It’s a perfect reason. Newbies gotta learn to read a time stamp, just like the rest of us. And his first post was stupid to boot. 
I love SF…but there are a LOT of bums around. Whilst waiting for a streetcar at the bottom of Powell St., I was accosted by a bum who was chattering away into what he thought was his cell phone (it was a screwdriver).
I guess it gave him good battery life.
I never found SF excessively dirty-Boston is a lot worse.
“Reason”?
People don’t learn from people being dicks. In general, if you are a dick to someone, then they want to do things to you that piss you off.
And Miller, you are no manhattan, so please stop trying.
My daughter and I got stuck in SF over 2 years ago. They don’t “pay” their bums. chronic insane (yeah I’m NOT being politically correct because they are friggin INSANE) dirty, smelly, aggressive, IN YOUR FACE street critters … I think they survive by the food pantries, getting ‘free food’ from food banks and then selling it…or just flat out whores and drug dealers. I really DON’T KNOW AND I’M SO TIRED OF TRYING TO GET MY HEAD AROUND IT!
In the assistance programs you have to go through major hoops. You have to go there, meet with stupid government “case workers” OFTEN, fill out forms, need an ID to even get on SNAP, have pictures taken, fingerprints…I’m not shittin you. You need to have an address for them to send you forms to fill out every 3 months, AND you have to go to job search stuff (unless you’re over 60) and classes…
No, it’s not just a ‘handout’. They don’t give you cash. You get on SNAP (food stamps) and if you are lucky enough to get into an SRO (which is a nightmare in itself) they don’t give you money, they pay your rent and you get a small pissy cash allowance after that to pay for things you can’t get on foodstamps. We can’t even afford a phone, cable or internet after general expenses. (The cable company ‘bundles’ that you have to agree to are way expensive AND they keep jacking you around and changing your rates from month to month even with a contract)(yeah, I’m talking about YOU Comcast!).
They have “bums” because California is friggin bankrupt. They closed all of the State institutions and dumped all of the chronic homeless mentally ill on the street.
Those are the ones you see. Not the one’s trying to get a grip with the bs hoops for assistance.
I like it here. Double Zombies or not!
Absolutely! I lived in Oz and the whole gay culture is so much happier. Of course Australia is considered the second happiest and content country on the planet! SF is a bunch of outdated stereotypes from naked prune guys in the Castro to fading hippies. I don’t know anything about ‘hipsters’ and frankly don’t wanna know. I know that I have never been racist, but the ‘in your face attitude’ of different cultures and colors with the “we are San FranCISco and we get aLONG” sic joy joy on the surface and yet there’s always underlying tension everywhere, especially here around the Loin is just not IT. I had a babbling black guy ‘off’ me with his ‘finger gun’. I saw him aggressively doing that to other white people walking ahead of me and then came up and did it to me. He wasn’t joking.
The woods between SF and OR are amazing. The OR coast is AMAZING. I HATE SF. (and for those of you who say, well then leave, I’ll be happy to give you my address so you can take a collection so I CAN. You can have my decrepit toaster oven and bed bug collection.
It’s cheaper too.
I’ve never heard that one before. Shopping carts? There are numerous agencies that do travel all over the city, Homeless Outreach, Homeless Connect, etc, trying to help people in dire straights, but most of the chronic street people are mentally insane/unstable. They don’t know and they don’t care.
I think if you worked here as a social worker you’d be trying to clean the inside of your brain out with bleach in a short time from the insanity that you run into.
You realize you’re responding to posts written 8 years ago, yes?
Also, fuck them for still being a pack of whiny bitches about losing to the Giants in the NFC title game last year.
Actually the major grocery stores have electronic wheel locks to prevent people from taking them out of the parking lot. Once in a blue moon they won’t work, but I kinda doubt that a bum looking for a cart will stick around testing them so I don’t know how they get away with it. The smaller markets just have baskets.
