May 25th and 26th
Located on Harrison Street between 16th and 24th Streets

Photo via Carnaval San Francisco / Pankaj Bhargava.

Carnaval San Francisco is a colorful two-day festival held annually over Memorial Day weekend in San Francisco's Mission District. It celebrates Latin American, Caribbean and Afro-diasporic cultures through music, dance, art and cuisine.

Founded in 1979 by a group of artists and activists, it is now the largest multicultural festival on the West Coast. The free festival spans 17 blocks in the Mission District, primarily along Harrison Street between 16th and 24th Streets. It features five main stages with over 50 local artists, 400 vendors, international cuisine, crafts and various activities for all ages.

The highlight is the lively grand parade on Sunday with elaborate costumes, music and dance groups representing different cultures and traditions.

The post San Francisco is heating up — Right here’s what’s occurring in Could 2024 | by The Daring Italic | Could, 2024 appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the Foster City area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the Foster City area.

Find out what’s happening in Foster Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Build serrano

• Customer review: “I am very pleased with his work and will hire him again if I ever need a handyman! 5 stars”
• Check availability

EV general home services

• Customer review: “Very nice, very hard worker. Very detailed and most importantly – she did an amazing job. The house is CLEAN.”
• Check availability

Alex The Handyman: Wall and Doors Repair, TV Mount

• Customer review: “Strongly, I would like to recommend Alex The Handyman to other friends.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the Foster City area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other Foster City community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the Foster City area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in Foster Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The Foster City Area

The rules of replying:

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The post Want A Restore? This is How A lot A Handyman Prices In The Foster Metropolis Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the Livermore area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the Livermore area.

Find out what’s happening in Livermorewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Build serrano

• Customer review: “I am very pleased with his work and will hire him again if I ever need a handyman! 5 stars”
• Check availability

Mario Lopez Jr

• Customer review: “Very organized, good work quality and very clean! Highly recommended!”
• Check availability

Phillip’s Home Solutions LLC

• Customer review: “brandon was great ! worker hard, solved our issues, professional, showed up when he said he would, what to say ? you will be happy to have him there.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the Livermore area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other Livermore community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the Livermore area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in Livermorewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The Livermore Area

The rules of replying:

• Be respectful. This is a space for friendly local discussions. No racist, discriminatory, vulgar or threatening language will be tolerated.
• Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims.
• Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic.
• Review the Patch Community Guidelines.

Reply to this articleReply

The post Want A Restore? This is How A lot A Handyman Prices In The Livermore Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the Albany area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the Albany area.

Find out what’s happening in Albanywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Build serrano

• Customer review: “I am very pleased with his work and will hire him again if I ever need a handyman! 5 stars”
• Check availability

Mario Lopez Jr

• Customer review: “Very organized, good work quality and very clean! Highly recommended!”
• Check availability

Carlos Garces

• Customer review: “Carlos was able to finished up a job that another handyman abandoned. Very flexible and creative in completing the task at hand.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the Albany area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other Albany community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the Albany area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in Albanywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The Albany Area

The rules of replying:

• Be respectful. This is a space for friendly local discussions. No racist, discriminatory, vulgar or threatening language will be tolerated.
• Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims.
• Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic.
• Review the Patch Community Guidelines.

Reply to this articleReply

Seasonal & Holidays|Dec 15

Seasonal & Holidays|Nov 22

The post Want A Restore? Here is How A lot A Handyman Prices In The Albany Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the San Leandro area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the San Leandro area.

Find out what’s happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Build serrano

• Customer review: “I am very pleased with his work and will hire him again if I ever need a handyman! 5 stars”
• Check availability

Mario Lopez Jr

• Customer review: “Very organized, good work quality and very clean! Highly recommended!”
• Check availability

EV general home services

• Customer review: “Very nice, very hard worker. Very detailed and most importantly – she did an amazing job. The house is CLEAN.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the San Leandro area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other San Leandro community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the San Leandro area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The San Leandro Area

The rules of replying:

• Be respectful. This is a space for friendly local discussions. No racist, discriminatory, vulgar or threatening language will be tolerated.
• Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims.
• Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic.
• Review the Patch Community Guidelines.

Reply to this articleReply

The post Want A Restore? This is How A lot A Handyman Prices In The San Leandro Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the San Rafael area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the San Rafael area.

Find out what’s happening in San Rafaelwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Mario Lopez Jr

• Customer review: “Very organized, good work quality and very clean! Highly recommended!”
• Check availability

Bambo mobile

Carlos Garces

• Customer review: “Carlos was able to finished up a job that another handyman abandoned. Very flexible and creative in completing the task at hand.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the San Rafael area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other San Rafael community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the San Rafael area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in San Rafaelwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The San Rafael Area

The rules of replying:

• Be respectful. This is a space for friendly local discussions. No racist, discriminatory, vulgar or threatening language will be tolerated.
• Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims.
• Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic.
• Review the Patch Community Guidelines.

Reply to this articleReply

The post Want A Restore? This is How A lot A Handyman Prices In The San Rafael Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — It’s an idea that’s sweeping the country: unconditional cash handed out on a monthly basis to families most in need. Universal basic income pilot programs are popping up all across the US But rarely do we get to follow a family and see the impacts these small amounts of cash can have on the recipients. ABC7 News followed one family from one basic income pilot for an entire year, here’s what we saw.

From chocolate to sugar cookies, scones and more Deisy Chan loves making sweet treats at the bakery she works at in the Mission.

The early days and long hours of standing can be tiring, but it’s all in support of her family.

We first met Deisy in November of 2021 when she and her family of four called a three-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin home.

Before the pandemic, another couple lived with Deisy and her family and paid half the rent. But that family moved out during the pandemic leaving Deisy’s family with the entire bill.

RELATED: San Francisco launches new guaranteed income program for transgender community

Then, it was only Deisy, her husband Miguel Senior, and her two boys: 3-year-old Mateo and 13-year-old Miguel Jr.

Deisy speaks Spanish and an indigenous language native to Mexico. She spoke to us in Spanish as she prepared dinner for her boys.

“To live here is expensive,” she said. She’s paying more than $3,000 a month in rent now that the family moved out.

“It’s tough buying things for the kids because I have to save so much for rent,” she said.

But saving got easier for Deisy and financial burdens less stressful.

A month before we met her and her family, in October of 2021, she received $350 of unconditional cash.

