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‘Q,’ Little Cable Cars, and the Degradation of the City by the Bay
How long before a critical mass of citizens finally say Enough is Enough? Then…?
It would take more adjectives than I know to describe our love for what we, and so many others around the world, regard as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the very epitome of culture, civilization, culture, natural setting, and a place where My Lady and I have had some of the best times of our life with some of the dearest friends we have ever had. In saying that, I hope to dispel any idea that I feel a sense of schadenfreude in recording the most recent outrage against all The City by the Bay stands for in the minds of so many of us in whose lives it played such a major role and whose memory we hold dear and precious.
This is a story of what happens when those in the “leadership” of the governance apparatus of any political unit simply hands the deed to the property they have sworn to defend and uphold to the lawless in their midst, nay, not only hand them the deed but basically ask what else can we do for you today? Rooms at luxury hotels where you and I would pay $500 per night? Done! Open air drug markets so you can get your absolutely, positively illegal shot any time you want it for free? Done! Rename your status so as to make it sound so much more palatable than homeless— how about “unhoused”? Done! What else can we give you from the treasure accumulated by the fewer and fewer producing citizens of what used to be the most beautiful city in the world before you crapped all over it? Just name it, and it’s yours.
Well, here is what happens when society begins to seriously unravel and one suspects we only know about this one because some enterprising advocate of the “unhoused” was standing by with his or her phone camera; how many other cities are experiencing this very brand of self-help against the ever-encroaching tentacles of barbarity?
Here’s a brief description of what happened when the owner of an Art Gallery in San Francisco had finally just had enough:
The owner of a San Francisco art gallery who was caught on video spraying a homeless woman on the sidewalk with water from a garden hose has been arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery in the incident.
Here’s the incident:
San Francisco man sprays a homeless person with a hose after she refuses to move from the sidewalk. pic.twitter.com/vnBmgJpwEJ
— Catch Up (@CatchUpNetwork) January 11, 2023
The DA in San Francisco immediately leaped to the defense of the all-important “unhoused” community:
San Francisco police on Wednesday arrested Collier Gwin, the gallery owner who was captured on video spraying a homeless woman with a garden hose after he said she refused to move from a sidewalk he was cleaning.
Gwin will be charged with misdemeanor battery “for the alleged intentional and unlawful spraying of water on and around a woman experiencing homelessness” on Jan. 9, District Attorney Jenkins said in a statement released after she had reviewed evidence from the San Francisco Police Department.
“The alleged battery of an unhoused member of our community is completely unacceptable,” Jenkins continued. “Mr. Gwin will face appropriate consequences for his actions.”
You now have both sides of the issue. One cannot but feel pity for the very tragic and indescribably pathetic image of the “unhoused” woman, known as “Q” in the neighborhood, pleading with the man in the video. Watching a human suffer that way brings a strong and natural sense of deep pity and remorse. However, the question remains: just how far can you expect the civilizing elements of our society to be pushed before they start pushing back in defense of their (not the “unhoused”) property?
To me, Mr. Gwin represents very possibly (probably?) the leading edge of what can be expected when a great Nation like ours begins its final descent into decline, a phenomenon noted by minds about one million more powerful than mine such as, for example, Roger Kimball, Victor Davis Hanson, and others.
Where do you stand on this issue and the incident itself? Am I being too doomsday-oriented in my view of the matter, or should this be seen as just another minor incident in the unfortunate decline of another of our great cities? I would be most interested in your opinions on the matter.
In the meantime, as always,
God Bless America!
Published in General
Good post Jim. Some slow, very slow, progress. Asian community, largest in San Francisco, went nuts over the CRT school board and the prior DA, a Soros clone. So some advancements. The homeless and drug problem looks to be getting worse. Still not LA bad and luckily confined to the Tenderloin and freeway areas. Just too many social justice leftists running the show. Which has been happening since Feinstein left as mayor over 30 years ago.
Seems more likely that especially this rather slow-building stuff just pushes good people out, and all that are left are either the problem people themselves, or those who don’t experience the problems in their gated communities etc. (As I recall, the affluent white areas mostly voted to retain the DA and the school board members. They just didn’t get their way, for a change.)
aka, The Curley Effect.
