SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – My journey to understanding the homeless problem in San Francisco took me to Fisherman’s Wharf – where I found a young man sniffing the sidewalk with a stuffed animal under his arm.

His name is Cory Harris. He is 25 years old.

“I’m from San Diego, but the coronavirus and cleanup have just moved away.”

I asked him how long he’s been homeless. He pretty much tells me his whole life.

“Just a shame … moving from house to house, no real parents who could take care of it.”

At some point he was a foster child.

But now: “I sleep outside … I have a sheet.”

I asked if he was trying to get any services … any help.

A closer look at the homeless crisis in San Francisco

“I tried, but they didn’t really want to help me, they refused me.”

Cory says the last place he went for help was on Larkin Street Youth Services.

So I decided to go next and find out why it didn’t work out with Cory.

It turns out that it might be because he’s just a bit too old to qualify for her help.

They let me and my camera in one of their shelters on Ellis Street on the edge of the Tenderloin known as the Lark Inn.

This is reserved for young people between the ages of 18 and 24.

Those who qualify will receive welcome kits of toiletries and linens.

Once inside, colorful murals with uplifting messages greet you.

While a sunny landscape cheers this hallway, the actual bedrooms are a bit bleak.

There are cement floors, replacement furniture, plastic bins, and metal lockers for storing items.

Some beds are currently not sleeping because they are only half full due to the pandemic.

“My experience is that it’s a place where you can lay your head at night when you have nothing else.”

This firsthand perspective is from Dale Jones, a resident of the Lark Inn.

I met the 22-year-old, originally from Contra Costa County, while he was at the Youth Services Access Point on Larkin Street on Golden Gate Avenue.

Dale didn’t want to go into details about how he got homeless in San Francisco, but rather described what his life was like before he found a place at the shelter.

“Couch surfing, house-to-house bouncing in the year before I came here, I lived with seven different family members, a couple of different houses in a hotel, a couple of times on an Airbnb.”

Now he tells me that he is making optimal use of the resources available to him and that he reports to his clerk here once a week.

“I’m already on the waiting list for basically cheaper apartments that will help me pay, so just go through it.”

The access side vibe is more of a college student cafe than a bureaucrat’s waiting room.

Even 12-year-olds can stop by here and have warm meals.

You have access to laundry and showers, a wardrobe and toiletries.

Below are resources to get a GED, college financial aid, or job search help.

Dale is now enrolled in a job program hoping to work as a security guard and then enroll in college.

He likes knowing that he can visit this place every day.

“At least I know they let me work Monday through Friday. At the moment I have a set program, before which I was literally from house to house, from couch to couch, day after day. “

Larkin Street Youth Services says the work to end young people’s homelessness is rare, brief and one-time.

Sherilyn Adams is the executive director.

“We know that around 50% of people over the age of 18 who are homeless had their first experience between the ages of 18 and 25, right? So we know the faster we intervene to prevent chronic homelessness. The other bit is, the longer you are outside, the more damaging it is to your health and wellbeing. “

While at the access point, I met a familiar face.

“What’s the matter with you since I last saw you? Just to survive. “

Cory was there to shower and get something to eat.

However, the 25-year-old will probably find it more difficult to find a place to sleep than it was a year ago.

“We don’t have a great system in San Francisco for the 25-35 year olds in general. Because the age range of people who are homeless is 70, 75 … and we prioritize people based on how long they have been homeless.

“And it is sometimes very difficult for people who are newly homeless and live in this way from 25 to 35 years.”

Meanwhile, Cory continues to try to get the help he needs.

“I’ve looked around [for housing]… no luck yet. “

Larkin Street Youth Services would not confirm whether they would assist Cory in finding help, but said they are able to assist those who join the system before they are 25 and will continue to receive after they are 25 .

They say they have accommodated over 400 young people so far this year.

KRON4 will continue our efforts to investigate the situation on the streets, but we also need your help. If there’s anything you think we need to see or hear, email OnTheStreets@KRON4.com

The post Assembly the youth experiencing homelessness in San Francisco: Their tales appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A year ago, Amoeba Music was in trouble.
 
Though the 25,000-square-foot bowling alley-turned-vinyl collectors’ paradise on Haight Street had managed to withstand an economic recession, shifting listening formats and the rise in music streaming services, it was the first time the store would face an entirely new beast: the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Amid the shutdown of retail, the in-person transactions Amoeba heavily relied upon came to a standstill, and its once lively aisles filled with record enthusiasts digging through the bins and seeking out their latest auditory treasure grew eerily silent. The independent record store chain was forced to furlough most of its staff at all three locations, including its original storefront on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley as well as its outpost on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Their most popular event of the year, Record Store Day, came and went without the usual lines rounding the block in front of the store, and with no end in sight to the pandemic, co-founder Marc Weinstein started to worry.

“We certainly had our dark days of wondering whether we would survive all of this,” he said. “There was a tremendous degree of uncertainty, especially not knowing what the government might be offering in terms of assistance or help.”
 