The payment was the first of six monthly checks as part of a Basic Income Pilot program.

“It’s a great help,” she said.

She’s able to buy food for her family without worrying if she can afford it. Deisy told us her youngest is growing fast. Now she’s able to make sure he has the basics, thanks to the additional cash.

Deisy and her family were selected to be one of the 13 families enrolled in the basic income program run through Compass Family Services.

The San Francisco nonprofit has been around for more than 100 years, focused on safety net programs for families that are unhoused or on the brink of living without shelter.

Compass offers wrap-around services like food assistance and free childcare.

Deisy’s youngest, Mateo, is enrolled there. That’s how she heard of the program.

The program provided each family $350 a month for six months for a total of just $2,100.

VIDEO: Universal basic income for Californians? Assemblyman breaks it down

“A little bit of money can make a really big difference for the families,” said Erica Kisch, executive director of Compass Family Services. “The families are using these funds for basic needs.”

Kisch said the basic income pilot was made possible by a $35,000 grant from Wells Fargo.

She said the nonprofit surveyed the families before, during, and after the program concluded.

ABC7 News followed Deisy and her family for the six months of the program.

“One of the words (the families) used when they were describing how the funds impacted them was that it increased their calm… So the idea that families are so stressed out by their finances, or lack of finances, and that affects everything ,” said Kisch.

There are currently more than 100 active Basic Income programs being tested in all 50 states – most of them following the huge success of a program started in Stockton by former Mayor Michael Tubbs.

Tubbs now leads the group Mayors for a guaranteed income. The group is a network of dozens of mayors across the country that have pledged to test the idea of ​​a guaranteed income in their cities.

The locations range in size from major cities from San Francisco, Oakland, and Atlanta to smaller cities like Salisbury, Maryland.

A newly released report by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income shows that families surveyed from 20 guaranteed income programs primarily used the funds on necessities.

The report shows 39% of the fund’s recipients received was spent at discount superstores for clothes, food, household goods and hygiene products.

Another 27% of funds were spent at grocery stores, 9% on transportation costs including gas and car repairs, and 7% on housing utilities.

Other notable expenses included loan payments, medical expenses, and tuition.

RELATED: Oakland to launch universal income program

“If you’re worried about food to feed your children, pay your rent, pay your utilities, buy milk – that’s going to impact your mental health, that’s going to impact your ability to parent… So just the idea that we could reduce that tension-that stress-and support the families’ calm just feels like it’s certainly a good use of $350 a month,” she added.

Along with the six monthly payments of unconditional cash, the 13 families enrolled in this pilot program received additional help including access to family counseling and money management classes, much-needed help when you’re just one unexpected bill away from homelessness.

“The situation that they are facing is they cannot pay their rent or they cannot buy groceries or they cannot pay other bills,” said Gerardo Gonzalez, Compass Family Services family and community engagement coordinator.

That’s the exact situation Deisy and her family found themselves in when we checked in halfway through the program, some three months in.

We caught up with Deisy over Zoom as the entire family recovered from COVID.

She told us her husband was out of work for two weeks because he was still testing positive for COVID.

Paid sick leave through Deisy and her husband’s job kept the family afloat, but still sick, her husband couldn’t work his part-time job so money was tight.

Deisy said she’s unsure how they would have purchased groceries without the extra cushion from the program. She’s grateful for the assistance – and is already saving what she can. She’s planning ahead for when her family will no longer have that added help and hopes the family can move into a less expensive apartment to save even more.

Months later, we caught up with Deisy on a busy summer day as she picked up her youngest son from after-school care offered by Compass Family Services.

She’s grateful for this support along with the $350 of unconditional cash she’s received for the last six months.

With a sense of gratitude and emotion akin to guilt, Deisy told us she wishes even more families could receive this basic income on top of services like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) her two boys already receive.

Her wish is becoming reality as an increasing number of organizations and city governments across the Bay Area, and beyond, test out basic income programs.

The City of Mountain View, which started sending out $500 payments to more than one hundred families just days ago, is the latest city to test out a basic income in the Bay.

“We can definitely call the movement,” said Sean Klein, associate director of the Stanford Basic Income Lab. “I don’t think we ever thought we would be at this place even a few years ago.

Stanford’s Basic Income Lab was launched in 2017 to study the successes and roadblocks of basic income pilots across the country.

Early findings from the lab suggest families spent the money on necessities like rent and food – not drugs and alcohol.

Kline also noted the added assistance allowed adults to look for better-paying, full-time jobs and does not cause reliance on the program, a major argument by naysayers.

“The evidence suggests that unconditional cash is efficient. It’s swift. It’s much more powerful than in-kind assistance: food, even housing, because it gives people the agency and the means to make the choices they know are right for their family,” Kline added.

Kline points to recent examples of the government doling out unconditional cash at large scales as an example of the power these programs could have if applied more broadly.

Just think back to the several rounds of stimulus checks during the onset of the COVID pandemic from the federal government and the State of California.

Or look at the longest-standing basic income program in the country just to our north in Alaska with the “Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend”.

For nearly the last four decades residents of the state have received an annual lump sum payment of approximately $1,600. The money is generated through taxes on the state’s oil companies.

“Middle and upper-middle-class families receive a tremendous amount of in-kind, unconditional tax benefits from the government. We don’t call into question when someone’s able to write off the interest on their mortgage, we don’t ask them for a urine sample. And yet, when it comes to those who are really in dire straits and need support from the government, who they pay taxes to as well, we call into question their deservingness,” Kline said.

When we caught up with Deisy, just weeks after receiving the final check in the pilot program, it was in her new government-subsidized apartment.

She and her family moved in just weeks earlier and now they are able to save money on rent.

Deisy gave us a tour as little Mateo showed us what he’s most excited about in his new home: toys. Just like every other kid.

Deisy tells us the six months of unconditional cash has been significant. It allowed the family to be financially secure when her husband lost his job.

It even gave the family enough breathing room to save up to buy new beds and even pay for her 13-year-old to start playing soccer.

For most, these are the basics. For Deisy it’s the American Dream. Out of reach for so long, now possible with just a little extra help.

It’s a transformation of the organization behind the basic income pilot calls a “huge success.”

It’s been so successful, Compass plans to expand the program to many more families thanks to a newly awarded grant.

