A San Francisco comeback requires reviving Market Street. Hundreds of drug users and dealers inhabit the area after midnight. This must stop. It badly hurts the city’s image and is unfair to Market Street’s hotels, theaters, housing and businesses. The city solved a similar drug crisis at UN Plaza. Why not apply similar strategies to Market Street?
Market Street Has Gotten Worse
After decades of decline, Twitter’s arrival in 2011 began historic Mid-Market’s revival. Market Street was finally on a path toward greatness.
But COVID halted this progress. It arrived at the worst possible time. Multiple developments were under construction and they opened to a pandemic that closed the street down. Market Street between 5th and 9th Streets—historically known as Mid-Market—saw drug activity skyrocket. It was not until UN Plaza and the Pelosi Federal Building were both cleared of open air drug markets that Mid-Market’s progress resumed.
But Mid-Market drug activity from midnight to 6:00 am is off the hook. Videos from October 20 posted on X by FriscoLive415 show a drug scene as bad as the dark days of the Linkage Center. JJ Smith, who regularly videos the Mid-Market drug scene, shows the same scene on October 23 from a different angle . An October 24 video from @TL2Active described the sidewalk-filled drug market as “crazy.”…