If you live here, you have to harden yourself against constant harassment for money and offers of drugs, and you have to get used to stepping around garbage and shit in the street. As much as SF should strive to be tolerant, at a certain point it must be recognized that if you don't want to be taken advantage of, as I believe is the case here for "authentic" residents of Haight-Ashbury, i.e. people who pay local taxes and own or rent and have what I would call a more vested interest in the community improving, steps have to be taken to curb the more destructive behaviors. The fact is, we already have disincentives for littering, disturbing the peace, selling drugs, etc, but they don't seem to be working. So I'm not sure what can be done.
I'm from the East coast and I recently visited SF again after a long time away. I was appalled by the amount of human feces in public. Street people just pull down their pants and shit right on the sidewalk or on a doorstep.
But what's far more appalling is that straight people in SF put up with it as part of the cost of doing business.
In 2006-2008 the crusties formed a gauntlet between Cole and Clayton on Haight. They were rude and aggressive and always had at least one rottweiler or pit bull. The locals and tourists could not stand them and the only reason they lasted as long as they did was because they were white. Eventually everyone got too fed up which is why the no sit laws were passed.
I vividly recall walking west on Haight to The Alembic in the summer of '07...it felt like something out of Mad Max or a post-apocalyptic zombie movie.
I visited SF not too long ago and I found the filth appalling. And the beggars were quite aggressive vs. other cities. It did not leave me with a positive impression.
I don't mind sellers of various good (incl. drugs) so long as they are peaceable and not... in your face.
San Franciscans in aggregate don't have the political will or desire to do what needs to be done.
What needs to be done is fairly obvious, since it was already done successfully by Giuliani in NYC - strict enforcement of laws plus draconian penalties for violating those laws, applied over a sustained period of time.
Like it or not (and I'm certainly not suggesting everything about it was likeable), it worked wonders for Manhattan.