“Absolutely, we plan to do more of this,” said Kisch.

This is welcome news for Deisy who wants more families to get the help her family did.

“I’m thankful to God that he puts people in my path who want to help me,” Deisy said.

Now Compass plans to do the same for so many others.

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

Copyright © 2022 KGO-TV. All rights reserved.

The post Does common primary revenue work? Here is the way it modified this San Francisco household’s life appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A great record shop is like a time machine, a portal to another world. In the right hands, these spaces are capable of fostering a deep connection to the overlapping worlds of music and art, and nurturing a community around expression. In our ever more technological world, they stand as meaningful anachronisms made modern by new generations of listeners, reaching beyond the digitizing of music and performance and grounding us in the aural physicality of music.

Such is the scene at Dark Entries, a new shop and gallery in the Tenderloin. It’s the work of Josh Cheon, a longtime DJ and founder of the archival and reissue label Dark Entries Records. Housed inside a former tattoo parlor at 910 Larkin St., not far from where Cheon has lived and worked for a decade, in the historically queer Tenderloin neighborhood, the shop officially opens its doors to crate diggers Saturday, Dec. 10

“I always imagined this as being a place where someday we could host events,” said Cheon, who acquired the space in early 2021 when rents dropped amid pandemic uncertainty. “It’s a modular space, and I want to keep it in flux.”

Josh Cheon, a longtime San Francisco nightlife DJ and founder of the archival and reissue label Dark Entries Records, is opening a record shop in the Tenderloin. Photo: Carlo Velasquez / Dark Entries Records

This block of Larkin has become something of a “corridor of art,” Cheon said, anchored by the Magazine SF (home to the Bob Mizer Foundation) and the Moth Belly Gallery.

“Before the Castro was gay, this was the gay neighborhood — the first gay pride parade in America was on Polk Street, and the first gay riot was here as well,” Cheon said. “The Gangway, the oldest gay bar in SF, was right down the street. I knew I wanted to be here, in the tenderloin, to keep it queer… and to host artists and events in the space that reflect this history.”

To further the art gallery aesthetic, the record shop’s visual identity is anchored by two original collage works from Gwenaël Rattke, a Berlin visual artist represented by Romer Young Gallery of San Francisco.

Josh Cheon’s Dark Entries Records is located at 910 Larkin St. Photo: Carlo Velasquez / Dark Entries Records

The shop will offer titles from the Dark Entries catalog — more than 300 releases since 2009 — as well as favorites from Cheon’s expansive personal archives, collected over his decades of work as an archivist and DJ. But of particular focus at Dark Entries is the music of Patrick Cowley, a San Francisco electronic music composer and recording artist. Thanks to several posthumous releases, his body of work — and influence — has only grown in the 21st century, some 40 years after his death.

An early victim of the AIDS pandemic, Cowley became famous as a composer and performer in collaboration with Sylvester, the iconic San Francisco disco chanteuse. Cowley composed Sylvester’s 1982 hit “Do Ya Wanna Funk?” which rose to the no. 4 spot on the Billboard dance music chart, and toured the world as a member of Sylvester’s live band in 1979. Other notable Cowley tracks from the era include a remix of Donna Summer’s iconic Giorgio Moroder-penned single “I Feel Love” (dubbed the “definitive” remix by MixMag), as well as the original composition “Right on Target,” performed by San Francisco singer Paul Parker. It reached no. 1 on the Billboard dance chart shortly before Cowley’s death in the autumn of 1982.

Exploring the sonic world of the late EDM pioneer Patrick Cowley

Patrick Cowley, a San Francisco electronic music composer and recording artist, died November 1982. Now 40 years later, his music is a focus at Dark Entries, a new record shop in the Tenderloin. Photo: Dark Entries Records

In his lifetime, Cowley released just three solo LPs: “Megatron Man” and “Menergy,” both from 1981, plus “Mind Warp,” composed and released in 1982. And things might have ended there, if not for Cheon’s label.

In 2007, Cheon, then a member of local queer DJ collective Honey Soundsystem, was introduced to John Hedges, the former owner of Megatone Records, the San Francisco music label founded by Cowley and Marty Blecman in 1981. By the mid-1990s, the Independent label was sold to Unidisc Records, a Montreal company that owns the publishing rights to a diverse coterie of late 20th century performers.

But Hedges’ private collection included unreleased Cowley recordings on reel-to-reel tapes. Songs from those tapes emerged in 2009 as the album “Catholic,” issued by Berlin-based Macro. Cheon avidly spun Cowley’s music at underground parties across San Francisco, and his work with Honey Soundsystem put him in contact with people from Cowley’s inner circle, including family members, patrons and collaborators.

Patrick Cowley, a San Francisco electronic music composer and recording artist. Photo: Dark Entries Records

One was Maurice Tani, who met Cowley in the early 1970s at City College. “We just called him Pat,” recalled Tani, speaking from his home in Berkeley. Together the duo collaborated during late nights at the campus electronic music lab, and later in studios and early home recording setups across the city. Tani contributed bass and lead guitar work to dozens of Cowley recordings, and kept several boxes of reel-to-reel tapes of Cowley’s compositions following his death.

Another collaborator was John Coletti, who in the late 1970s helmed Fox Studios, a gay pornography studio in Los Angeles. Coletti worked with Cowley on the soundtracks to several films, offering a home for the composer’s original instrumental and atmospheric works, music little heard outside of the late 20th century gay film subculture.

Dark Entries Records is publishing Patrick Cowley’s personal journal, “Mechanical Fantasy Box: The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley.” Photo: Dark Entries Records

Over the last decade, Cheon has worked with Coletti, Tani, and others to restore, digitize, and release Cowley’s forgotten oeuvre to growing public interest. This work includes hosting nightlife events, promoting the music on social media, publishing Cowley’s intimate personal journal (“Mechanical Fantasy Box: The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley”), and making his work available to streaming services, all of it under the Dark Entries Records banner.

Along the way, Cowley’s life and work have been reappraised by the contemporary music and cultural press, with major features in Pitchfork, the New York Times, the Guardian, Art Review and on NPR. There are nine Cowley albums now available via Dark Entries, all prominently featured on the shelves at the new shop.

Dark Entries Records released Patrick Cowley’s “Malebox” last month. Photo: Dark Entries Records

The latest, “Malebox,” released last month, is a collection of demos — whose origin story reads like episodic television.

