Quick question: Are you building Noah’s Ark in your spare time?

Photo: Courtesy of Getty Images/yyyahuuu

hey asshole

(Come to think of it, I don’t actually know your name. When you moved in and started operating what sounded like a bowling alley upstairs at all hours of the night, my diurnal, children’s formalities surrendered to episodes of late-night frustration . I never asked for your name during that first, brief, severe interaction. So yea: asshole it is.)

it’s me Your downstairs neighbor.

I know your unit — its size, its dimensions, its prior date of occupancy — because I toured it two years ago before moving into the one below it. At one point, I was considering signing a lease for that very space but couldn’t justify paying the $250 more a month for what was basically better Golden Hour lighting. The cabinets, like the wooden floors, had decades of patina. The bathroom fixture in your unit wobbles when you shut the medicine cabinet too firmly. That refrigerator has a brownish-yellow stain in the back; your apartment, for some reason, has a gas-powered range — a luxury, in and of itself — above a microwave model plucked right from the early 1980s.

And yet, I still can’t come to understand how you’ve managed to create so much audible, vibrational chaos every day within your 244-square-foot residence.

The first time I heard a REM cycle-breaking sound — which carried with it the weight of a whole-ass human body — from above my kitchen cabinets, I was genuinely worried. I thought you had fallen off… something. Or a piece of the ceiling had given way to entropy, crumbling onto the floor in a smattering of decades-old drywall and plaster.

I came up in my running shorts. I knocked on your door; you were eating a bag of Flamin’ Hot Funyuns, gnawing the fried allium rings with your maw fully ajar as you explained to me that “nothing’s wrong” in unaffected tones.

I was tired it was nearly the Witching Hour, after all. I rolled my eyes (because it was kind than anything waiting to grumble up from my larynx). I went back downstairs and immediately purchased a $375 pair of noise-canceling headphones in anticipation of the next series of anvil-weighted bangs to come.

I think you recently went out of town or something; that first week of February was blessedly calm. I had forgotten that the light fixture mounted on my ceiling doesn’t have to necessarily echo a metallic rattle come 1 am every night. My cochleas hadn’t been that relaxed since you moved in.

But then you returned. As did your pachyderm-like pacing; the sound of your dropped warehouse boxes; your ambivalence toward appreciative mannerisms that come with living inside a building completed in 1913 — a residential structure set inside the second-densest city in the country.

“What the fuck was that?” exclaimed a boy I was hosting inside my diminutive home beneath yours after hearing another one of your late-night antics. The glow from my TV — Nancy Silverton’s episode of Chef’s Table was playing — caressed his naked, bronzed pecks and strong, Brazilian jawline. My dick was still inside of him. But after the second dense sound caused him to physically recoil, I pulled out.

And donned underwear. Before writing an inspired note on a nearby Post-it note. Which I then left on your door.

“You’re literally being a boner killer, right now,” I scribbled in black ink. “At least try not to drop stuff from body height or walk around with your boots past 11 pm, that’s all I ask.”

When I returned, I waxed charismatic for a little longer, before we both found humor in the whole situation and shared a few chuckles. We finished pleasuring ourselves in a popper haze, sans the surprise of dynamite going off upstairs.

I was half-hoping to see what note you would leave in response to mine… given its expressive quirk.

You never left a note after I adhered that pink missive to your door. Nor did you respond to the following blue note. You refused to come to the door at 3:13 am last Tuesday when my ceiling drummed from playing bass notes.

In a moment of pettiness, I contemplated fastening a Bluetooth speaker to my ceiling. When you would inevitably send another thud or thump or reverberation through the floor, I thought about playing said mounted speaker at full blast in nominal retribution.

All I want is for you to respect both my sanity and gravity’s pull on this space rock. For God’s sake: Just put down a piled rug. Never once in my three decades on this planet have I thought about drilling through the ceiling to install a peephole — I want to know what exactly is going on up there.

I know you won’t read this, even though you have my full government name and cell phone number, which still contains my Dallas, Texas area code. If you do, somehow, stumble across this 864-word Medium post…. stop the floor circus.

Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the bay area in your inbox every week.

I beg of you. But if you don’t, I’ll continue decorating your door with all the colors of the rainbow. Unless you know, you actually chose to answer it next time.

The post A Notice to My Upstairs Neighbor in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed pledged Wednesday to confront the city’s most pressing issues — including homelessness, public safety, police reform and a COVID-battered economy — during her annual state of the city address, the first she has delivered in-person to a crowd since the pandemic began.

She vowed to add more police officers while continuing to pursue reform in use-of-force issues, to continue her efforts to address drug dealing, mental illness and homelessness on the streets of the tenderloin and to clear the way for more housing construction.

Breed, who is halfway through her first full term, touted her administration’s progress on housing and job creation but acknowledged the city still faces significant challenges. In a year in which discontented voters brought an unprecedented two recalls to the ballot, residents remain deeply divided over how to best solve the city’s biggest problems.

“We cannot sugarcoat it,” Breed told city leaders and employees at the Mission Rock residential and commercial development under construction near Oracle Park. “We have work to do. Our recovery will not be quick, or easy. But it is coming. San Francisco is coming back.”

Breed has become one of the most watched big city mayors in America. Over the last two years, she went from being praised nationally for her handling of the pandemic to being questioned by some over her response to the city’s struggling tenderloin neighborhood and its street conditions.

The mayor gave her speech as San Francisco emerges from yet another COVID-19 surge and on the day the city announced it would lift its vaccination mandate for businesses. She emphasized the city’s response to the pandemic, not just in health outcomes, but changes to the city’s landscape such as allowing outdoor dining and closing roads including JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to car traffic.

