This Summer, in San Francisco

I know it’s a little late, but if you haven’t decided where to go for your summer vacation, here’s a tip, via the Zero Hedge blog: Whatever  you do, don’t go to San Francisco. Several Australian couples learned the lesson the hard way.

Zero Hedge reports:

San Francisco - a Democratic stronghold known for cable cars, quaint architecture and its diverse culture, has become a bastion of squalor and crime as city dwellers and visitors alike dodge aggressive, drug-addled vagrants. And it's beginning to scare the tourists...

For my part, I like the phrasing: “a bastion of squalor and crime,” where you will have to dodge “drug-addled vagrants.” It has a certain poetry to it, if you don't need to walk the streets.

Some Australian couples took to Reddit to share their experiences:

An Australian couple visiting the city were shocked by what they saw after deciding to walk back to their hotel: 

"Is this normal or am I in a 'bad part of town?' Just walked past numerous homeless off their faces, screaming and running all over the sidewalk near Twitter HQ and then a murder scene. Wife is scared to leave hotel now," reads a Wednesday posting by Reddit user /u/nashtendo.

Another said this:

"We did La and Nyc on this trip too. Both felt safer," he said later in the thread, adding "Syringes were visible, people were staggering, others had wide aggressive eyes. 'Off their faces' might be an Australian thing (sorry) but I meant just visibly drug affected." 

And also:

It's pretty normal. I'm honestly hoping tourists will realize how shitty this city has become and stop coming. Maybe the loss of income will finally push the city to stop allowing the rampant drug dealing and homeless people treating the entire city like their toilet. You would think a city that deoends so heavily on tourism and conventions for the bulk of their income would put more effort into maintaining a certain standard, but there is rampant drug dealing out in the open in some of the most heavily tourist areas. The city know about it, they just don't care. -/u/SgtPeanutbutter

Some local businesspeople are beginning to notice. But, they take comfort in knowing that the syringes that are littering the city were handed out by the city itself.

"The streets are filthy. There's trash everywhere. It's disgusting," Joe D'Alessandro, president of S.F. Travel told the Chronicle's Heather Knight in April. "I've never seen any other city like this — the homelessness, dirty streets, drug use on the streets, smash-and-grabs."

The city, which hands out up to 4.8 million syringes each year, has struggled to figure out how to keep streets clean and safe for residents, while accommodating a growing homeless population and longstanding HIV and Hepatitis C epidemics. There are roughly 16,000 residents in San Francisco with HIV, and 13,000 with Hep C. 

Of the 400,000 needles distributed monthly, San Francisco receives around 246,000 back - meaning that there are roughly 150,000 discarded needles floating around each month - or nearly 2 million per year, according to Curbed. 

This is what a woke city looks like.