What I’ve mostly seen is large arrays of rolling suitcases. They get very creative with how they stuff all of their shit in them, so you’ll frequently have to walk around them IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING SIDEWALK while they are pulling out all of their nasty and no doubt bug ridden shit to re-organize it. Either that or they’re sleeping on is.
Yuk. I hate it here.
A lot has changed since then. That was before the great Smug Cloud of 2006 nearly destroyed the city.
We hate you being here. Why don’t you get your ass down to LA?
San Fransisco! I made a film of a burning tire (tyre pyre) rolling down the street and got arrested for not using a classic Alpaflex.
I don’t care what part of SF you are in SF is just an overrated gross expensive pompous place. Most in the “city” area, read: Downtown, the Loin, Nob Hill, Soma, etc…don’t really consider places S of Mission to be part of SF. So they don’t really count.
I unfortunately live on the edge of the LOIN. Yes, it’s dirty, smells like piss…anyplace that doesn’t smell like piss still has graffiti and is uphill BOTH WAYS! Plus a lot of the insane street people aren’t content with pissing on the street and leaving their stink there take it WITH THEM every where they go! Signs that say: “Pick up after your dog” but who knows where it really came from? (I’ve seen that too)
…and no, NONE of these traits can be considered giving the city “character”.
I’ve been to a ton of places including Japan, lived in Guatemala and Australia, Canada… but NEVER saw anything like flyers warning heroin users about ‘bad heroin’ because the EMT’s are overtaxed with dealing with them? Seriously?
Or needle disposal boxes in the LIBRARY? Signs every block in shopkeeps windows telling drug dealers and users to stay away or they’d call the cops? No sleeping in doorways, etc…!
I’ve seen way too many drive by’s, drug deals, stabbings and shootings…you get propositioned by drug dealers every block. I don’t mean to sound racist here but there are screaming fights at least once a night by groups of blacks.
I grew up in a 50/50 neighborhood just N. of Watts. So no…my SRO is facing a notorious intersection at Jones and O’Farrell. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the term ‘nigger’ screamed at someone day and night on a daily basis. Seriously. I’ve only heard one insane white guy for a few months in the past couple of years who thought he was Jesus. Then there are the blacks who play nasty rap at 3 in the morning for hours at the highest sound level they can. It echos for blocks!
Next are the Emergency Vehicles. Constantly. I used to joke that our street was the only street that allowed EV’s on it. There’s an Emergency Vehicle on our 4 sq block intersection at least 1 x per week. (probably the Heroin thing) All times of the day and night.
That said, I’ve also been in other parts of SF. Now and growing up. I grew up in So. Cal and SF was a regular visit. People are fucking weird here.
I lived in NYC for close to 7 years. My sister still lives there after close to 40. I was involved in music and theater and most of my best girlfriends were gay guys. I do NOT see the point in being so over the top obnoxiously gay as they are here in SF. Wrinkly, pruny dicked naked old guys in the Castro? Oh, give me a break. The whole tranny B&D and S&M in your face thing in SOMA? Overall it’s just friggin strange here. What’s scarier is starting to get numb about it. Not acceptance mind you, just blocking the whole disgusting scenario out of your head. No WONDER drugs are rampant here.
Touristy? They’ve got a bridge, ‘meh’ chocolate, a wharf …and fog. BFD. Oh, and sourdough. Double BFD.
SF stole my car a couple of years ago and I got stuck. We had lost everything in a swindle a few years back and I stupidly assumed SF would be a nice easygoing place with decent work. (I’m a cook/baker) No, I wasn’t parked illegally. I had managed to find a rare out of the way spot that was only checked once a week. The problem? I had WY plates and it had expired about a month prior. I was tucked into a couple of other cars in a fashion where NObody could see my plates unless you squeezed around the other car’s bumper. Somehow they squeezed it out. I swear they pay people to run around and check. (On top of the meter maids in their stupid little tri-wheeled blinky carts.) It’s a huge racket. Initial bailout if you get it back INSTANTLY? Close to 400 BUCKS. So everything I owned was lost. SF makes 11 MILLION dollars a year on parking tickets alone! Let alone the probable kick-backs from the tow companies plus the fees that the PD imposes for the paperwork to get your car out of the tow yard. ($200 per vehicle is not too shabby)
Plus what is up with the huge number of disabled people? Anything from little question mark shaped crones, to limps to canes and crutches, then walkers and wheelchairs. I am currently USING a cane because since we got here my hip is falling apart! I’ve been active all my life up until we got here! Is it the water? Air? WTF?
