Ahead of the start of the APEC gathering in early November in San Francisco, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) kinda sorta said the quiet part out loud regarding the city's (and state's) frantic efforts to clean up the streets and hide the homeless population.
Perhaps with the understanding/knowledge in mind that some residents were fuming over the fact that city and state leaders evidently cared more about impressing dignitaries than the people who actually live and work there, here's what Newsom said at the time:
"We're cleaning up this state!" said California Governor Gavin Newsom as he touted Clean California. He spoke during the unveiling of a street tree nursery in San Francisco.
"I know folks are saying, 'Oh they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town.' That's true because it's true, but it's also true for months and months and months prior to APEC we've been having conversations," said Newsom.
As predicted, though, once all the Important People who visited, like President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping, were gone, things quickly got back to normal, with homeless encampments sprouting up again and open-air drug use ramping back up for the locals to have to see and navigate through.
And to further prove the point, San Francisco residents are taking to the Twitter machine to voice their disapproval over public poop sightings that don't get cleaned up even after being reported to the city's poop hotline:
I never do this but here I go:
— Naz Khorram (@nazkhorram) December 28, 2023
I left my parklet as a open public space for everyone to use and decided not to lock it up. I came to work and there’s a huge piece of shit in my parklet. And here’s city’s response!!!! @SF311 @sfpublicworks Are you kidding me? pic.twitter.com/L43QtTajzY
For those wondering (as I was), a "parklet" is "a small area, usually with seats and often grass and plants, next to a sidewalk."
The FriscoLive415 Twitter account, which monitors troubling activity on SF streets and the community's response to it, went off after reading Miss Khorram's report:
Wow. We were fooled years ago when SF transferred all street trees to property owners knowing the underlying (root risk) to sewage lines. Now the City is making us a fool again with this nonsense by not cleaning up on a "parklet"... when the City has an OVERWHELMING AMOUNT of pressure-washing resources, and while the businesses on Mission and Valencia are suffering. It's incredible how the City keeps bending over the taxpayers and contributors and giving it to them raw and rough. That won't last forever. It's a losing strategy in the end for those currently in charge.
This should be simple. Parklets are inherently on the streets. The streets are City Property, not Private Property.
To make matters worse, the SF311 Twitter account didn't respond to Khorram tagging them on her tweet, but did respond to someone asking what a parklet was:
The Parklet Program has been transitioned to the Shared Spaces Program. The Shared Spaces program during the pandemic. It offered a way for neighborhood businesses and community groups to operate outdoors. ^LC
— SF311 (@SF311) December 28, 2023
Khorram replied to the tweet by asking them if they were planning on addressing her issue as well.
"Hey guys, will you be helping me with my question too? Can I get help in cleaning this sh*t? I don’t need a steamer, I need it picked up and I will clean the area myself," she wrote.
In another tweet, Khorram guesstimated that the poop probably weighed at least half a pound.
As of this writing, there has still been no response from the city to her issue. Maybe if she told them Joe Biden or a communist dictator like Xi was visiting, they'd pay more attention.
Yep, I'd say things had definitely gotten back to normal in the city by the bay, which is of course not good news for the citizens of San Francisco, who for some reason keep voting in the same types of people and expecting better results.
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