Tipped off to their existence by a follower on social media, Cheon went from haggling with distant descendants of a Megatone Records owner on Craigslist to poring over decaying boxes of tapes in a South Bay storage shed.

“The roof was collapsing, raccoons had made a nest inside, and every single box had some kind of excrement in it,” recalled Cheon. “It’s a miracle we were able to get any tracks from it.”

For Cowley fans, it’s roughly the equivalent of pulling a van Gogh painting from a garbage can.

The album’s centerpiece is “Low Down Dirty Rhythm,” recorded in the fall of 1979. The track wobbles and thumps with a palpable, unshakable sense of rhythmic sleaze; thrilling and sensual, it’s impossible to dislodge from one’s head, requiring repeat listenings. Accompanied by vocalist Jeanie Tracy (a backup singer in Sylvester’s live band), this track anchors Cowley not just as a burgeoning hitmaker cementing his powers, but as a pop compositional auteur nonpareil, evoking the better-known work of multiplatinum legends like Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and Prince.

Tape loops and layered hand production help provide an organic feel essential to these recordings, what Tani describes as “a frothy combination of synth-based beats with traditional percussion layered on top.” Cowley’s music is a reflection of a place and time, of overlapping San Francisco subcultures and gay liberation, but it also expresses the fascinating sonic milieu of pre-digital dance music in the 1970s and early ’80s.

Patrick Cowley, a San Francisco electronic music composer and recording artist, was 32 when he died in 1982. Photo: Dark Entries Records

Tani calls it “a melding of art and science — experimental music in every sense.” A time of four-track analog tape recorders and magnetic tape sequencing cut by razor blade and splicing block, of great hulking synthesizers like something out of Mission Control. They say each of us now walks around with more computing power in our pocket than it took to land a man on the moon; one can only imagine what Cowley might have done with a copy of Pro Tools.

Cowley was just 32 when he died, with multiple songs on the dance charts and a herculean body of work already on tape. Cheon is keenly aware of the reactions his reissues have engendered from Cowley’s contemporaries: his bandmates; his surviving family; the people who knew him throughout his too-brief life as a composer, friend, brother and son.

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” he said. “There’s excitement but also incredible sadness because he was stolen so early. I feel like I’m a custodian for lost and unreleased music.”

Indeed, Tani believes “this music would have been lost without him. Without Josh, Pat’s stuff would still just be in my attic. He’s the curator. His work has been so incredibly important.”

Josh Cheon, founder of Dark Entries Records, said he chose the Tenderloin for his record shop because, “Before the Castro was gay, this was the gay neighborhood. … I knew I wanted to be here, in the tenderloin, to keep it queer.” Photo: Carlo Velasquez / Dark Entries Records

A great record shop is like a time machine, but no glimpse at the past is truly meaningful without the context of the present. Dark Entries Records serves as a hub of connectivity to San Francisco in an earlier era, drawing a through line to the role of art and music in city life today. It is a reverent platform for the work of Cowley, who at last is being recognized as one of San Francisco’s great composers.

“For a gay man who suffered from AIDS, whose music sat in boxes for decades after his death, the depth and range of his sounds are incredible,” said Cheon.

Forty years later, inside a new record shop on Larkin, San Francisco, can continue listening.

Dark Entries Records Grand Opening Party: DJ sets by Carlos Souffront, Topazu and Jeremy Castillo. 6-9 pm Saturday, Dec. 10. 910 Larkin St., SF Updates on Instagram @darkentriesrecords. www.darktriesrecords.com

The post San Francisco is getting a brand new report store within the Tenderloin. This is why it is so nice appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

He stood in the corner of San Francisco’s Department of Motor Vehicles, clutching the handles of his walker and waiting for his turn to apply for an identification card. He’d lost it a few years ago, along with his home, his health and his dignity.

“I recognize those two people right there,” he whispered to me, anxiously, nodding at a man with a long braid and a young woman in a blue dress just feet away.

Ben Campofreda, 41, had smoked fentanyl many times with the pair on the sidewalks of the Tenderloin. He hoped they wouldn’t spot him.

After lifesaving surgeries and a hospital detox, he could stand instead of slumping in his old wheelchair. His long hair, once grimy, was cut short. He wore clean clothes.

Ben had been sober for four months by that September afternoon and aimed to keep it that way. Reconnecting with anyone from his old life, he figured, could jeopardize that. Fortunately, his former friends took no notice of him.

“I love that nobody recognizes me,” he said. “There’s a rumor on the streets that I died on the operating table. I told my dad about that, and he said, ‘Good. Let everybody think that you’re dead.’”

The rumor may be more believable than the truth — Ben had managed to kick fentanyl, the terribly powerful and addictive opioid that has radically changed San Francisco. He told me that of all the friends he made smoking “fetty” on city streets, 40 had overdosed and died. Just one, he said, is in recovery.

I’ve been following Ben since late August because his story exemplifies so much about the cruelty of a city that makes it far easier to buy deadly drugs than to access treatment to leave them behind. But his journey shows there’s hope for the legions of people like him dotting the Tenderloin and South of Market districts in a fentanyl-fueled fugue, often sprawled on the sidewalks or folded over where they stand.

With the help of family and friends, talented health care workers and the resolute determination to be free of addiction, a better life is possible. But the obstacles are significant. The question as I kept in touch with Ben was whether he could hold on to his new sobriety and avoid falling back into the chaos of life on the drug.

In the DMV, the numbers ticked.

“Lucky 13!” Ben said. “I’m next! All right, I’m ready.”

Ben Campofreda, about age 7, at his grandparents’ house in Virginia

Courtesy Judi Johnson

Ben Campofreda, in his early 20s, at a restaurant celebrating his great-grandmother Mary’s birthday.

Courtesy Judi Johnson

Left: Ben Campofreda, about age 7, at his grandparents’ house in Virginia. Right: Campofreda, in his early 20s, at a restaurant celebrating his great-grandmother Mary’s birthday. Photos provided by Judi Johnson. At top of story: Campofreda walks through San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to catch a bus to his drug treatment program.
Top: Ben Campofreda, about age 7, at his grandparents’ house in Virginia. Above: Campofreda, in his early 20s, at a restaurant celebrating his great-grandmother Mary’s birthday. Photos provided by Judi Johnson. At top of story: Campofreda walks through San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to catch a bus to his drug treatment program.

