Posted on 12/09/2006 9:01:41 AM PST by Zakeet
SAN FRANCISCO - An effort to clean up some of the city's seedier neighborhoods and rid the streets of junkies, hookers and runaways has run headlong into San Francisco's free-to-be-who-you-are ethos.
Nearly four decades after the Summer of Love, residents and merchants frustrated with what they regard as blight are turning to the city for help or taking revitalization into their own hands.
But other residents of the Tenderloin district and Haight-Ashbury contend a crackdown would rob their neighborhoods of their identity and violate everything San Francisco stands for.
Joey Cain, a board member of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, complained that those who would drive the vagrants from the neighborhood are turning their backs on the Haight's "historic obligation" to shelter the downtrodden.
This is, after all, the city that proved so appealing to the Beats, the hippies and practically every other brand of noncomformist.
Haight-Ashbury was the very capital of the Summer of Love in 1967, when young people flocked for the music, sexual freedom and drug culture. They are still coming, panhandling on corners and sleeping under the trees in nearby Golden Gate Park.
But the neighborhood has changed. Its stately Victorian homes sell for millions, and the head shops are mixed with chain stores and trendy cafes. Business owners and longtime residents complaint that street kids harass the elderly and leave playgrounds littered with needles.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The above cite where cleaning out panhandlers would rob their neighborhoods of their identity and violate everything San Francisco stands for is but one example.
Another includes the city's decision earlier this year to pair (homeless persons) with social workers who advised them on how to find housing ... those who had someone back home to care for them were given a one-way ticket. This resulted in diatribes accusing the city of pandering to well-to-do residents and abandoning its principles.
Still another involved a community group that wanted to employ homeless people to plant hundreds of trees in the Tenderloin district, San Francisco's seediest quarter with its flophouses, strip clubs and sex shops. However this proposal, the beautification project angered some gay and transgender residents.
You are well advised to take anti-nausea medication before reading the article.
The sooner the place becomes a habitat for Pacific Ocean marine life, the better for the country.
I DO hope Ghiardelli moves to Vegas before the next BIG ONE, however.
The Green Goes UP! (punchline to an old joke, about hiring the less-than-capable to plant trees...)
"...liberal mind...?
I believe you are in the lead for the 2006 "Oxymoron of the Year" award.
Auburn students... I s'pect
Off to the social services concentration camps they will go.
But you could tell the joke that way, yes. ;)
It's good to see the majortity of the citizens of SF may be finally getting some common sense. What kind of moron would think that letting bums, drug addicts, crazy people and thieves roam the streets like packs of wild dogs is anything but a blight?
I lived in Frisco for 4 lousy years. My ex is still there. Better her than me.
Ah yes, I remember the stench of urine, the filth, the beggars and bums. And those silly boys, light in their loafers.
But worth the risk...
It's a waaaay back southern tradition...
Have a good one...
This is a perfect article to read out loud in its entirety with that self-important, haughty, liberal mouthpiece voice that Michael Savage uses on his show when mocking news stories written by leftist tools. The article just oozes with liberal values. I'm sure the author gets all nostalgic when seeing a glob of phlegm on the sidewalk on Market Street or being panhandled by alcoholics and drug addicts at every corner.
Elected officials in San Francisco know they must tread lightly to avoid offending people's ultraliberal sensibilities.
The City could outsource the job to the ChiComs. They'd get it done in a couple of hours.
.Tiananmen Square 1989
Who get what, $300 a month from the city, no questions asked?
Is that true?
Unbelievable!
The fun part of living here is riduculing hippies without fear of recourse. They wouldn't even raise a hand to save their own lives.
"It's good to see the majortity of the citizens of SF may be finally getting some common sense. What kind of moron would think that letting bums, drug addicts, crazy people and thieves roam the streets like packs of wild dogs is anything but a blight?"
New Orleanians?
How does a city "fight over its character" when any character it had was lost long ago?
It's why I left and moved. :)
I do have a LJ group for Bay Areans who are conservatives
http://community.livejournal.com/sf_conservative/profile
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