Luckily, Amoeba was able to secure two PPP loans, in addition to individual grants for each of its three stores, which helped to cover most of the losses. Meanwhile, a successful GoFundMe campaign generated nearly $300,000 — all of which went toward maintaining health care benefits and payroll-related costs for more than 400 employees. Amoeba’s Haight Street location was the first of the three stores to cautiously reopen in September with a reduced capacity and limited hours, among other safety measures.

But as business barely trickled in, product manager Tony Green also began to feel uneasy.

Amoeba Records product manager Tony Green inside the store on Haight Street in San Francisco on April 6, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

“We were very concerned going into December,” he said.

That’s when the city entered its second stay-at-home order, forcing the store to close for another month. But it wasn’t until late January, when San Francisco lifted the order and entered the purple tier of the state’s reopening plan, that the Amoeba Music on Haight Street experienced what Green called “a 180-degree turnaround.”
 
The atmosphere of the block seemed to change overnight, from that of a scene in an apocalyptic horror film to a newly awakened neighborhood blossoming with vibrant activity. As restaurants and bars with parklets and outdoor seating reopened, the difference in foot traffic was staggering. And though Amoeba had to reduce its operation to four days a week, the store found itself struggling to keep up with the surge in business, even with the return of most of its staff.

That’s when Green came upon a stunning revelation: The store has been continually making more in those four days of business than it previously had during a typical week in 2019, prior to the pandemic. Not only that, but the store has also seen an influx in physical media traded for store credit, accounting for about 70% of sales. Additionally, the amount of vinyl LPs purchased per customer had soared.
 
One thing was clear: San Francisco’s largest record store was still in high demand.
 
“I woke up this morning with a strange feeling,” Green said. “I realized it was job security. We’ve been incredibly surprised by the level of support and business.”

A sign hangs inside Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco on April 6, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

He attributes this renaissance to a variety of factors. For one, people had been cooped up at home for weeks, if not months. Some of them had stimulus checks they were eager to spend, or a handful of old records they no longer listened to and hoped to exchange for an upgraded selection. But Weinstein also believes that record stores provide a personal freedom that not necessarily everyone knows how to quantify.
 
“People were missing a space like ours in their lives,” he said. “They still want the experience of being part of a community and for immediate access to records. A record geek loves Amoeba because there are so many opportunities for real life serendipity.”
 
Regardless of the cause for the resurgence, it’s led to a renewed interest in record shopping at Amoeba that just might rival the store’s opening date nearly 24 years ago.

A line of customers waits outside of Amoeba Music in its early days.

Courtesy of Marc Weinstein and Amoeba Music

‘No one had ever seen anything like it’

It was Nov. 15, 1997, and record shoppers had been waiting outside in the rain for hours.
 
“That didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for coming in,” said Green, who had just transferred from his previous gig at the Berkeley store to a new role as head buyer for the Haight Street location. “It was just a stream of people, and so busy, you wouldn’t believe it. There was a line out the door the whole day, and I felt punch drunk by the end of it.”
 
Once they were let in, customers sprinted headlong down the ramps of what used to be Park Bowl and toward the bins containing thousands of new and used records and CDs. “Within half an hour, the aisles were clogged and the clacking CD cases sounded like corn popping,” read an article published in the Chronicle two days later.

Some of the records for sale at Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco on April 6, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

There was a selection of rare jazz and soul records Weinstein himself had sourced from around the country, which attracted a reasonable chunk of the avid collectors present that day, as well as hard-to-come-by rock LPs and a collection of albums from the Country Music Hall of Fame. Customers excitedly noted that every album in Bob Dylan’s discography was available either used or new. There was even a $10,000 copy of the Beatles’ infamous “Yesterday and Today” butcher cover with the original shrink wrap on it — one of the most expensive records Amoeba has sold to date.

“Today, all friendships are off,” one of the customers, a San Francisco resident named James Colbert, told the Chronicle. “You get in and do your damage and get out.” 

Meanwhile, Weinstein was just happy that his dream of opening a record store in the city had finally come to fruition. Though the Amoeba Music in Berkeley had been successfully running for seven years by that point, Weinstein, fellow co-owner Dave Prinz and Joe Goldmark (who at the time was a part-time owner of Escape from New York Pizza) had originally set their sights on San Francisco — and specifically Haight Street — for their first storefront. Prinz described it as “Telegraph’s sister street,” and when Weinstein heard murmurings that Park Bowl owner Gilbert Klein had plans to move out, he struck a deal with the former KFAT-FM talk show host to lease the building before it went to market.

“The scale of our store has everything to do with the fact that it was a bowling alley. It was a rare opportunity to get a space that size, and still to this day is a unique aspect of Amoeba,” he said. “It represents half an acre of music, and no one had ever seen anything like it.”

Before it was Amoeba Music, it was Park Bowl.

