How To Ensure Your Property Value Will Stay Strong In Trying Times

I was walking down Market St., dodging the piles of shit, some whole like a brown whipped cream topping, some smeared across the sidewalk. A man was flowing with the power of methamphetamine in the shelter of a bus stop, vibing with the universe, like a cowboy speeding away on horseback with his bank heist, feeling the thrill of dodging death and the law. Behind him, against a wall, another man slept, face chiseled with scars from a life of taking punches. At this moment he was at peace.

I saw a Nimby in a pullover sweater and tailored slacks pull out his brand new iPhone 14 and take a photo of the two of them. Then he shook his head like he couldn’t believe the indecency. I was on my way down to the financial district to pick up some street shots for a short film I was making. For as much as I want to film the homeless camped out in front of enormous wealth to show you all “See, this is what Bullshit looks like”; I can’t in good conscience rob those people of yet one more thing: their image. So I have to tell you this story instead.

Downtown there’s this building whose roof is lined with these robed figures without faces. It’s really eerie. They are called the Corporate Goddess statues and they look like harbingers of death. I was trying to navigate my way back to this building when it started spitting rain. So I ducked into a cafe to get out of the weather for a minute.

I want to tell you I ducked into a magical cafe owned by a Tunisian woman who hosted art on her walls and jazz jams in the back room, and murals in the bathroom that had anarchist messages scribbled across the mirrors. And that this woman was both grandmother and best friend who would tell it to you straight. And that at the tables of this cafe, decades ago, the beats would vibe with the universe, minds speeding on fire, trying to capture something that had never been spoken about in the west and couldn’t be captured anyway if it were.

But this was the financial district in downtown San Francisco in 2022, so there were Nimbys, people on their laptops making $300K to sit in this cafe and isolate, as they isolate at home in their 18th floor condo with panoramic bay windows in a sterile life that you could operate in. People who buy their parties and their creativity from trendy design showrooms, and have nothing but floods of money, believing blind-heartedly in science and individualism.

Everyone looked like they were waiting to get their LinkedIn profile headshot taken. They were all dying to let us know that they had gone to Stanford and had been Senior AI Engineers at Meta. I sat down with a tea by the window and watched the street go by.

Blocks away from here is the Tenderloin. People get mugged and murdered there. The city pretends like it doesn’t exist. A client of mine got pick-pocketed his bus fare out-of-town down there, because he couldn’t take it anymore, and when he turned around to confront the guy, the guy was counting the money right in front of him. When he reached to get it back, two other guys jumped him, and one hit him in the face with a baton. It crushed the side of his face, and now he can’t breathe right out of his nostril. Needless to say, he never made it out of town. He’s now in a treatment program where I work. That’s the TL. It’s like a shit stain in your fancy silk underwear. And people around here blame the stain for how it mars the silk, but it’s like, “Bitch, you’re the one with shit in your ass.”

So I was sitting by the window watching these robot programmers walk by in fancy rain resistant blazers and crisp shoes, and curly coiffed hair and designer glasses, and in walked that asshole who took the picture of the meth-tweaker. He then sat down with a group of his friends and they asked him how it was going. He started to complain about all the “dirty” people he kept running into and why didn’t the mayor do something about it for god’s sake. Then he pulled out his phone and showed them the picture, which in that moment I learned was actually a video. And they all started shaking their heads but also making jokes. I had half a mind to get up and smack the phone from his hand and punch him in the face. But then I had the flash of an idea. I leaned into it.

I got up and interrupted them. I started quietly, and I said, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I think you are right that it’s abominable to let this go on. The other day, I saw a man in the middle of Market and 8th St intersection, with his pants down around his knees, ass and balls fully hanging out as he bent over to poke a plastic drinking straw into the Muni tracks.”

When they all agreed that someone should do something, I suggested camps. They nodded. “Like if we took just a little bit of the city’s budget, we could put them on buses and send them to the central valley, where there is a lot of space, and put them in a facility, with a fence around it, and guards…” My heart was pumping so fast as I said this, having no idea where it was going.

