So, taxpayer spending on the ineffective Tenderloin Housing Clinic empire is up 2000% the past couple decades and what has that gotten us? Why don’t other cities do things the way we do in the Tenderloin – why is SF so unique in this regard. Why doesn’t Randy Shaw lay out how his operations benefit the city of San Francisco? No, not interested in doing that, Randy? Oh, but you sometimes spend your time threatening to sue the San Francisco Chronicle, the very “Chron” you’ve promised to get us “Beyond?” And you’re too busy singing the praises of San Francisco’s weakest-willed Mayor since … forever? OK fine.
Let’s check in on the latest in the Twitterloin*
“SF’S FOCUS TURNS TO CRIME”
One assumes this is Randy Shaw being aspirational, as they say. For example, here’s Randy Shaw from 2007: “By the summer of 2008, going “uptown” in San Francisco will mean heading to the Tenderloin.” But that’s not what uptown meant in 2008. And it’s not what it means now in 2015. So that’s just an example why whenever Randy Shaw says something, it’s not true. Randy Shaw says that the focus of the entire City and County of San Francisco is now turning to the topic of crime in 2015 – that means that the focus of the entire City and County of San Francisco is NOT now turning to the topic of crime in 2015, it’s just what Randy wants people to believe, for some reason.
“San Francisco’s economy is booming. But many are upset about crime. This is particularly true in the Tenderloin, where residents, merchants, workers, and thousands of children confront public drug dealing on a daily basis.
Public drug dealing from the residents of the residential hotels promoted by … Randy Shaw.
Why does the city allow such flagrantly illegal activities?
I don’t know, like why does the city throw $20 million a year down the Randy Shaw rathole?
After all, the Tenderloin is finally bouncing back from fifty years of decline and there are rising expectations for its future.
Again, if Randy Shaw says that the Twitterloin is bouncing back, that means that’s what he says all the time, going back decades, and it means that it’s not true. You’ll just have to take his word about expectations, and who has them.
It used to be that the Tenderloin attracted drug dealers because the city allowed them to do business there. It was a crime “containment zone,” with the entire criminal justice system backing a policy which forced low-income residents to walk down unsafe streets.
Well, that’s still kind of the case now, right Randy?
Mayor Ed Lee made it clear after taking office that the Tenderloin’s days as a crime containment zone were over.
But it’s still a containment zone, right? Hey, did I mention about how much money the Randy Shaw Twitterloin empire gets from SFGov every year? What does he do for that money? Wouldn’t we be better off just stopping giving him all that money and starting over? And shouldn’t City workers be doing Randy’s job?
And his intervention, along with resident activism, resulted in the biggest positive transformation of any single block in San Francisco.
So isn’t this where Randy Shaw should mention that he’s a government contractor from Berkeley and that’s why he sings the praises of who(m)ever is the Mayor of San Francisco? No, OK. And BTW, the unit block of Turk hasn’t really been “transformed.” It’s just where the Randy Shaw empire has a storefront, that’s why it’s such a BFD to RS.
This was through the elimination of over 100 drug dealers who used to work daily on the first block of Turk Street.
Elimination? Were they all executed by Ed Lee? Oh no, they’re still around, and some of them live in hotels of the Randy Shaw empire? OK fine.
On January 28 at 6pm at the Kelly Cullen Community Center at 220 Golden Gate, the Police Commission holds a hearing on proposed new boundaries for the Tenderloin police district. The Police Commission faces a choice between two very different visions for the Tenderloin’s future. In the vision backed by nearly all residents, merchants, workers and community stakeholders, the new boundaries will keep the Tenderloin together and target police resources where public drug dealing regularly occurs.
All right, now here’s real life: Most residents of the Tenderloin, nearly all of them, aren’t objecting to the SFPD redistricting itself as it sees fit. And I’m not sure what Randy means when he talks of the new boundaries. The new boundaries are what the SFPD is proposing, it’s what Randy Shaw super doesn’t like.
In the vision embodied in the SFPD’s proposal, the national Uptown Tenderloin Historic District is divided among three police districts.
But there isn’t any “national Uptown Tenderloin Historic District,” not IRL. That’s just a designation that Randy Shaw wanted.
It takes historic Tenderloin SROs like the Hotel Union at 811 Geary, the Hartland Hotel at 909 Geary, and the nearby Elk Hotel at 670 Eddy, and puts them outside the Tenderloin police district.
So what, Randy? How does it matter? Hey, don’t you live in Berkeley?
At the same time that core blocks in the Tenderloin are excluded from the “Tenderloin” station, the new district adds shoplifting-heavy Westfield Cente. It is located at 5th and Market, well outside the Tenderloin. The new “Tenderloin” station includes Market Street as far down as 3rd Street and continues to Market and Van Ness before heading south as far as the intersection of Mission and South Van Ness.
What’s the obsession with maps? Why should the SFPD concern itself with what a Berkeley resident thinks about maps?
Critics of the SFPD plan understand that it is only a draft, and that the January 28 hearing is designed for public feedback.
It’s what the cops want, so shouldn’t they get it? Is there some sort of constitutional issue here? I don’t think so. So you let the cops do the job as they see fit. We want the cops to perform well, right? So why micromanage them? The “draft” map is exactly what they want, right? Oh, Gentle Reader, you have a beef with the SFPD over Some Other Issue? Well that’s different than redistricting, right? Let’s say you don’t want the SFPD to institute an unconstitutional Stop and Frisk program, you know, like the one that Mayor Ed Lee proposed after coming back from New York. Opposing something like Stop and Frisk is not micromanaging, not at all. But nitpicking over district borders is.
Because Tenderloin folks (myself included) were not paying attention in 2007, we allowed Little Saigon (Larkin from Eddy to O’Farrell) to be excluded from the Tenderloin district boundaries drawn that year.
Randy Shaw, you isn’t “Tenderloin folk,” you is longtime mansion-dwelling Berkeley Hills folk, right? Who cares what the borders of the Tenderloin are considered to be? Why does it matter?
If Westfield Center joins the still under construction Market Street Place in the Tenderloin District, the crime priorities of Abercrombie & Fitch, Nordstrom’s and J Crew will prevail over drug dealing on Leavenworth Street.
Well that’s what Randy Shaw says, but it’s not true.
Police will not ignore powerful retail interests whose sales taxes fuel the economy in order to protect seniors and kids walking on Leavenworth Street from drug dealing.
Is this what they call “framing?” IDK. It’s something, anyway. Are there a lot of cops patrolling the malls in SF? I don’t think so.
No police chief is going to throw big national retail chains under the bus by refusing to allocate police to arrest shoplifters.
Or local chains, or convenience stores – pretty much if you call the SFPD to haul away shoplifters, they’ll go and haul them away, right?
Randy Shaw is Editor of Beyond Chron. His book, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco, will be out this spring.
Oh, there’s sex in the Twitterloin? And there’s crime in the Twitterloin? Wow, thanks for writing the book, Randy. I can hardly wait for it…
*And that’s a New York Times-approved word. How will Randy Shaw occupy his time in the future, will he start up a Beyond Times newspaper and install himself as Editor-For-Life?