It may well be that there are still enough good people left to change things, but I wouldn’t bet my own money on it.
The larger problem, for the rest of the country, could be people who vote for this kind of garbage then leave when they don’t like the result, and then start the same thing again wherever they end up.
A relative owns a home in San Francisco. Lovely neighborhood…view of the Golden Gate Bridge from her rooftop patio. A single woman, she doesn’t live there any more. She is too afraid. Tried selling it for years. No takers. She lives north of the city now. She’ll never leave California, but she left San Francisco.
I’m sure she could sell it for SOME price. Especially some price closer to what she might have bought it for, umpteen years ago.
Seems like a lot of people who think California and especially San Francisco are going – or have already gone – down the toilet still want to take advantage of years/decades of rising home prices.
San Francisco once was one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Back in the 60s and 70s, I used to love walking the streets. Union Square was a jewel in the middle of the city. The last time I was there, in the 70s, one had to be very careful where he stepped. At first, I thought it was dog feces until I mentioned it to someone and he told me the story.
She’s not greedy. Potential buyers complained that there was too much paint on the woodwork, not the best appliances, etc. The buyers were arrogant as they wanted 21st-century perfection in a place built in 1907. People didn’t even want to rent it. Its not Nancy Pelosi’s house, but its not a dump, either. Part of San Francisco’s problem is the Silicon Valley money.
We are in a massive cost-benefit distortion. Some people get a narcissistic buzz over their compassion, tolerance, Concern and general personal wonderfulness. A grift industry closely intertwined with the political powers has arisen to serve the elite self-worship fest and profits immensely (WEF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, BLM, et al). Nearly all of the costs of this policy wonderfulness fall on the non-rich, non-elite normals while the psychological benefits go to others and the cash benefits to their parasitical companion entities.
The solution is to force the people making the rules to live with the consequences
If the people who might buy, think they couldn’t buy it and afford to have excess paint removed etc, and still end up with a good deal, then the price is still too high.
Even with “too much paint on the woodwork” I bet someone would buy it for $2.
The rest is negotiation.
Yep. Nobody is allowed to leave Calfornia until they can show X years of voting for only Republicans.
Douglas Murray has a very solid piece on this incident in the New York Post this morning; it can be accessed here.
The art gallery owner was unceremoniously hauled away in a squad car– the “unhoused” woman, who had cursed him, screamed at him and spit on him, was not.
In America. In what not long ago was one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Here’s his conclusion:
God Help Us.
The Elites use the law to punish the citizens, while ignoring it to sow chaos. This is not a bug, it is a feature. Their goal is no middle class and them and serfs.
I found the wording of the District Attorney’s public statement (as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle article) curious. (I’m looking at this as a lawyer.) Why is the victim’s status as “a woman experiencing homelessness” and again as “an unhoused member of our community” important enough to mention it in the public statement? I can see treating spraying water on a person – any person – as an assault. But calling out the victim’s homeless status suggests that such status changes the nature of the crime because the homeless status is privileged and criminal acts against a person of that status is more serious than the same acts against people without that privileged status. The law grants such privileged status in some circumstances to children and to police officers. So many people could hear the district attorney’s statement and reasonably conclude that he is saying that homeless people have privileged status, and are protected by the law to a greater extent than are others of the general public.
Spraying water on someone intruding into your property/business doesn’t seem like “assault” to me. Should homeowners experiencing a “home invasion” only use deadly force, not a water hose if that’s sufficient? Would they be arrested for using a water hose, but not a gun? Well, maybe either would get someone arrested, in the People’s Republic of California. But that’s not supposed to be the point.
I’m also looking at this as a lawyer and I found the DA’s statement vile and repugnant; I know we’re supposed to expect anything out of any public official in San Francisco to be more or less divorced from reality but the double standard in this case is appalling.
This seems to me to be the kind of virtue signaling one would expect from many San Franciscans excepting, as we must, present company, but especially from public officials of that once-fair city. By the way, have you or any other of our colleagues heard of a homeless person being referred to as an “unhoused” person? I am happily aware that we live in what we refer to as a bubble here in the Florida Panhandle, and maybe I’m not as up to date on all the current wokeisms as I should be, but that was a new one to me.