I noticed I was losing them. I had to bring them back. “I mean, they’re drug dealers and criminals.” They nodded. “San Francisco’s a great city with so much potential, but we have to worry if there’s gonna be a meth head lying in our doorway when we walk out of the house in the morning. I’ve had to eject two people myself in the last couple months. I mean, come on, that really puts a dent in my property value.”

They were back with me now, nodding and commenting about when that happened to them too. I continued, “I mean, they’re barely alive anyway. We’d be doing them a favor if we euthanized them.”

Here one of them stopped me. A woman in a power suit. “Well, we can’t just kill people,” she said.

So I said, “But they live in misery, and they are an eye-sore. What else would we do with them? Obviously they are beyond hope of being reformed. These kinds of people have no will power. They will always choose meth over sanity.”

My group was visibly uncomfortable with me now. The guy with the bus stop photo said, “Thank you. We’ll talk among ourselves now.”

And I said, “How can you sit here talking when we have a public safety crisis on our hands. Do you feel safe? Because I don’t!”

Now they were making eyes at the barista, hoping to get someone’s attention. I was delirious by now, so charged with adrenaline that the memory of this is a bit of a blur. But I’ll see if I can piece it together.

They were starting to get up to go get someone and–I shit you not this actually happened–in the next moment a woman with grime and oily looking stains all over her tattered jackets and pants, with coarse greying hair and missing teeth, barged in the door right then and there and pointing right at various people, started pissing through her pants as she screamed bloody hell at the manager who tried to approach her.

So I started yelling at my group, saying, “Get your phones out. Film this! So that we can have evidence to show city hall about how this is intolerable. My Tesla got pissed on the other day! I’m so sick of this shit.”

The group cowered in total confusion.

I continued, “What are you doing? Call the police! Are you going to let this vagrant woman get away with making a farce of this city? What is wrong with you people?”

They tried to get up to leave, but they were barred by the woman, so afraid they were of approaching her lest she reach out and touch them. The guy who took the bus stop picture tried to assuage me now. “I mean they are still people,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I snapped back, “We will never live in progressive future until this scummy people are wiped out from under our noses. What is wrong with you all? How could you allow this to happen?” The power suit woman glared at me with true concern in her eyes. And then I dropped it: “You all are afraid of what really needs to be done.”

The rag woman alternated from rage to tears, repeating, “Don’t touch me. I’ll kill you!” then, “Please, they’ll kill me. Help me. Help me.” It was heart wrenching really. But I held firm to teaching these Nimbys whatever lesson I could pull out of my ass.

I said, “You don’t believe me, I can see. But if you’re too coward to do anything about it then I’ll do it myself,” I accused them and pointed at her. The whole scene was so insane.

And then this is what I did. I turned to the woman, and began to approach her. My Nimby friends gasped, frozen mouths agape.

At first the woman screamed at me, “Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you!” Which quickly subsided back into crying.

“What’s your name?” I asked. She pleaded not to kill her.

“No one is killing you.” I said.

“They’re fucking killing me!” she sliced at me.

“We’re all perfectly ok,” I said. I offered her my arm. “Come on now, what’s your name?”

“They’re going to kill Nancy.” She blurted.

“Nancy” I repeated. “Nancy is safe.” I said. My attention was fully on Nancy, but I could feel the eyes of everyone on my back. Especially the Nimbys.

“No,” Nancy whined.

“What do you need, Nancy?” I asked.

There had been a word she’d kept saying over and over during her rant which had sounded like “Moonshine” but as I was bent low close to her muttering now, I heard her say “Moon Shield”. It made even less sense, until I noticed a metallic mylar sheet lying on the ground outside, wrapped around a light post, getting pushed around by the wind.

“Is that your moon shield outside?” I asked, pointing to the sheet.

“They can’t kill Nancy,” she said in reply.

“Ok, you wanna come with me to get it?” I asked.

She wiped her nose, the stink of piss, fresh and sour, pungent in my nose. Then she gripped my arm with her blackened finger nails and we walked toward the door.

As I pushed it open to let her outside, I looked back at my Nimby friends and mouthed the words, “Fuck you.” I gave them a smirk and then went and fetched Nancy’s moon shield for her.