But she acknowledged San Francisco is still struggling in its recovery, with emptier-than-usual office buildings, vacant storefronts and recovering small businesses. Breed has been trying to lure back tourists, conventions and remote workers downtown while battling perceptions that the city isn’t safe, with stories about viral shoplifting and the drug overdose crisis grabbing headlines.

Breed didn’t shy from confronting some of the city’s most divisive issues in Wednesday’s speech.

The mayor started her talk with a recent political win — the landslide recall of three school board members. Breed, who endorsed the recall, is now poised to appoint three new members, potentially tipping the board in a more moderate direction. She argued the recall underscored that public officials should deliver on the essentials, instead of getting distracted by big ideas. She and others who supported the recall criticized the school board members for renaming 44 schools during the pandemic and being slow to reopen classrooms while vulnerable children struggled with online learning.

Breed stressed that the school district’s focus should be on helping families and children who’ve suffered.

Breed also dove into her own perspectives on policing and crime, which have become huge issues for city residents.

Outrage over crime fueled the upcoming June recall vote on progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose policies critics view as too lenient. Data shows that crime in San Francisco is complicated. During the pandemic, some reported crimes including robberies and larceny thefts went down from previous years, while homicides, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts increased since 2019.

Breed hasn’t yet stated her position on Boudin’s recall, but has previously said “I am not necessarily on the same page with a number of things that he’s doing.”

In her speech, Breed mentioned Asian seniors fearful of leaving their homes, Tenderloin families terrorized by drug dealers and Bayview families dealing with gun violence.

“These are complicated problems, with twisted roots that reach well below surface-level solutions,” she said. “But, again, we have the tools to deliver both the basics and the big ideas.” First, she said, “we need law enforcement.”

Breed directly addressed to her critics who oppose an increase in policing.

“And to those who say we don’t need the police — again, I say, listen to the residents. They are speaking louder than ever,” she said. “No, not for a return to the past, like when I was growing up, and there was often a deep mistrust between the community and the police. Even then, we needed the police. We needed them to cease the gunfire. We needed them to protect victims of violence. We just needed them to help us live our lives—not undermine us in our community.”

Breed gained national attention in December when she pledged to step up policing against drug dealers — and users who refused services — as part of her state of emergency to clean up and reduce overdose deaths in the Tenderloin neighborhood. She’s reiterated that she’s open to police getting involved in clearing the Tenderloin’s streets, but data earlier this month showed arrests for drug crimes hadn’t increased since the emergency began.

One issue that’s hamstrung that effort is police staffing shortages, which Breed highlighted Wednesday. San Francisco was 540 officers short of a recommended staffing level as of early March, with 1,636 officers.

Breed also emphasized alternatives in some situations are needed. She mentioned the city’s street crisis response teams, started last year to send mental health professionals to calls of people in mental crisis, and community ambassadors.

Breed also said police were working on reform, which was also critical. Data shows police use of force has decreased in recent years, but Black residents are still between 9.5 to 17 times far more likely to have used force upon them than white residents. Police are completing reform recommendations from the state and federal governments.

Breed also touted her investment in the Black community to address historical inequities, highlighting the Dream Keeper Initiative she created with Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton to 2020 to pour $60 million annually into Black-led community organizations.

“These are programs that recognize the root causes of crime are driven by poverty. By decades of disinvestment and systemic racism. These are programs that will heal our communities with housing, mental health, education, job training and economic empowerment,” she said. “Let’s be the national model: For reform, for alternatives and for safety.”

While the mayor dove into policing, she didn’t dwell too much in her speech on her push in the tenderloin and the drug crisis that prompted it. Overdoses killed nearly twice as many people in San Francisco as COVID-19 over the past two years. Close to two people a day die of overdoses in the city.

She acknowledged her emergency has stoked debate, but said “the main takeaway is that we can’t continue to accept things as they were.”

“I’m done arguing if it’s okay for people to remain on the streets when we have a place for them to go. Because it’s not. It just isn’t,” she continued. “And to be honest, there are some folks who cannot — or will not — do what’s safe for themselves and for others, so we have to be honest about the need to deal with those struggling with mental illness and we need to make serious changes to our state laws.”

She said she’s been meeting with state leaders to talk about mental health laws — potentially a reference to the ongoing debate about conservatorship, mandated treatment for someone who is a danger to themselves or others.

In 2019, a report found 4,000 people who were homeless and struggling with mental illness and substance use disorder. The city has made slow progress to increase the number of treatment beds — with only 89 of the 400 planned added so far — and to make the care system more cohesive and easier to navigate.

Breed focused more on another challenge prevalent in the Tenderloin: homelessness.

The mayor has highlighted the city is pouring $1 billion into tackling homelessness over the next two years. Most of that money comes from a voter-approved tax that breed didn’t support in 2018.

Her administration will spend some of the funds to reach her goal of creating 1,500 new permanent supportive housing units by June. Breed said the city is on track to exceed by 70% that goal of creating subsidized housing with services for formerly homeless people.

But the city struggles with quickly filling available units, with 10% — or around 850 units — vacant this week, the spokeswoman said. That number covers units getting repaired and those ready for referral, including some where a tenant is already scheduled to move in.

The city is also working to add new shelter beds and reopen beds still shuttered during the pandemic to get to 2,100 short-term shelter beds by July.

Despite the progress, between permanent and temporary housing, there simply isn’t enough for the city’s homeless population. In 2019, a count found around 8,000 unhoused people, but the health department recently estimated 18,000 people citywide are experiencing homelessness.

The post ‘San Francisco is coming again.’ Mayor Breed hits optimistic observe in annual tackle, however says work nonetheless wanted in housing, public security appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.