Courtesy of Marc Weinstein and Amoeba Music

It’s worth noting that Park Bowl was once a success story in its own right. At popular Rock & Bowl nights, which were also run by Klein, retro music videos played over the monitors while upbeat pop songs thrummed over the speakers, and neon lights flashed over gaggles of mostly amateur bowlers as they filled the scene to drink and dance. It attracted the likes of celebrities such as Robin Williams, who hosted cast parties there.

On a visit to Amoeba, traces of Park Bowl are still visible. The right side of the building once housed a pool hall associated with the bowling alley, and when you walk into the store today, the stairs are where bowlers would have gone to sit down at the tables and pick up their bowling balls. There was a diner where the store’s buy counter currently stands, and the wooden benches that once appeared along the bowling lanes can now be found near Amoeba’s book section.

The former Park Bowl underwent renovation in the early 1990s before transforming into Amoeba Music.

Courtesy of Marc Weinstein and Amoeba Music

There are still a few bins of bowling balls in the attic, according to Green, and Amoeba’s management originally thought of leaving one lane up for employees to play after hours.
 
“Unfortunately, the equipment was so decrepit we couldn’t use it,” he said.
 
The record store’s massive neon sign bears the same font as the original Park Bowl logo, but perhaps the most obvious symbol of the bowling alley that once was is the sign at the top of the tower on the building, which the city of San Francisco asked Amoeba to preserve. They did so, albeit begrudgingly.

“It’s still there,” said Green, chuckling. “And it still gets tagged.”

The former bowling sign sits atop the Amoeba Records marquee on Haight Street in San Francisco on April 6, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

A place to play

Over the years, scores of musicians have appeared at Amoeba on Haight Street, not only for in-store performances and to peruse the record bins, but also as employees behind the counter.
 
Joel Gion, the emblematic tambourine player of psych-revival rock band The Brian Jonestown Massacre, worked there for a number of years, as did Tim Hellman of garage rockers Thee Oh Sees and Flat Worms. Shayde Sartin of The Fresh & Onlys and currently the Peacers, Tim Cullen of Summercamp and Matt Correia of the Allah-Las were employed there, too. 
 
Several episodes of Amoeba’s Webby Award-winning YouTube series, “What’s in my Bag?” have been filmed at the Haight Street store as well, featuring the musical picks of actors Fred Armisen and John Cameron Mitchell, musicians Ty Segall and Mac DeMarco, singer-songwriter Valerie June, rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and dozens of others.

“It’s a little weird when they’re doing it,” Green said of the filming of the episodes in his stores. “We have to turn the music down really low so it feels a little creepy … almost like something is wrong. But it’s one of the most popular things about our website, and it’s still going strong.”

Though Weinstein and Green are grateful all of their stores are now open to the public again, there’s one component of Amoeba that they’re eager to return to: its popular (and free) in-store concert series, “Live at Amoeba.”
 
The city of San Francisco recently issued guidelines that will allow indoor live shows to go on with capacity limits, but Amoeba will likely wait to resume its own events until the store is able to get back to its usual seven-day operation. And because most of the acts that perform at Amoeba are associated with touring artists, they must wait for those tours to start happening again, though Weinstein said he’s exploring the possibility of holding live shows with local artists this year.

Some of the records for sale at Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco on April 6, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

These in-store performances notably debuted at the Haight Street location and have hosted a variety of memorable acts: Elvis Costello played at both Amoeba S.F. and Amoeba Hollywood in the same day in November 2009. Touring in a station wagon, the White Stripes borrowed a drum kit for the performance from one of Amoeba’s buyers, an employee named Jason. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo showed up and played a 12-minute jam session. And after the release of her album “Born to Die,” Lana Del Rey stayed so long meeting fans and signing records that she chose to miss her flight home and took a taxi back to Los Angeles, said Weinstein.

On a recent trip to Amoeba myself, I overheard two employees discussing the time that rapper Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) had unexpectedly appeared at the store.
 
“He showed up with his whole entourage, and he didn’t even buy anything,” they said in apparent disbelief. The other employee just shook their head in disappointment.
 
But the show that sticks out most to Green was a performance from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
 
“There were about 600 people in the store, and the lead singer ran out on top of the CDs and played this insane guitar solo right in front of Dave [Prinz], our owner. I could just see the look on his face … it was totally rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “No damage though. We may have broken a bin card.”

Amoeba Music co-owner Marc Weinstein at the Haight Street store.

Courtesy of Marc Weinstein and Amoeba Music

Even without the lively performances, masses of music lovers are slowly making their way back to Amoeba again, and despite the limited operation and an overall challenging year, Weinstein feels optimistic about the store’s future, which holds a special place in his heart.

“It’s one aspect of the old San Francisco we still have left,” he said.

It’s Haight Month at SFGATE. We’ll be diving deep into the neighborhood for the entirety of April as part of a new series where we’ll be highlighting a different corner of San Francisco every month this year.

The post San Francisco’s Amoeba Music is experiencing a record-shopping renaissance appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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