Ben, who grew up in Virginia, developed spinal stenosis as a teenager; a lack of space in the backbone puts pressure on nerves in his spine. By 20, he had constant, extreme back pain.

A doctor prescribed Oxycodone, and Ben loved both the relief from his pain and the energy the pills gave him. Within a couple years, he’d developed a serious addiction, consuming an entire month’s supply of 120 pills in a day by crushing and snorting them. He found an M.D. who would write prescriptions for more for $100 a pop and supplemented all that by buying pills on the street.

This allowed him to live a successful life as a snowboarding instructor in Colorado, then as a sound engineer and production manager who toured with musicians including the rapper Macklemore.

But the addiction grew stronger, and buying all those pills was expensive. In his early thirties, Ben switched to heroin, which was cheaper.

He moved to Santa Clara with a girlfriend six years ago to be near her family, working remotely for a Colorado company that provides online courses to educate people about cannabis, including how to run successful dispensaries and how to cook with it. He tried to hide his worsening dependence on opioids from his girlfriend, but she was suspicious of his increasingly strange behavior and dumped him after catching him smoking heroin on a camping trip.

His boss fired him too after Ben was high and incoherent during a weed conference in Seattle.

Next came a stint in an RV that he parked in Millbrae, providing an easy starting point for Uber rides into the city to buy heroin. When his RV broke down and was impounded, he couldn’t afford to get it out. So he settled into life on the streets of the Tenderloin, never calling one corner home, but just wandering.

Almost immediately, someone stole his backpack with his wallet and phone. And finally he did what so many have done: He switched to fentanyl, which was cheaper than heroin and far stronger.

He funded his addiction by dumpster-diving, explaining to me that many San Franciscans are so rich that they throw away clothes with tags on them, sunglasses, electronics and toys. He sold whatever items he could salvage by spreading them on a tarp or a blanket at Sixth and Market streets at night.

He often ate breakfast, used the bathroom and got toiletries at Glide Memorial Church or St. Anthony’s and got more goods from outreach workers.

“There was a lot of food offered,” he said. “People would hand out tents and sleeping bags, toothbrushes, deodorant, harm-reduction supplies. They would give out meth pipes, crack pipes, aluminum foil.”

The drugs were the easiest to score of all — dealers were everywhere, and fentanyl was dirt-cheap — and soon his life was entirely centered around scoring his next hit.

“The dealers figured out the science of that one real good,” he said of fentanyl. “It’s a jackpot for them. You constantly need it, you constantly want it and you’ll do anything you can to get it.”

A cop, every so often, would approach him in the Tenderloin and tell him to put his drugs away. He doesn’t recall a single outreach worker offering him treatment on the street, even as the city’s drug crisis grew so severe that one or two people, on average, died of overdoses every day.

He rarely slept at night, using methamphetamines to stay awake, and sometimes stretched out on a pew at St. Boniface Church to doze during the day.

“Everywhere else,” he said, “you’ll just get robbed.”

He managed to get by OK for a while, but then an infection in his legs made its way into his spine, and he couldn’t walk. He became confined to a wheelchair, unable to use the bathroom or get food without help. He normally weighed 170 pounds, but as his health grew worse, he shrunk to a startling 100 pounds. His hands grew red and puffy, a common symptom of opioid use.

“I wasn’t taking care of myself at all,” Ben said. “I didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

Campofreda on the streets of San Francisco shortly before his friend took him to UCSF in the spring for medical help and to beat his addiction.

Courtesy James Nugent

One thousand two hundred and seventy four. By the count of Judi Johnson, that’s the number of days her son was homeless.

“San Francisco reminds me of a Mad Max movie,” she said. “It’s beautiful and the weather’s nice, but I don’t understand how you can let people do drugs on the street like that. It’s not compassion. It didn’t seem like there was any help.”

She flew to the city from Virginia four times to visit Ben and was shocked by his worsening health. The skinny, filthy man in the wheelchair looked nothing like her little boy.

“He was gaunt. He was sick. He was off-color. He had sores,” she said, crying at the memory. “It just broke me. It still hurts to think about it.”

She found him easily each time just by walking around, then offered him help like food, hotel stays and phones he kept losing.

“I never went there thinking I could change him,” she said. “I just hoped Ben would see how much I loved him and come back.”

He didn’t, and when the pandemic struck, she stopped flying out west. She worried about her son during the day and dreamed of him at night, joining a growing number of parents whose children are addicted, homeless and lost here.

“San Francisco reminds me of a Mad Max movie.”

— Judi Johnson

Allison Lawler, 33, Googled her old college boyfriend on Valentine’s Day of this year on a whim. She found Ben’s name and photo in an online essay about San Francisco’s homeless people and their pets. Shocked, she flew south from Oregon.

Arriving one weekend in March, she found her once-vibrant and athletic companion sitting in his own waste in a wheelchair in United Nations Plaza, his back wrecked, his skeletal body nearly folded in half. He was, she recalled, “continuously smoking drugs and having uncontrollable twitches.”

Mayor London Breed had by then opened the Tenderloin Center in the plaza, with a goal of linking the city’s most vulnerable people to housing and treatment, but Lawler learned that it offered no assistance on weekends.

She initially booked a room at the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin, planning to clean Ben up and accompany him to the center that Monday. But after she realized her friend had open, feces-infected sores on his legs, she called 911 against his wishes.

She urged the paramedics who arrived to place him under an involuntary psychiatric hold. They said they couldn’t. One, Lawler said, suggested she wait until Ben fell unconscious from the infection in his legs, then call 911 again. That made no sense to her.

“It’s a slow suicide, right?” she said. “Who are we protecting by letting someone die on the streets?”

Lawler returned in April on a weekday to visit the Tenderloin Center. She said she spent a frustrating day there with Ben, who smoked fentanyl in an outdoor area. (The practice was allowed and may have saved lives, with workers able to administer the antidote Narcan to those who overdosed.)

While the staff was kind, she said, the programs didn’t seem coordinated, and finding housing for someone in a wheelchair seemed particularly difficult. After many hours, staff members gave Campofreda a spot at the Cova Hotel on Ellis Street. But the bathroom wasn’t big enough for his wheelchair and he didn’t stay. Lawler went home again, defeated.

