I left my poop but not my straw in San Francisco
Brian C Joondeph
San Francisco, along with other left coast cities, has become a laughingstock; a poster child for everything that is wrong with liberal policies and governance.
Back in the 1960’s, San Francisco was the home of peace, love, and understanding. It was the city where you wore “flowers in your hair”. And where you met “some gentle people there”. Remember the lyrics to Scott McKenzie’s 1967 hit song.
Well, that San Francisco exists no more.
San Francisco has morphed from the “city by the bay” to “poop city”. Newly elected, “San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the streets of her city are “flooded with the excrement of the homeless.” And let not forget the hypodermic needles and syringes, or the homeless themselves.
This is the city that views the homeless as an endangered species–to be protected so their population can grow even larger.
It’s so bad that the city has a “poop map” to alert residents and visitors to the parts of the city where they need to literally watch their step. Along with high prices and traffic, visitors now receive a new perk.
Now the problem hit the point where San Francisco is paying an economic price.
A major medical group cancelled their annual convention in San Francisco. This group has been holding conferences there every 3 to 4 years since the 1980s.
The economic cost is significant, as “The group’s annual five-day trade show draws 15,000 attendees and pumps about $40 million into the local economy.” However, convention attendees are fed up. Here’s a quote:
“Their members were afraid to walk amid the open drug use, threatening behavior and mental illness that are common on the streets.”
One of the medical group’s board members was assaulted near the Moscone Convention Center, providing further motivation for the group to move its meeting elsewhere.
Doctors, who are quite familiar with feces, syringes, and the downtrodden, don’t want to take their workplace with them when they attend a conference, often with their families. Walking down the sidewalk in San Francisco is like strolling through an inner city biohazard area.
Just as hospitals are hotbeds of infections, so it is when you mix human excrement, summer heat, and an already unhealthy population of homeless individuals. The city more represents a large petri dish where all sorts of exotic diseases can emerge, threatening residents and visitors.
While this is going on, San Francisco ignores the obvious and instead focuses on the silly. The city’s supervisors recently voted unanimously, “To ban plastic straws, toothpicks, cocktail swords, and stirrers.” No ban on pooping on the sidewalk, but forget that straw with your Starbucks iced latte.
Up is down and down is up in San Francisco. If Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco today, it would be covered with human waste. Frankly, the city’s leaders have left their brains somewhere else.
Who does run the city?
San Francisco had its last Republican mayor when Tony Bennett recorded his iconic song, in the early 1960s. Since then the city has been run by Democrats. At a national level, San Francisco has been represented by such luminaries as Kamala Harris, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and of course Nancy Pelosi.
See a pattern here? Plenty of once beautiful and prosperous American cities have been ruined by decades of Democrat leadership. Other examples include Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, and Oakland. Now we can add San Francisco to the list.
You can be sure that the sidewalks in front of Nancy Pelosi’s mansion are free of poop, needles, and the homeless. And if she wants a straw with her iced mocha, she will get one. Not so for everyone else.
Such a shame that San Francisco’s leaders prefer to virtue signal by banning plastic straws and toothpicks while they do little about poop, needles, and syringes littering the sidewalks…at other people’s homes. Meanwhile, the homeless population chase away visitors and residents alike.
Never mind leaving your heart in San Francisco. Now the priority is to just leave. Period.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
