San Francisco

I used to live in San Francisco. I spent about 11 years in that town, living in the Tenderloin...I felt immediately attracted to that part of the city, because when I left Germany, I read in books about San Francisco, that one shouldn't go there. All kinds of riff raff lived in the streets and one would get mugged...so it was written in the books...
I rented a shoebox sized apartment on Hyde Street and worked several jobs as a banquet server and interior painter at that time. The scene in the streets was nothing strange to me, even though this had a way harder vibe than the vibe that I was used to from big cities in Germany. In the US there is a crassness to everything. One block is fully taken by the Downtown Hilton Hotel...red carpeted entry doors, golden and vulgar. Bell boys and porters, fetching and running to please members of the American upper crust...Woman in expensive clothes, high heels, with matching hand bags, getting out of limousines, screeching with high pitch voices...Men with suits and ties, business look....too important to give a commoner the sweat of their balls. These people oozed self importance. Next block, small vietnamese restaurants and middle eastern owned liquor stores, and there it looked like Calcutta, right next to the Hilton Hotel. People would shit in the street because they had no place to go. The whole Tenderloin was teaming with homeless people, crack whores, dope dealers and mentally ill sitting in their own shit, piss and vomit....just a block from the Hilton Hotel. A lot of the action was happening in the alleys. Dope dealers would exchange merchandize for money or for a sex...Crack addicts would scratch around in the cracks between the pavers, maybe looking for a lost piece of dope or mining for some mysterious treasure...One night I saw from my window two figures in an overhang of the building accross from mine. The girl pulled her pants down and the guy just fucked her right there. The whole deal was over in no more than five minutes. She pulled her pants up, got her dope and off they went. On to the next one....
There was a black dude who used to sit at the corner. He had dreadlocks that formed a big nest-type thing on his head....a heavy looking piece of knotted up hair...He had a pet chicken that sat on his head...There was another guy who would walk the neighbourhood with his head hidden in a cardboard box...He had cut little holes in it so he could see...Homeless people where shaking a paper cup: "Spare some change " on every corner.
All day long you could hear people scream and cuss. Especially at night, the screams almost sounded like those of tortured animals. I tried it myself a few times...to walk the street and talk to myself and bellow and no one would blink an eye, since it was commonplace.
A lot of people in the tenderloin were out of their minds. There were vietnam vets who had not found their way back after the war, youngsters from dysfunctional families, women traumatized from the past, unable to function in a society where greed, exploitation and social Darwinism had closed the doors to anyone who wasn't willing or able to play game.  
I remember one day I read in an article on the internet, that the city had now created a task force. Government workers drove by with trucks and rounded up the belongings of the homeless people. They swooped in and destroyed the makeshift tents and dwellings, which were giving shelter to those folks. They just threw it all in a big truck...the tarps, blankets and shopping carts....all their belongings. They were cleaning up the neighbourhood, they said...I was very concerned for the homeless people. I wondered what else would be done to them. There was no accountability...they could just be rounded up and put in some prison camp. Who would know? Who would care?
Curiously the dope dealers remained and...they got worse. Stabbings and shootings became commonplace. I felt it was time to get my ass out and so I did.  
Today, thinking back, I did the right thing by leaving. The squalor dragged me down and made me feel hopeless. I do feel though, this was an important experience of my life...to see the US Calcutta...the people no one wants to talk about because they soil the image of the "great America".  
A friend told me recently the Tenderloin has been re-named. It is now the Trendyloin. Yuppies and Google employees make now the image of the former poor people's neighbourhood. Gentrification has washed away the stench of the shit and piss and vomit. The "important" people live there now. Young enterpreneurs, from wealthy upbringing with expensive cars, sipping their Starbucks Latte. The Tenderloin is dead. With concern I wonder again what they did with the homeless folks.  
If I would be asked today if I wanted to live in the tenderloin the way it was or in the Trendyloin I would always choose the former. There was suffering and squalor and violence, but there was also life...something real was happening.  
By the way.... I never got mugged when I lived in the Tenderloin!