy backpedaled and we kept walking,” Siddiqi recalls. He planted his face firmly in the face of the guy. Until his skinny, Ivy League-educated friend - Barack Obama - intervened. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the bum, who approached him menacingly.
![snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago snopes obama visited gay bars in chicago](https://13wham.com/resources/media/5a4edd20-14a9-4856-8ab6-e931c3600dc1-large3x4_AP19085604036627.jpg)
This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city’s derelicts was to avoid them entirely. NEW YORK (AP) - The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug, Charlie, on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog’s head.