Ok I’m a bit surprised but I 100% expected a comment like this already under this post, so I’ll do it myself:
No wonder if you follow CCRs tips: Don’t go around tonight, well its bound to take your life - theres a bathroom on the right.
In the subway near the pillars
I have never had any encounters with shit on the streets of SF. Now granted, I haven’t worked in the city in almost a decade, but this reputation it seems to have is nothing new.
I think if SF business owners weren’t so fuckin’ stingy about people using their restrooms then the people who can’t afford to buy something at the grossly inflated SF prices just for the privilege of accessing a sanitary place to relieve themselves in privacy that the rest of us take for granted each day would be a lot less likely to shit or piss on the streets.
I remember waiting for the train after a night of particularly heavy drinking, and it was a 20+ minute wait for the next BART train, and I was already doing the pee dance on the platform. I knew I wasn’t going to make it to the south bay before my bladder exploded. Station restrooms were already locked (even though trains were still running), so I went out to Market street and entered a nearby McDonalds. Asked to use their restroom, said I would buy something from their menu if necessary. Nope, they refused. I wasn’t about to pee my pants, so you know what I did? I went and I pissed on the street right in front of their front doors. Problem solved.
If you leave people no possible way to do something “correctly”, don’t be surprised if they start doing it incorrectly on purpose.
Somewhat related, if for the other side of the country…
We went on a US trip in between Trump presidencies, and my wife and I’s first reaction to getting out of the taxi in NYC was: Why does it smell like piss?
In the 6 block walk to the hotel our question was answered multiple times by people pissing in the street, the gutter, and the alleyways.
tl;dr - NYC smells like piss because of all the piss
New Yorker here, yep.
City of a thousand sights… And smells.
Smell of piss aside, I’m tempted to go back… if only for these garlic knot things from Carnigie Pizza
They are like garlic.rar or some sort of garlic tardis or something because I swear there was more garlic inside these things than their outside dimension allowed for. I am legitimately drooling like pavlovs dogs right now. Please send help, or better yet several dozen garlic knots.
Garlic.rar 😂😂😂
You’re a funny guy, I like you.
I live on the west coast now, certainly got my memories going now from my neighborhood pizza joint when I was a kid.
Aren’t there cameras everywhere nowadays? Why are these people not in jail? Seems weird for the city that made broken windows theory popular(or any city really).
Businesses get pissy about anyone needing to go to the bathroom if they’re not a customer.
I never cared if I was on camera, nobody looks until after something serious happened. Pissing definitely ain’t that serious.
Pereonally, I’ve never seen shit on the street in SF. But I’m only ever in, like, two parts of the city. The wharf, and downtown.
Fogarty was from the East Bay so he’s the perfect guy to be sledging SF too. Love it.
CCR has to be the band most unexpectedly from where they are from.
I always assumed that CCR was from like…Louisiana or something. Never would have guessed that they were from the bay area. Wild.
So I listen to CCR and Wikipedia says they were formed in El Cerrito, California (so in the san-fran bay area). I don’t know much about the regional tones of bands from that era, but what makes their region of origin unexpected?
Half their songs are about being from Louisiana.
CCR sounds bluesy, gritty and blue-collar/southern, definitely not folksy, ‘hippie’ sounding compared to a band like the Mamas and the Papas
Ah gotcha! I don’t really get too much into music categorisation so grouping them by geography is off my level. Thanks!
Every time I stop staring at the ground for more than two seconds I step in shit. Me and my gf have a system where I look down and she looks up. I stop us from walking into feces, she stops us from walking into people. The city is amazing though and does a lot to help people out of poverty and I think it’s sad it doesn’t get much recognition for that
I’ve never been to SF, but we just moved to NorCal earlier this year and I’m SO stoked to visit. I absolutely believe that there’s a homeless issue there because I’ve been to major metropolitan areas before: Houston, Baltimore, Vegas, Paris, Tokyo, etc etc etc but I simply do NOT buy into the hype of there just being endless amounts of human shit and discarded needles in the streets.
In my head, I have it built up as this glamorous place with good food and pretty bay views with the huge hills and colorful houses and streetcars.
Honestly I think I want to spend my birthday there in March, and I’m pretty excited. Any and all bar/museum/restaurant/atlas obscura oddity recc’s welcome from locals/people who have been are welcome!
Almost never see needles on the ground. There is a lot of shit, but not like endless shit like that. The city is 99% shit free even counting homeless areas because of the city’s efforts to address it. However for me, I’ve lived in many cities where it wasn’t as common so seeing multiple piles a day is jarring to me. But as long as you watch where you’re going, it’s not a problem.