In the nearly 11 months it was open, people made about 123,000 visits to the Tenderloin Center, where basics like food and laundry were plentiful. Center staff members reported making 1,500 connections to housing or shelter, but there were only 397 “linkages” to mental health or substance abuse services.

Whether those referrals were successful is unclear. The city didn’t measure outcomes, a lost opportunity to help more people like Ben recover.

Breed had pitched the center as a conduit to longer-term care. By that measure, it failed. And rather than work to improve it, Breed this month shuttered it with nothing new to take its place for the more than 7,700 people in the city who are homeless and the untold number who are struggling with addiction.

I wanted to ask the mayor about the closure of the Tenderloin Center and whether she considers the city’s treatment system effective, but multiple requests for interviews with her over three weeks were not granted.

James Nugent, one of Ben’s best friends, was trying to find him, too, calling police, homeless aid groups and even the city morgue.

His breakthrough came after contacting Miracle Messages, a nonprofit that aims to reconnect unhoused people with their families. Soon after Nugent called, one of the group’s volunteer detectives, Liz Breuilly, called him back and agreed to search for Ben, finding him quickly.

Nugent flew in from Washington, D.C., in May, met Breuilly and then found his friend smoking fentanyl in United Nations Plaza, his head covered by a dirty jacket.

“He’d hit his drugs and then all of a sudden would be in la-la land for 45 minutes to an hour and then do it again,” Nugent said.

When some addicts fell unconscious, he noticed, dealers stole their belongings. Police officers were scarce. Meanwhile, office workers strolled through the plaza carrying bags of Whole Foods groceries, ignoring the scene around them.

“It looked like a war zone,” Nugent said. “And no one was doing anything about it.”

At one point, Ben asked Nugent to lift one of his legs onto the footrest of the wheelchair because it was dragging on the ground, and he couldn’t raise it. Nugent felt warm liquid. “He was actually peeing on me,” he said.

That was it. He told his friend he was going home and wouldn’t visit again. “I said, ‘I don’t want to remember you like this. I want to remember the good times.’ I think that hit him hard.”

Nugent left for his hotel, but soon received a call from Breuilly. Ben had called her to say he was finally ready to get help.

When they met at 9 the next morning, Breuilly told Nugent to take Ben to UCSF Medical Center, where he would have a better chance at obtaining long-term, intense help than at the smaller hospitals nearer the Tenderloin.

After arriving at UCSF, Nugent and Ben said, medical staff removed Ben’s soiled pants. Maggots fell out of the sores on his legs. Doctors later told Nugent that Ben, if he remained outside the hospital, would have died within a week.

That was May 15. It was the last day Ben used fentanyl or any other illicit drug, he told me. He marks May 16 as his sober date — the day he began to come back to life.

Ben arrived at UCSF Medical Center with osteomyelitis and discitis, severe bacterial infections in his lower back. The infections had eroded his two lowest vertebrae and spread to his tailbone. He was extremely skinny and, in the words of Dr. Alekos Theologis, a UCSF orthopedic surgeon, “depleted of all nutrition.”

“People who are addicted to drugs and who are malnourished and who have a compromised immune system are prone to these infections,” he told me.

What came next, Theologis said, was “miraculous.”

The treatment by a team of surgeons, doctors, nurses, nutritionists, social workers and others began with a complicated surgery to remove bone that was pressing on the nerves in Ben’s back. A second surgery included cutting out the infection and using a metal cage to reconstruct his spine.

Over the summer in the hospital, Ben began to recover the use of his legs. He gained more than 50 pounds. “Even though his recovery was slow, I must say that it was dramatic,” Theologis said.

The team gave him the anesthetic drug ketamine to ease his withdrawal and later prescribed him methadone for the same purpose upon discharge.

Ben, who is on Medi-Cal and paid nothing for his stay, said someone in the hospital told him his care cost more than $1 million. Theologis said he didn’t know the exact figure, but that the estimate “was very possible.”

Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a UCSF professor of addiction medicine who didn’t work on Ben’s case, called Ben’s transformation “a welcome miracle.” He said he doesn’t know how many people like Ben recover from fentanyl addiction, but called it “unfortunately low.”

“Even though his recovery was slow, I must say that it was dramatic.”

— Dr. Alekos Theologis

Fentanyl is highly potent and addictive. Treatment slots are too few. The federal government heavily regulates methadone to treat it, limiting its availability and requiring frequent trips to licensed opioid treatment facilities to access small quantities. Another drug, buprenorphine, isn’t effective until after a few days of painful withdrawal, Ciccarone said, noting that many patients give up in the meantime.

“You have to be lucky and persistent and know people and be motivated and be ready to go through all the hard work that it means to go through recovery all at the same time,” he said. “People do it, and I find it utterly remarkable and extraordinary.”

Ben, his family and his friends praised the hospital for devoting so much time and effort to him. But at his discharge in August, the city’s lack of a coherent treatment system became clear.

Ben needed to stay nearby for follow-up appointments, but UCSF social workers could not find a good place for him to go.

They recommended a medical respite facility at Eighth and Mission streets. But the corner teemed with drug dealers, and Ben said he had a panic attack when told that was his best option. The only other place the social worker could find, he said, was a medical respite facility in Oakland.

Ben went there with a prescribed stash of painkillers for his back and methadone to curb his cravings, expecting someone would keep it for him and dole it out in small quantities. Nobody did. He stayed alone in a room with piles of drugs, frantically trying to find a program that fit his needs.

In late August, Breuilly, the Miracle Messages detective, reached out to me. She’d been phoning her contacts, asking where someone who had three months of sobriety and no home could go. She couldn’t find anything.

Ben Campofreda, a recovering fentanyl addict, walks back from the pharmacy in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. He is recovering from multiple surgeries in a respite in Oakland before seeking drug treatment.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

“I’m so desperate to help him, I could just scream,” she told me in one of our conversations. “He is scared to death. He doesn’t leave his room.”

Ben and I started chatting, and he provided regular updates. He said he left “dozens” of messages at city agencies and treatment centers, but either didn’t get calls back or received contradictory information.

“It’s been a lot harder than I planned,” he said. “They keep asking me if I have a case worker, but they can’t tell me how to find one.”

A UCSF social worker suggested he visit the Tenderloin Center — and he did, wearing a ball cap, sunglasses and COVID face mask as a disguise in hopes of avoiding his old friends.

