The good news is at the end of this blog. It is authoritative.
The photo at the right is a seasonal addition to our palm trees. I love the palm trees, they’re clean, bold and they seem to surprise everyone. This city has had palms throughout its history, largely because we don’t get winter freezes. City planners have recently come to re-appreciate palms.
The new De Young.....
The new De Young Museum of art has opened and the architecture is wonderful including a viewing tower with a panorama of the western part of the city. There is a large public area which includes several gardens and an appealing restaurant. The architects, Herzog and de Meuron did a good job, far more radical than San Francisco usually sees, but not a world-class monument like the two Gehry has done in Los Angeles or Bilbao.
What about our police scandal? Count me out. The police can make any video they want for their private parties and some mean-spirited person can leak it. What is missing is internal loyalty.
The police department has been a mess all my life. First the union had a gang of 50 sociopaths that they protected for decades, then they had an outside professional chief who they tried to destroy, since then they have had a string of internal promotions and no leadership. For eight years we had a communist DA, so the police did their serious busts in other counties. Now we have a DA, mayor, Board of Supervisors and Police Commission who openly express contempt for the police. Murders are up from a low of 60 a year to 100 in just two years.
The police are not willing to risk their lives for a city whose citizens abuse them. The police sit around the stations, go out for coffee, plan parties and make videos… what would you do in a city that shows only contempt for your work?
Remember that we have a highly integrated police force with a Chinese female chief and twice as many people on the force as 1970 when the city was the same size. Wasn’t integration supposed to help something?
The good news is the homeless front. I walk 4.2 miles from my home to North Beach along Market Street and turn up Grant Avenue at roughly 7am when the homeless are still asleep. For many years I have counted the number of homeless sleeping on my side of the street. The high point has been around 54, the average is 35 and on the worst rainy cold winter day, the number dropped to 23.
Today, the number of homeless was 7 on my regular route. Most people credit the incessant pressure of social workers talking to the homeless every day and, most importantly, the availability of bus tickets home to anywhere in the U.S. The police do 5 minutes of paperwork and escort the individuals to the bus.