It may be a problem, but certainly not to the point where SF isn’t a beautiful city, it definitely is. I’ve never seen anywhere like it! The people here are so friendly, too! It gave my partner a bit of culture shock actually.
As for some recommendations, I love pier 39. I don’t go out much but that’s always fun. There’s a spot to watch sea lions there, too! And the civic center and ferry building are a must see ofc. One more thing: There’s a farmer’s market by the library in front of the civic center on Wednesdays and Sundays iirc, it’s very cheap and the fruits and veggies are so much better than what stores sell, especially the fruit.
Where are you living?? I’ve walked through the TL and a bunch of other supposedly “bad” areas of SF without having that problem…
The area on market street from trader Joe’s to the bay foods market is one of the worst, if you’ve been around there. 6th Street and the surrounding streets are pretty bad, too. A lot of it is crusted to the ground and hard to spot if you aren’t actually looking for it though. But a lot of it isn’t human shit like people joke about, just dog shit.
I’m glad you like your city, but I’ll be over here, not living somewhere I need a dedicated two person system to avoid walking through human feces.
It’s kind of amazing just how much that simply isn’t a problem in so very much of the world, and how adaptable people are to bad situations.
That’s fair, the poop is a problem. I’ve been in some really bad places and was blown away how quickly people adapt and find some sense of normalcy.
Why not just use the poop map?
I actually don’t carry a smart phone on me anymore and I live in the ghettos anyways so I assume it would be hard to keep up with it. They power wash my street twice a day and it’s still covered in shit
At least it’s not some piss sponge like the Moscow metro.
Not to get political, but Moscow piss sponge is what the Russians call Trump.
"Not to get political, but…* (Gets fucking political anyway)
Is this the new “I’m not racist, but…?”
It’s like “no homo.” If you don’t say it, then you’re being political, but if you say it first, you can fuck your bro and it’s all kosher.
Tf? The Moscow Metro is rather clean.
Seriously. There’s a lot that can be rightfully shit on about Russia, but the Moscow metro system is sparkling clean compared to similar systems, and many of the stations are gorgeous (especially the older ones with mosaics and statues).
Clearly you’ve never been to Columbus, Ohio
I’ve never seen human shit on the street there. The homeless can’t afford to live there anymore and live in Lancaster these days
I’ve spent vastly more time in SF than Columbus, yet I’ve seen more homeless ass and street shit in the latter.
Listen I’ve never been to California, I don’t really believe all the stories of people shitting in the street there, but I’ve spent years in Columbus and I really don’t believe stories of people shitting in the street there
They shit in the subways actually, or on the escalators. Seen a log right by a pillar when going down the escalator,
A lot of these stories are about a few dense blocks in the core of downtown areas that either have homeless services nearby or are tourist areas where you can panhandle succesfully. This leads to a concentration of desperate people, who do desperate things.
No city has hundreds of streets and thousands of blocks just full of human shit. It happens in high traffic/high visibiilty areas due to poverty, the lack of accesable public bathrooms and drug use in the US, and even then, is minimal. Social media and right wing hysteria pump up minimal issues into quipy mania.
I was watching people undress and relieve themselves on the sidewalk in August over on State Street.
Some municipalities actually started DNA-testing dog shit, AFAIK it deals with the issue of dog owners leaving dog shit in the street quite well. Of course, that method won’t do anything when the culprit is someone homeless or a stray.
Do you have literally anything to lend credence to this claim?
Edit: Welp, they brought the receipts.
Here’s a BBC article about Bolzano/Bozen in Italy doing this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/68018142
I’m confused. What are they gonna do, securing search warrants for Larry the Labradoodle and no-knock the front door off the hinges and buccal swab the cocksucker there and then?
Otherwise, the only way this makes sense if every dog is registered and must provide a sample preemptively. Maybe I’m missing something.
Otherwise, the only way this makes sense if every dog is registered and must provide a sample preemptively
That’s exactly what’s happening. I have a friend whose apartment complex has that as a requirement for dog owners to move in. If you leave shit in the grass, they test it, fine you and make you pay for the lab needed to prove it was you. It works pretty well, as she and I went outside one night in the dark with flashlights because I forgot a poop bag and couldn’t find it when I came back with the bag to make sure she wouldn’t catch the fine.
Yes, registering every dog’s DNA is exactly how they’re doing it - and if they find a match, they’ll send a fine. It’s quite a bit of effort, which is probably why this isn’t more widespread. Sidewalks full of dogshit fucking suck, though, and dogs already have to be registered for tax purposes so it’s not like this is a completely new level of bureaucracy, either.
god I wish I lived somewhere civilized. The general level of societal function this implies sounds amazing.