He’d visited the center about a dozen times before, but only to smoke fentanyl and meth in the back, lured by free meth pipes and the ease of bumming drugs off fellow users. He said San Francisco should create overdose-prevention sites, but also drug-free places to seek treatment.

“I was literally looking out a window watching someone use while I’m trying to find rehab and trying to stay sober,” he said.

“I’m so desperate to help him, I could just scream.”

— Liz Breuilly, Miracle Messages volunteer

Ben said he visited the center five times in the fall, but it never led to much help. Once, after being assessed for housing, he said he was told he didn’t qualify. Another time, he said a staffer recommended visiting the office of HealthRight360, a treatment program, “to introduce himself.”

He said a staffer at HealthRight360 asked why he was there since he was already sober. “I’d like to stay that way,” he responded. He said he was told it was too late in the day to enter the nonprofit group’s detox program, but that he could come back the next day and try again.

UCSF provided car rides from Oakland, but needed several days of advance notice. Ben said he wanted to make sure HealthRight360 could place him immediately if he went back. He said he called the nonprofit and left messages that weren’t returned.

He grew increasingly frantic. He knew his recovery was fragile.

Ben should have been able to get treatment at any hour of any day. San Francisco voters in 2008 passed a measure mandating it. But 14 years later, the city is far from reaching it.

At a recent Board of Supervisors hearing, officials with the Department of Public Health were adamant that San Francisco offers treatment on demand, but advocates say that’s not true.

San Francisco has no nighttime or weekend options for seeking treatment, makes little effort to proactively educate people addicted to drugs about treatment options, and offers no navigators to help people figure out the bureaucratic treatment system once they’re ready. For people like Ben, who are already on the edge, the system needs to be a lot more supportive. Any delay or confusion can be devastating.

Department of Public Health officials said in a statement that 4,544 people received drug treatment — including methadone to curb cravings, outpatient treatment and residential treatment — through its programs in 2021. The wait time for methadone programs is less than one day, and the wait time for 90-day residential drug treatment is four days, they said.

The department said people seeking treatment should visit the Behavioral Health Access Center at 1380 Howard St., from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, or call the center 24 hours a day at 415-255-3737.

I called the number recently and, as a test, asked how someone can get treatment for a fentanyl addiction.

The call-taker said to visit the Howard Street center, but noted it was open for intake only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and was closed for two hours Wednesday afternoons. He said detox was usually available quickly, but that securing outpatient or residential treatment could take up to two weeks.

Critics of the city’s system say people addicted to drugs often hit rock bottom at night or on weekends and that if they can’t get immediate help, they may seek fentanyl.

I described Ben’s plight to Dr. Hillary Kunins, the city’s behavioral health director. “It’s important feedback for us to receive, and we want to make sure people know how to get help,” she said, noting she intends to expand the hours for the Howard Street facility.

She said outreach teams do “motivational interviewing” in which they ask addicts what they need but also urge them to change their behavior.

But Sara Shortt, co-chair of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, an advocacy group, said the city needs to improve its treatment services and ensure that people addicted to drugs know about them and can access them.

“Much more public education needs to be put out there, and in some cases, people really need more navigators or case managers or people who are going to hold their hand through the process,” she said. “All of that is nonexistent for the most part.”

San Francisco has a new advocate for people like Ben in Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who’s in recovery himself after years of alcohol and crystal meth addiction. He smartly wants to task police with keeping dealers away from blocks with treatment facilities. He wants treatment intake available 24/7, a 311-like call center for people seeking help and a response team available to pick them up within an hour and help them navigate the process.

He said he recently helped a friend addicted to crystal meth access treatment, a process he found frustrating and confusing.

“This is never going to be the issue of the month for me,” he said. “I consider it the obligation of my survival.”

Ben made a Sept. 22 morning appointment at HealthRight360, and I asked permission to attend. That’s when things finally clicked. They told him he could move into a treatment facility on the edge of Buena Vista Park that day.

“That’s awesome!” Ben said. “I’m stoked.”

Getting into detox can happen quickly if someone shows up by 3 p.m., said Vitka Eisen, executive director of the nonprofit. But she acknowledged that a city that truly offered treatment on demand would have it available all day, every day and would be more explicit about how to get the help. She said a staffing shortage has made offering immediate treatment even more challenging.

I visited Ben at the Buena Vista Park facility the following week, and he seemed calm and happy. He described attending morning meetings in the chapel and walking in circles around the large room in the afternoon for exercise. He attended online Narcotics Anonymous meetings and had been connected to a doctor, a psychiatrist and a dentist to pull meth-rotted teeth.

“It’s been really great here,” he said. “The program is awesome now that I’m in it.”

After a couple of weeks, he moved to a longer-term treatment facility on Hayes Street. Now, he can go for walks outside. All participants must perform jobs; he folds laundry.

He talks to his parents every day, and numerous friends have visited. He voted on Election Day and celebrated Thanksgiving at the facility with turkey and stuffing. He’s recording a podcast called “Rehab Undercover.” Perhaps most stunningly, he no longer needs his walker and can walk and climb stairs with ease.

Ben Campofreda is dropped off at HealthRIGHT 360 in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Campofreda began his 90 day-residential treatment in his attempt to stop his fentanyl addiction.

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

Ben Campofreda arrives at HealthRIGHT 360 in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Campofreda began his 90 day-residential treatment in his attempt to stop his fentanyl addiction. He sits in an office to process his paperwork before going to the treatment center.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Left: Ben Campofreda is dropped off at HealthRIGHT 360 in San Francisco on Sept.Santiago Mejia 22. Right: He sits in an office to process his paperwork before being admitted to the treatment center. Photos by Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
Top: Ben Campofreda is dropped off at HealthRIGHT 360 in San Francisco on Sept.Santiago Mejia 22. Above: He sits in an office to process his paperwork before being admitted to the treatment center. Photos by Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

