Drugs, Protest, Port-a-Potty, and Art

An Oakland friend went to India for the first time a couple of years ago and had a life-changing experience. "How did you deal with the poverty?" I asked, and she replied, "I used to commute to the Civic Center BART station and walk up Grove Street to work for years. After what I saw there on a daily level, the streets of India didn't feel very shocking. And at least they don't hate their poor people like we do here."

The Civic Center neighborhood has always hosted a down-and-out population of the very poor, the mentally ill, and the drug addicted.

Some individuals are a combination of all three, and those triple threats seem to be everywhere in the neighborhood since the pandemic began, smoking or shooting crystal meth and heroin with an occasional jacket thrown over their head for discretion.

Last Saturday I was walking down Grove Street for an afternoon protest at the Federal Building on 7th and Mission Streets.

There was a small contingent objecting to the federal stormtroopers who are currently brutalizing the citizens of Portland as part of a propaganda photo-op for our demented dictator.

A former boss moved to Portland from Berkeley about four years ago and loves it. She reports on Facebook, "For friends outside of Portland, stay critical in your evaluation of the news. Trump’s story is just that, it’s a fiction. We are not in chaos, we are making change. The federal government is not helping." She also links to the Facebook page of Daniel Pickens-Jones (click here) who has superb live reporting and photos.

Around the corner a young man was sleeping against the Mission Street side of the Fed building and he looked so painterly that I took this photo.

Directly across the street was another tableaux that looked staged. A two-story wall was sporting the text, "IT WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE" above a U.S. flag sign on a fence that read, "Vigil for Democracy" above a card table and clipboard fronted by a Port-a-Potty.

Wondering if somebody was registering voters on an unlikely stretch of sidewalk, I crossed the street and asked the young man wearing a neon vest, who laughed and said no, he was just keeping track of the public Port-a-Potty. As part of a new pandemic initiative by the City of San Francisco, they are finally opening up the most rudimentary of public toilets, with attendants attached. It's long overdue. With their multi-billion dollar budget, maybe the City and County could finally spend money on public shower and bathroom facilities throughout the city, with attendants to keep things relatively clean and enforce behavior like the mean old lady attendants I remember from similar facilities in Europe.

At the triangular corner of Market, Hayes, and Larkin, there were two women working on a new mural for the sidewalk.

"Will there be colors other than yellow and white?" I asked one of the artists, and she said yes without elaborating on what they might be.

I will take some pictures of the results tomorrow.