Considering the gargantuan problems this city is facing with, only as one example, its homeless (oops! its unhoused) problem, it seems just insane for them to be spending their time charging someone, anyone, with a crime, even a misdemeanor, for spraying a hose on another person. We were fortunate enough to grow up in a time, seems like in another America, when we sprayed water on each other with a garden hose and as I recall you would have been considered a lunatic if you suggested that could be considered a crime. And, mirabile dictu, most of us actually survived all that barbarity!
It seems to me that there is, in fact, a privilege which attaches to the mere fact of being “unhoused.” To illustrate, if any one of us “housed” deplorables had cursed, screamed at and spit at, or on, a shop owner in our town how fast do you think it would take the local gendarmes to slap a charge on us? That’s not even mentioning acts of public nuisance such as urinating and defecating at the entrance to said shop owner’s place of business. The answer suggests itself. Sounds a whole lot like a privileged class to me!
Thanks for your excellent comment.
That’s only about 12 in San Francisco.
The B.Bee does it again. Justin Trudeau shows up on a cable car in San Francisco in black face to get his $5 mil.
This wasn’t a home, it was the sidewalk.
Maybe it’s a simple matter of numbers: more – WAY more – “unhoused” people in San Fran, than actual productive people especially business owners? Arresting the few productive people is easy, if they were arresting the “unhoused” it might take all day!
Would you sell your house for $2? I didn’t think so.
Like I said, the rest is negotiation. Versus the original statement “Tried selling it for years. No takers.” Lots of people in the People’s Republic of California selling houses now for over $1 Million that they might have paid $50,000 for, years ago. But that doesn’t mean the house some other person bought for $50,000 can now get offers over $1 Million. Especially if there’s “too much paint on the woodwork.”
On the legalities, and looking only at the specific event, I can understand why the gallery owner was arrested and charged with assault. But I have sympathies for the broader problem that this “unhoused” woman (and possibly others like her) has for some time behaved in a manner that discourages customers from coming to the gallery, and interferes with the gallery owner’s quiet enjoyment of his property (that’s a real property legal concept), yet the city (which is responsible for the public sidewalks on which she camps) won’t do anything. Such refusal of the government to enforce social order leads to even greater chaos as vigilantism and other forms of “self-help” become the only available options for the majority of the population.
My sense is that San Franciscans, and Californians overall, are nowhere near the point where the homeless situation will be seriously addressed. Small business proprietors are the worst affected, but they will move out or give up before the situation gets better, assuming it ever does.
I think the homeless/bum/drug problem throughout the West Coast is much bigger than is recognized. I cannot imagine any acceptable public policy being implemented that would improve the situation. By acceptable I mean any individualized consideration or formal hearing prior to the relocation of the bum from prized public property to less prized public property. There is not even enough less prized public property to accommodate the homeless. Homeless population of LA County is estimated to be from 44K to 77K. How is a civil rights and welfare prioritizing government going to handle this? The scale of this problem is enormous.
They pay people to be homeless.
“My sense that San Franciscans and Californians are no where near the point where the home less situation will be seriously addressed”
If I understand your comment you seem to be saying that Californians are no where near fed up sufficiently to demand change.
But what you don’t seem to understand is that most major elections are sufficiently rigged so the Left cannot lose.
And sadly that situation is not unique to California, just perhaps more pronounced , to the point where important elections are across America are now fixed for the Left to win.
Laughing about the gas stove nonsense. Bought our house in 2002. Ridiculous 2 year renovation. Wanted a fire place. Dept. of Building Inspection says no wood fireplaces. Must be gas. Wonder if they will make me change to electric. Are there electric fireplaces? Never saw one.
Not real ones, just fake ones. Sold in many stores.
Will it keep me warm when it gets to 45F. here?
The can produce varying amount of heat. But from a regular 120v outlet, you won’t get a full fire’s worth.
On the plus side, you don’t have to go outside to bring in more wood.
Maybe there are some 240v versions, I haven’t looked.
Thanks will check it out. Maybe the SF commissars will check on the house after we make our escape from San Fran.