05 May 2025
Name: BU; unhoused for about 6 years
Place and date of interview: In the lot along side 101 off-ramp. Dore and Bryant streets. 28 April 2025
Belongings: The clothes he is wearing, a skate board and backpack.
What he said:
If anything is going to change [regarding the unhoused situation] it’s not going to be by brute force, it’s going to be through compassion and actual care.
Where had you been before coming to this part of the city?
My usual spot that I’d been staying at damn near the last two years was Haight and Octavia cause it’s a friendly neighborhood and all that. It’s been all good until recently when the Mayor himself, took it upon himself to … I guess he drives down Octavia on his way to work in the morning, and he woke me up twice now, with his two body guards, to tell me, personally, that he was not OK with the fact that I was sleeping there. And that if I was to continue sleeping there he would make sure he had me arrested.
You moved down to the Dore area, has that been different?
Umm, I don’t have the Mayor jumping out on me anymore. The neighborhood people here are a little more, like, disconnected from what’s going on outside their doors. On Haight and Octavia it was cool ‘cause the people there knew me, and they knew I wasn’t like a piece of shit, that I’d pickup trash and stuff, and so they would sometimes make me meals and stuff. They told me themselves that they considered me part of the community which really touched my heart a lot.
It’s going to be a long time before I see anything like that in this area.
Around Davidson and Quint, a block or two off of Evans. An industrial area where people often park their cars, RVs, and pitch a tent because the city sweeps the industrial areas less frequently.. 13 June 2023
SF Chronicle front-page for 16 April 2025. Homeless counts depend on counting tents, but because the city takes all belongings including tents during sweeps, there are fewer tents. Not fewer people, who now sleep rough as it is easer to hide and leave quickly.
The Reads
The Luddites lost the fight to save their livelihoods. As the threat of artificial intelligence looms, can we do any better | John Cassidy/The New Yorker
Starved in Jail - Why are incarcerated people dying from lack of food or water, even as private companies are paid millions for their care? | Sarah Stillman/The New Yorker
Hospitals in Ruins - “It’s strange that the world has allowed this to happen.” | Clayton Dalton/The New Yorker
Photography/Art/Culture
Anti-modernist architecture group declares Simmons Hall "America's ugliest building” | Ben Dreith/dezeen
"Stalin, Hitler and Trump all tried to block modernist architecture” | Steven Holl/dezeen
Apes, toilets, conflicts and cowboys: Sony World Photography awards | Mee-Lai Stone/The Guardian
Aline Manoukian and the Specter of War Photography | Nancy Kricorian/Hyperallergic
Italian Photographer Gusmano Cesaretti’s Chronicles of East LA | Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic
THE ANONYMOUS PROJECT PRESENTS - BEING THERE | LEE SHULMAN & OMAR VICTOR DIOP/EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
The Daily Heller: Brad Holland’s Last Exhibition | Print
For The Leisure Of Working Insects
“It’s About Him”: Renowned White House Photographer Pete Souza on How Trump Is Perverting the Presidential Photo Stream | Pete Souza/Vanity Fair
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