As liberal a city as San Francisco is, one would think the left-wing bleeding-heart political leaders there who so loudly advocate for the homeless would by now have solved the problem of homelessness and also dealt with the City’s asocials and aggressive panhandlers in a consistent and caring way, getting these folks the help they need and off the streets. Indeed, it seemed like some progress had been made in recent years — at the insistence from the hotel association. But judging from our recent vacation interlude in downtown S.F. this weekend, the unfortunate, and the freaks, are still masters of the streets, day and night on weekends, in stronger numbers than ever. This sad situation can’t be good for business in San Francisco, and it demonstrates how heartless liberals can be in insisting on peoples intangible rights above all rather than delivering tangible, substantive programs to actually improve people’s situations.
We decided to take a long weekend in San Francisco to "recharge the batteries." My grandmother and father were born in The City, and I grew up in the Bay Area, so we have some history there. We thought it might be good to "get away" and enjoy the sights, and a few good meals over the weekend. On a few recent business trips we had noted that famous Union Square in downtown San Francisco had been renovated and seemed "crime free," and the shopping in the Union Square area looked like it would be great, so we choose to stay at a small hotel up on Post Street a couple blocks from Powell in the center of the city. The hotel also has a great restaurant, and that was a draw, too.
But our Saturday afternoon walk outside the hotel pretty much summarizes what the average tourist can expect these days. In early afternoon we decided to walk down Post to look into the Saks Fifth Avenue at Post and Powell. Then we were going to walk further down Post to the famous Shreve and Company jewelry store just to look, cross the street and hit the famous "Gumps" department store, then walk back past the old "City of Paris" building, which is now a Neiman-Marcus, then circle back to our hotel and get ready for dinner.
Within a block of the start of our journey we were aggressively panhandled by a elderly Asian woman wearing rubber gloves. The rubber gloves threw us until we spotted the cache of plastic bottles she was dragging behind her. We crossed the street without incident and noted a very large dumpster sitting on the street just outside the Art Academy building. As we walked past it, a bearded man’s head popped up, peered down, and he said something indecipherable to us, then retreated back into the dumpster. We continued our walk to Powell and Mason and crossed directly in front of the Disney Store on that corner. Speakers were blaring music from famous Disney children’s animations. In front of the Disney Store were three aggressive male panhandlers, so aggressive, that there were jumping in front of people (with children — this is in front of the Disney Store) as they passed by and shaking paper cups full of coins at them. Sometimes, we observed that these aggressive panhandlers would offer a free "publication," which we determined provided them some sort of loop-hole from anti-panhandling laws. One of these panhandles actually blocked our progress on the street and jumped up and down in front of us in a menacing manner.
We crossed the street to get into the Saks Fifth Avenue. But as we approached the front door, we were confronted by two union pickets engaged in what looked like a secondary boycott of Saks because of the apparent employment of a non-union electrical company to perform some repairs. The pickets actually stood in front of us and made us walk around them. At any rate, a large African-American man in a Siberian White Tiger Skin Full White Tie and Tails Tuxedo with a loud and splendid baritone, was there, and he was singing Lou Rawls on the street corner directed entirely at the picketers. They didn’t seem pleased, and we suspected this had been going on for a while. (We wondered if Saks had paid for the singer to do that, or if he was just doing it because he enjoyed it.) The singer was the first street person of the day to respond to us graciously and with a smile.
We finished our tour of Saks and decided to leave by another exit, and yes, were still confronted with and indeed did cross the picket line.
Things then lightened up for a couple of blocks, with only occasional light panhandling. We heard some great operatic music coming from Maiden Lane, a lovely live voice singing to CD, full throttle.
It was cold, and my wife had worn a leather jacket with a modest fur collar. We proceeded to look around at Neimans. And of course, as we left Neiman’s, a group of about 12 young women from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) were just jumping out of their van and getting organized for an anti-fur picket of the store. As we walked by them, my wife’s small collar piece fortunately didn’t capture the attention of the earnest young women, but we did have a quick vision of a paint can being dumped on her head, given the way the day was going.
We stopped at Kuleto’s bar on Powell for a quick mineral water to collect ourselves and get ready for the final push through freaky San Francisco to our hotel. We walked back up Powell to Post but were short of the Disney Store and managed to avoid the troubles on that corner, and the atmosphere made more bizarre by the blaring children’s music. We did, however, pass a man walking down the street dressed as a Star Wars Storm Trooper. We also spotted a man in a suit with a briefcase who had entirely "bronzed" himself, hair, briefcase and all, and was standing without movement as a living statue on one of the entrances to Union Square.
We turned left to walk to our hotel, and as we moved past the large dumpster in front of the Academy of Art, again, its resident, more-or-less like Templeton in Charlotte’s Web, peered once again over the rim of his steel home and muttered something to us again, and then he disappeared. A police car was parked on the street, but the officer ignored the waste bin man.
It would all be funny if it weren’t all sadly true. Perhaps some people get a charge out of these types of experience, but I don’t. I wonder why San Francsico can’t help people who clearly need it, and why law abiding citizens should also have to tolerate extreme asocial and antisocial public behavior that is a breeding ground for crime and health hazards, and a threat to children. I won’t tolerate it again, I’ll just take my shopping to safe and sane South Coast Plaza. And I wonder if the liberals who have run San Francisco since the earthquake of 1904 are proud of their performance, or even recognize their failures, as exemplified by a tourist’s simple walk through downtown.