You Know You're in San Francisco When...

SF GATE (San Francisco Chronicle) ^ | 11/24/03 | Adam Sparks

[sfwarrior]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/11/24/asparks.DTL

[tubebender]

You know your in SF when your Grandfathers pig farm smells better than Market Street...

[ladyinred]

I was wondering why you didn't post any of this, until I clicked on it and read it. Good call! :-)

San Francisco is beautiful though!

[giotto]

San Francisco is a caricature to those who have never been there, or seen only the most infamous parts of it. In reality, it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, even after eight years of King Willie.
It's a real city, where you can walk out of your house, eat lunch at a great restaurant, shop for a hat, buy a book, visit a museum, toss a frisbee in the park, and go to a concert, all in the space of a few blocks. And by the time you trudge back up the hill to your apartment or hotel, you've also gotten all the exercise you need for a week. This is why there are few fat San Franciscans.
In spite of all the perverts, wierdos and lefties, there are many normal people there, who wouldn't think of living anywhere else.
That having been said, everything in the article is absolutely accurate.

[Simmy2.5]

San Francisco is a wonderful city...if you look past the legions of homeless, the freaks, the peaceniks, greenies, aging hippies, and idiot leaders that call it home. Like giotto said, there are still many normal people living there. I still have family in San Francisco and they are in no ways the hippies or freaks. The restaurants I've been to in San Francisco are wonderful, and the sites are certainly some of the best in the world...past the grim and crap brought on by liberalism of course.

[Simmy2.5]

Forgot to add...these maybe jokes, but they do have a lot of truth in them.

[ILBBACH]

I was going to give you a GROAN until I realized that the first thing I said after reading your post was..."Oh sh*t!"

[August West]

I visited San Francisco for a day last January and I found it to be a real hellhole. Am I missing something?

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Thanks for that - very good.

[tubavil]

"City workers can have their genitals cut off and follow-up trangender sex counseling paid for by the medical plan."

[the invisib1e hand]

the jokes are funny because they highlight the ridiculousness reality.

Notice all the contradictions? The mark of the Left is embracing contradictions.

Orwell mused about the totalitarians at once acknowledging and failing to acknowledge something. Ayn Rand, I think, called that feat insanity.

[Ichneumon]

Like I always say, the only thing wrong with California is that it's full of Californians.

(My apologies to the "red zone" Californians, I'm aiming this at the "blue zone".)

[giotto]

Like I always say, the only thing wrong with California is that it's full of Californians.

Or rather, it's full of all the bizarros that were too weird for the rest of the country. Gradually, the place has become a haven for the dregs of society, who think they have a God-given right to camp out by the crystalline waters of San Francisco Bay and be supported by the people of California, most of whom live their lives in dusty inland valleys, stuck in commuter traffic, working their tails off to pay the taxes which allow the squatters to sit around and bad-mouth them. Most of San Francisco's residents are from somewhere else. And I wish they'd go back there.

[Yeti]

San Francisco is a caricature to those who have never been there,

I lived there for a few months in '81. It was a sick, festering pit of evil and depravity. Difficult for me to believe it's changed that much.

What kind of people name whole sections of their town for the teenage runaway male prostitutes that roam the streets looking for someone who will give them some food in exchange for "gay" sex, as is the case with the "tenderloin district" in San Francisco?

The news reporters, the government, everyone refers to the area around Polk Street by this "cute" euphemism that seems like it would be only appropriate from those who frequent the area and participate in the fun.

Do they still have the Exotic Erotic Ball thingy? A city-funded mass orgy downtown each year?

It was a crazy place, like most large cities, only taken to a hypersexual "gay" extreme. If it doesn't bother you, it's because you're acclimated to it. Live someplace where there isn't a torture chamber in any bar or hotel for miles around, and after a while, maybe the haze will clear, and you'll begin to recognize the profundity and ubiquity of madness that saturates that place. Go someplace where transvestites at least trouble themselves to shave before applying their makeup.

[presidio9]

BUMP

[just_living]

What kind of people name whole sections of their town for the teenage runaway male prostitutes that roam the streets looking for someone who will give them some food in exchange for "gay" sex, as is the case with the "tenderloin district" in San Francisco?

FYI:
It's called the tenderloin because the cops on that beat got paid extra, it being such a tough beat. So they were able to eat...tenderloin. That's the story, and it's been the story for a lot longer then the hookers have been there.

[Elliott Jackalope]

He missed one.

You know you're in San Francisco when you shave your head bald, paint your scalp bright blue, walk down the street and people stop and say "Hey, that's a nice shade of blue!"

[Bernard Marx]

What kind of people name whole sections of their town for the teenage runaway male prostitutes that roam the streets looking for someone who will give them some food in exchange for "gay" sex, as is the case with the "tenderloin district" in San Francisco?

This is how some knowledge of history can be helpful. "Tenderloin" districts (there are many in cities all over the U.S.) got their name in New York City back in the 1880s. They were Red Light districts featuring heterosexual prostitution and gambling. Cops assigned to the beat were able to supplement their pay with kickbacks for looking the other way when businesses broke the law -- just as they still do.

"Police Corruption - a Sociological Perspective," edited by Lawrence W. Sherman, says: "In the late 1800's, a police precinct in New York could be rated by the number of establishments featuring gambling and prostitution that could be systematically 'assessed' by the police. When Captain Alexander S. Williams was transferred to the Twenty Ninth Precinct, the city's most fashionable red-light district, he rubbed his hands together and spoke of moving up from 'salt chuck' to 'tenderloin.' Thus the district was christened 'the Tenderloin.'"

[nicksaunt]

All the misfits of the world go to San Francisco.

[Yeti]

Odd that the post should have sat around for a month and then you both post replies the same night...

just_living, you seem to have a kinder historical explanation than the one Bernard Marx offers, though you both have the police factor in common. I'll go with Bernard Marx's, since he can cite a source.

And I'll stick with my assessment of the town: it's an insane asylum.

[Dane]

Forgot to add...these maybe jokes, but they do have a lot of truth in them

The best humor is always based on truth.