Pandemic in the Neighborhood

Blaring car horns appeared under our windows at noon on Thursday from a mobile demonstration.

I prayed it wasn't a right-wing, astroturf REOPEN protest, and my prayers were answered. The dozen or so vehicles festooned with signs were there to ask for the immediate release of immigrants in ICE custody. Cruise ships, nursing homes, homeless shelters, and jails are currently the deadliest places to be. Freeing people from ICE detention centers is an ethical no-brainer but politically fraught.

The protest was small, about a dozen vehicles and they spent an hour or so circling the block, repeating the same error of many other California-focused protests over the decades. The State of California offices are actually a couple of blocks away where the California Supreme Court presides, but they don't have a fabulous sculpture of the California Seal, so everyone protests in front of the California Pubic Utilities Commission offices instead.

Although sympathizing with the cause, we didn't feel like listening to a horn symphony for an hour, so we walked to Mexican Street Food on 9th Street for burritos (recommended). A surreal detail was that the endless Van Ness BRT construction project that has seemingly stretched longer than a decade was still going on in the midst of a pandemic. A lone heavy equipment driver was slowly doing something in front of City Hall.

At the corner of Van Ness and Market, half of a typically overstaffed police contingent was hanging out. The only time I actually see a police presence in San Francisco is during parades and peaceful protests, but then they mysteriously disappear and are nowhere to be found.

The front of Bill Graham Auditorium seems to have become the staging ground for an army of SF Paratransit vehicles.

It's a pleasant, safe feeling block on Grove Street.

The rest of the neighborhood is a different story.

Living in a tent on a sidewalk is probably much safer than being in a shelter right now, but there are no showers and bathrooms for people, which is just begging for public health disasters in addition to COVID-19.

I wish San Francisco would set up a public campground like the city did after the 1906 earthquake in Golden Gate Park. If people can't afford homes, let them at least have tents in an outdoor setting with bathrooms and showers.

Though it would be lovely to take a walk through the neighborhood for some simple exercise, I rarely do it these days. The combination of drug addicts, mentally ill, and the down-and-out sheltering in place together when the only place they have are the sidewalks is extremely dispiriting.

We are now living in the dystopian world that our contemporary literary Cassandras (Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler) predicted over the last 50 years.