What works for Lime scooters works for boulders!
Step 1: Place Lime scooters on street
Step 2: Roll boulders on top of Lime scooters
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How are the residents allowed to dump boulders onto the sidewalk?
How are people allowed to camp in a tent on a sidewalk?
What is keeping a resident from parking a small car or motorcycle on the sidewalk but boulders and tents are ok?
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According to other articles, residents claim they’re not there to stop all homeless: they’re there to stop people from putting up large tents which are used to sell drugs. How much credibility you give that explanation is up to you.
I think the city’s response is interesting though. They keep putting the boulders back on the sidewalk. Because it’s ok for people to dump boulders on the sidewalk, but not in the street. The city’s spokesperson said:
“We’re working on an authorization process to see which is the best way to move forward,” Gordon said. “It’s unfortunate that people are pushing them off the sidewalk and onto the road. It’s not a safe thing to do.”
Maybe I’m reading too much in to her choice of wording, but I think it’s interesting she calls it an authorization process. Not “a consultation process where the merits of having these boulders here and the perspectives of different stakeholders can be considered”. Not “a process where these residents can ask permission to place boulders in this shared public space”. No, it’s a process to authorize their placement. As in, “we’ve already decided to allow this small group of self-interested residents to dictate how the sidewalk is used, we’re just trying to come up with a way to paper the whole thing to give it an air of credibility”.
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It really is unfortunately getting that way. Italy and Austria have had the right idea.
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If the boulders are not city property, and if the residents dont claim they own them either, then they are fair game for graffiti art.
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Umm… “Transitioning”?
Sometimes the solution just requires redefining the problem.
Look at all of that free amo someone left on the sidewalk.
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I frequently wished for a set of spinning saw blades for the stroller when my kids used them. People will not move.
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well, i’m pretty sure that drug dealers don’t need tents to conduct their business – at least not from what i’ve seen when accidentally blundering through the Tenderloin. but i suppose in their eyes allowing residents to inhibit public use with boulders in the name of deterring homeless camps is easier and cheaper than, you know, actually addressing affordable housing for low-income people. sheesh. what a mess.
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My perspective as a non-stroller pedestrian: I want to scream at the groups of moms who take over the sidewalks by walking side-by-side-by-side. Even the non-pushing parent needs to file in behind the other parent when the sidewalks are narrow.
My husband or I often file in behind one another when we are walking side-by-side on a sidewalk and we see people walking toward us in the opposite direction.
Basically, can’t we all be just a bit more civil and help each other out?
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No, because people.
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I looked at a crime map for this street, and it doesn’t seem any worse than the streets around it. But it does seem bad. Seemed like at least 50 calls to police for crimes on this street or at its beginning on Dolores. Interestingly, none of the reported crimes were overtly drug-related. They were all petty theft, people breaking into cars, disturbing the peace, brandishing knives, a few assaults, etc. And those are only the reported crimes; I think I’ve read that homeless people are unlikely to report crimes when they are the victims.
I also looked to see what the city of San Francisco does about homeless people in the city. San Fran is spending somewhere near a quarter billion dollars on various aspects of the homeless problem. One estimate put the number of homeless people in San Francisco at 7000, with a pretty fast rate of growth. That puts the city’s expenditure at around $35K per homeless person. It’s a huge amount of money being spent, but the overall problem seems to get worse instead of better. There is a caveat that a big chunk of that expenditure goes to housing for formerly homeless persons and the “housing insecure.”
After spending half an hour trying to understand the larger problems, my takeaway is that I can empathize with all the people’s frustrations. BUT, in this case, the housed residents of this street have simply added a rock problem to their perceived problem with homeless people.
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Cue the penis art.
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But while the rocks were out “we traded criminals for activists and the media,” and the resultant hostility and scrutiny has been brutal.
“We don’t want to feel the fire any more,” the resident said.
[…]
“I met with residents yesterday and they are feeling intimated and frightened,” he said. “They didn’t like having drug dealing and violence outside their doors before, and they don’t like masked vigalanties coming in and protesting and removing rocks.
Class War: It Works!
If people are so obsessed with quiet and order that they become classist jerks, just show them that being a classist jerk will bring you even less quiet and order.
Coexistence isn’t always perfect, but it beats the alternative.
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Every movement needs a hashtag these days.
I’m leaning towards #GetYourRocksOff
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Make the boulders into benches. The cost of sending crews to move the boulders back onto the sidewalk is starting to match the cost of adding bench tops to the boulders.
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The law of the ADA doesn’t care what your “INTENT” is, they care if the place is routinely inaccessible for people with disabilities. Besides wheelchairs and such; there’s also blind people who have learned to navigate the streets and now have giant fucking boulders in their way
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Doesn’t California have one of the more loose Adverse Possession laws of the states? I suggest some activists start claiming the rocks through the legal method of Adverse Possession laws. Then sell the damn thing, or burn them, or whatever
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Update: The SF Department of Public Works plans to remove the boulders for good.
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