this guy kills me
If my recollection serves, he started off on the sports page. Which, I suppose, is a good place to hone one’s sense of misplaced outrage and self-righteous blatherings about things you are only faintly acquianted with at all, and chronicling (literally, in this case) experiences that other people have had with a knowing, assured attitude, despite never having done any of those things. You have to love the level of clueless condescension that goes into this kind of treatment of a civic question - it’s like someone turned the city pages over to Jackie Harvey (”Newsflash! Apparently some of the Muni buslines are savagely overcrowded! No wonder there’s been talk about a “subway” through the Chinesetown! Mayor Agnos really needs to look into this…”) Although, lord knows I’d love a Washinton Square terminus to that line. San Francisco appraoching the 20th century! SO cuuute…
Anyway, then he goes for what can only be called The Gusto, parroting the moronic and thoroughly unscientific line that somehow the number of liquor stores in a certain area contribute to alcoholism, as well as city waste on ambulances and hospitalization for the miscreants and etc. etc. Because an alcoholic certainly wouldn’t walk an extra 3 blocks for some St. Ides. And if you want to “solve” the problem of alcoholism, I don’t think adopting even more hardline bullshit about what kind of booze a liquor store can sell is going to work. What almost certainly would work would be affordable (free) treatment for alcohol abuse for anyone who wants it, as well as affordable (free) and effective job training and placement programs. Trying to outlaw alcoholism, especially in an area that because of it’s relative affordability tends to attract people with problems of one kind of another in the first place, by changing the liquor store regulations is just self-righteous and asinine, as well as ignoring the fact that for many of the people around there, those corner stores are where they do most of their shopping, period. It’s called “urban.” Everyone doesn’t get in the 4wd Volvo wagon and head to Safeway. After living in the Tenderloin on a couple of different occasions during the early and mid-nineties, I think I can, unlike idiots like Nevious, speak to this with some actual experience and knowledge of both the hood and the folks in it. Better yet, Nevious completely ignores a story in his own paper that goes a long way towards proving how stupid the “city wasting money on ambulances for fuckups” argument is. It’s not that it isn’t necessarily true, so much as that it’s the city’s (and the community’s) fault for not addressing the problem intelligently in the first place.
Also, most of those recidivist ambluance users, as it were, are homeless, not necessarily residents of the Tenderloin in particular. As a visit to where the Haight hits the park, or Washington Square, or the Wharf, or any other part of town where homeless tend to congregate, would surely indicate, if one was paying attention…