There is NO work. I don’t care what anybody says. Oh, that is unless you’re willing to work for jack shit. Certainly not anything that will equal the expense of living here. If you even hint at wanting a decent wage you never hear from anyone. Plus you have to mostly depend on MUNI. HA! There’s a joke.
Public transport is unreliable. Certain times of the day it’s impossible to even get a seat. Then you are stuck next to a stupid snotty nosed kid whose mom never figured out telling them to put their grubby hand over their mouth when they do that flegmy cough.
God forbid a wheel chair should need to get on or leave when it’s packed. I was on a bus recently and not only was the bus packed, (plus some designing moron decided to put the wheel chair spaces almost halfway to the back door) but the ramp wouldn’t deploy. It was stuck in the out position and we were stuck for close to a half hour waiting for someone to fix it. It’s just a mess. It IS kind of amusing when the electric buses derail their electric feed from the overhead wires though. Happens a LOT.
Did I mention bed bugs?
Before anyone says: OK, then leave…um…alright, I need a job that I can’t find to make money to even begin to hope to leave (Been looking for over 2 years now and my age and now physical probs are stopping me from finding anything). I’d be competing with people 2/3 my age and it seems employers don’t want to spend the money on quality experience. They want to pay poverty wages.
I’m on pittance assistance which pays barely enough to just exist let alone put any aside to be able to save up to get out of here. If they hadn’t stolen my car we would have been long gone years ago.
No it’s not the ‘handout’ some ignorant people make it out to be. It’s a frustrating rough haul of continuous dog and pony shows chasing all over town dealing with dumbassed government workers that haven’t a clue what they’re doing, and doing cheap help for the city, like street sweeping. You get photographed, fingerprinted and have to file quarterly reports. You need a mailing address…hmmmm…never saw a street critter in the only PO in SF that offers General Delivery…All for the ‘privilege’ of living in a nasty, bug laden run down 100 year old SRO filled with drug addicts and seriously mentally disturbed individuals. With not much left over after they pay your ‘rent’ to even be able to afford stuff that most people take for granted: like cable and phone. (I’m borrowing the internet before someone bitches at me about it)
The only really good thing about SF? That SF is unique. Meaning we’re spared their being more than one of them.
Ya know…I forgot the trash divers that dig through the hotel canisters for cans and bottles. BOY do they leave a mess…
Cali is bankrupt. I’d rather move out of state so when you make the check out please add a few extra zeros.
Thanks
Wow, what a waste of energy that post was, both the writing, and the reading (well, skimming). Not to mention this very response.
You know, normally I’m down for a good San Francisco hate-off, because SF really is a mostly ugly, very dirty, extremely expensive shithole filled with pretentious assholes who need a good punch in the face, but let me see if I follow this correctly:
- San Francisco has too many broke-ass people – you are broke.
- San Francisco has too many slow and/or disabled people – you are disabled.
- San Francisco has too many jerks doing fuckall on the public dole – you are unemployed and drawing benefits.
- . You had an unregistered car parked illegally and it’s someone fault other than your own that it was towed.
- The local negros are very loud (and, perhaps, uppity) and there are emergency services passing by once a week!!!~!~
Good to know.
By the way, there are many beautiful areas near SF and some parts of Oakland are really cool. It’s only insufferable SF I have a problem with. It’s like Park Slope writ large, with worse bagels.