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There's almost no problem so severe that it is immune to hyperbole. I'm always in such a strange place responding to comments like this, because I generally agree. San Francisco govt is very restrictive toward business - it bans plastic straws and happy meals - but it seems helpless in the face of severe misbehavior from addicts and mentally ill. So severe that people might wonder if some in government are willfully enabling this behavior. I've lived in SF my whole life, and I'm pushing 50. My parents live here, I'm raising my kids here. Every day I wonder if I made the right decision. There's still time to leave. It hurts, feeling this way, because in many ways I still really love the place where I grew up, and I feel like a lot of my life is woven in here. I said all that to make it clear that I agree with you And yet, there's still room for disagreement about how severe it is. I've been on long walks (something I like doing in urban areas) since COVID hit. Where I go often depends on something I need to do in an area, an errand I have to run. I walked a long distance through the outer sunset along the great highway (closed to cars right now). From Washington and Presidio out through Clement street, for a ways. I surf, too, and while the waves don't have the shape of a point or reef break (think Santa Cruz), I'd much rather spread out in the beach break and find the occasional open corner than crowd in with a bunch of surfers all competing for the take-off spot (I felt this way before COVID, let alone now). Plenty of others (Carl Nolte wrote about a walk of his own in the Chronicle this sunday[1]), I don't need to list them all. I have glorious days here, still - there is some intrusion from urban blight even on those glorious walks, but in some cases it was a still pretty minor. I was not accosted, nor did I have to constantly dodge human feces. The city showed well, the houses and buildings were interesting looking, the views were glorious, the people around were friendly. There are comments who make it sound like every square block of SF is like escape from New York. It isn't, though it's getting worse, and I'm worried. Some of this, I think, is motivated by a desire to disparage left-wing government (I'm ok with holding progressive San Francisco accountable for what the city has become, though I do think we need to consider macro factors beyond what they can control - not to dismiss the considerable role of SF's policies, but as part of the discussion). I've also been downtown in plenty of other US cities - most recently, Seattle and Milwaukee. In some ways, the remarkable thing about SF's downtown is that it was inhabitable recently. Many cities wrote off their version of market street long, long ago. I do agree that parts of SF are pretty disgusting, and SF does win the top prize in this regard, but I actually don't agree that it is uniquely disgusting. Anyway, this is just a disagreement about degree, and some hyperbole is intended as a kind of satire or comic rant. Overall, I agree, we have a really serious problem in SF. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-city-Republi... |