“His birthstone is the second most expensive behind the diamond and the sapphire: the emerald.” – overheard in San Francisco’s Mission District
I didn’t realize that diamond-sapphire stones existed. I can see why that’d be expensive.
You’d think the hardest part is combining the stones. The actual hardest part? The diamond.
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Walking through the Mission District, I’m struck by the homeless people and the drugs. I used to live in this city – within a one-minute walk of what I referred to as “San Francisco Public Library and Homeless Shelter” and “Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and Homeless Awning” (because homeless people would huddle underneath) – and still I’m surprised. I’m mostly surprised by how everywhere they are. I must’ve walked by 20 people in three blocks.
I moved to NYC recently. I left San Francisco when the people playing $1k buy-in poker were talking about tech moguls the way that I imagine people in L.A. talk about the Kardashians. The city appeared to me no longer filled with the original innovators (nerds who love tech), nor the assemblers (executives to organize the nerds), but the suckers? The moochers? The spectating hangers-on?
I didn’t remember SF’s pervasive decrepitude. I had heard SF homelessness became less ubiquitous after the Grants Pass Supreme Court case. If this is less ubiquitous, it doesn’t feel like it. (Turns out there are 4% fewer homeless people but 85% fewer homeless tents. Somehow these people have become more homeless.)
Living in SF just out of college, I watched someone inject themselves in broad daylight on Market Street. I watched someone else defecate into a bucket outside my office. I knew someone who strolled to work daily shirtless.
I remember when San Francisco outlawed nudity. It felt to me like a cultural loss. Lewd behavior was already illegal, so the ban only targeted nudity. But what’s the problem with someone being naked?
Today, I feel sad at the hunched-over druggies, wobbling in their fentanyl folds. I wish they had somewhere else to go.
