the 'loin characters

I don't like to drive my car in the city and if I could walk, bike or bus it to my destination, I'll do it. Last night, I had plans to see Camera Obscura at GAMH. Biking was an option but GAMH isn't in the nicest part of town and I didn't want to exit a concert and find my lock, bike-less on a parking meter.

So, I bused it on the "Dirty 8", got off one stop past the one I should have gotten off at and found myself in the heart of the Tenderloin. There's nothing "tender" about this neighborhood.

Rather than walk straight up O'Farrell, I went up a block to Geary, a slightly safer street to walk on and where Edinburgh bar is located. Two blocks later, there's police cars lighting flares to cordon off the intersection where a Toyota Prius (no driver to be seen) with a cracked windshield, a bag of bloody groceries spewed by the front bumper, and a blood stain under the left tire sat. No sign of a victim or victims. Just a bunch of rubberneckers watching the police nonchalantly do their job so I assumed the ambulance came and went. I kept walking.

A block later, two bearded hipsters of fixed gear bikes riding the wrong way on Geary (Geary is a one-way street) are honked at by a taxi. And guess what the self-righteous hipsters do? They yelled obcenities at the taxi driver, spat on his vehicle and continued to ride against one way traffic toward the squad of police officers at the next intersection. I hoped they got ticketed. I kept walking.

Another block, a drug deal plain as day was going down while some poor soul was shooting up in a doorway of a boarded up storefront. I just kept walking.