Campofreda walks through HealthRight360’s Walden House in San Francisco, where he was undergoing his drug rehabilitation.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Ben Campofreda, a recovering fentanyl addict, shows off his bracelet reading “ Every Day Counts” while in his room in rehab at Walden House in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2022. He is recovering from multiple surgeries while getting drug treatment.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Ben Campofreda, a recovering fentanyl addict, (right) meets with his therapist to discuss his progress in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. He is recovering from multiple surgeries while getting drug treatment.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Ben Campofreda, a recovering fentanyl addict, organizes a piece of laundry at his drug rehabilitation program at Walden House where hopeful messages are on the walls in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2022. He is recovering from multiple surgeries while getting drug treatment.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Left: Ben Campofreda shows off his bracelet reading “ Every Day Counts.” Top right: He meets with his therapist to discuss his progress. Bottom right: Campofreda does laundry at his drug rehabilitation program at Walden House in San Francisco. Photos by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Top: Ben Campofreda shows off his bracelet reading “ Every Day Counts.” Middle: He meets with his therapist to discuss his progress. Above: Campofreda does laundry at his drug rehabilitation program at Walden House in San Francisco. Photos by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Ben Campofreda organizes chairs in a meeting room at Walden House’s 30-day detox center in San Francisco.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

He plans to enter a HealthRight360 step-down facility where he’ll be able to live for a year or two while getting help seeking a job. He hopes to become a drug counselor.

Dec. 16 marks his seven-month-sober date. His mom and friends still can’t believe their happy, healthy guy is back. A miracle, his mom calls it. Like winning the lottery, his ex-girlfriend said. As good an outcome as one could have possibly hoped, his surgeon told me.

He goes back to his old stomping grounds for methadone appointments and no longer worries about getting recognized by his old friends.

“I hope that when people see me out there and see what I’m doing, it can maybe be a glimmer of hope for them,” he said.

And he no longer worries much about succumbing to the lure of fentanyl.

“Actually, it’s the complete opposite,” he said. “I can’t believe that s— had such a crazy hold on me. It’s like being held hostage.”

But now, at last, he’s free.

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf

Campofreda greets a friend he had used drugs with on the streets after a therapy session in San Francisco.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

The post He was days from demise. Right here’s how he kicked fentanyl and bought off San Francisco’s streets appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The majority of people who work for the city of San Francisco don’t actually live there, according to data provided by the city.

In fact, 58% of San Francisco’s public workers live outside of the city as of 2022, a slight increase from where it was a decade ago. SF workers commuting into the city most often live in San Mateo County (19%), but that number is also decreasing.

Meanwhile, East Bay counties Alameda and Contra Costa are seeing more San Francisco public workers move into their areas. As of 2022, 14% and 12% of San Francisco city employees live in Alameda and Contra Costa counties – 10% and 15% percent increases since 2013, respectively.

In particular, Stockton is attracting lots more San Francisco city workers these days than it used to, despite the significant commute. Nowadays, 311 city workers reside in San Joaquin county — still only about 1% of all workers, a 46% increase from 191 in 2013.

While the lack of affordable housing is likely one of the main factors driving city workers out of San Francisco, other factors could also be at play, according to Enrique Lopezlira, Director at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

For example, improvements to public transportation — like a BART extension to San Jose — could be making people more comfortable commuting longer distances.

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“It’s hard to definitely say it’s all housing [costs] that’s causing this. Those other areas, if they’re also getting more residents and they start building more amenities, better schools and so forth, that might also cause people to want to live outside the city,” Lopezlira said. Still, Lopezlira thinks that it’s “a bit high” for a city like San Francisco to have six of every 10 municipal employees living out-of-city.

San Francisco’s public safety departments have the highest shares of workers living outside SF In 2022, just 25% of San Francisco Police Department employees lived in the city proper, the lowest share of any department.

SF Police Department spokesperson Adam Lobsinger said some officers choose to live outside of the city to have separation of their work and home lives.

“I live outside of San Francisco … it’s really important for us to have some downtime and get away from work because of the toll that this job can take on you both physically and emotionally,” Lobsinger said.

Only 28% of SF Fire Department employees live in the city. According to Fire Department spokesperson Jonathan Baxter, many workers who do live in town can do so because they inherited homes from their parents, still live with their families or work second jobs.

“Rent is extremely high in San Francisco and most of the firefighters that I’ve spoken to who rent in San Francisco have [two to five] roommates so that they can have a decent living standard, [and be] able to continue to educate themselves to progress in their careers such as going to college and taking trade classes,” Baxter said.

Despite having the highest median income out of all the city’s departments at over $200,000, the San Francisco Fire Department has one of the lowest portions of employees that live in the city.

Many city departments prefer to have their staff live in San Francisco and recruit locally to make that happen. For example, the Fire Department offers youth outreach programs like CITY EMT, a four month program that offers Emergency Medical Technician training to at-risk young adults in San Francisco.

The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development offers affordable housing programs that give preference to people who work in the city, like the San Francisco Affordable Housing Lottery — the city’s system for allocating “Below Market Rate” properties. San Francisco workers have an advantage when applying to this program because every lottery has a “live or work in San Francisco” preference that improves an applicant’s chances at being awarded housing.

Some housing programs are more targeted to specific departments. The First Responders Downpayment Assistance Loan Program helps members of the San Francisco Police Department, Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department buy their first home in San Francisco. The loan covers a downpayment of up to $375,000.

But with already-high median home values ​​rising even higher in recent years, Baxter questions if this is enough support.

“I myself could not afford my driveway at the home that I live in right now if I were to buy my home again and that’s a factor in seeing the rise in the cost of housing that we have here in San Francisco,” he said.

Not all of the city’s departments are seeing the same patterns. Even though Public Library employees have a median income of $102,000 – over $100,000 less than Fire Department’s median income — six out of ten Public Library employees are city residents.

One explanation could be age-related: Public Library employees have a higher median age than most other city departments, according to City Librarian Michael Lambert.

“We have employees who are still in their late 60s and 70s working for us. In the past, we’ve even had 1 employee in their early 80s,” Lambert said. “If our employees are older and stay longer, they have a greater likelihood of having put down roots in their younger years here, and perhaps have had a relatively easier time staying in the city and navigating the housing market.”

Labor Center researcher Lopezlira said his organization is beginning research on why the public sector has seen slow recovery in employment staffing since the pandemic. He said the city’s lack of affordable housing could be one of the causes of the high number of vacancies in government positions.

“We realize that there’s a lot of talk about [public sector] labor shortage in general, but maybe part of the reason for those hiring vacancies is the fact that it’s really expensive to live in the city and county,” he said.

Adriana Rezal and Harsha Devulapalli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: adriana.rezal@sfchronicle.com

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