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

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San Francisco’s Tenderloin Center, a building at UN Plaza where people on the streets can drop in and receive basic services, including connections to substance abuse treatment and housing, will close in December.

Conceived as a centerpiece of Breed’s state-of-emergency initiatives in the Tenderloin, the center opened in January as a safe harbor for homeless people and part of the emergency’s push to deal with skyrocketing overdoses. City officials used emergency powers to bypass the city’s typical contracting process and quickly secured a lease for the building, while Breed announced efforts to crack down on drug dealing in the neighborhood.

But the center met resistance early on after it came to light that the city allowed people to use drugs there. Critics argued that it enabled addiction and that very few people were connected to drug treatment through the site.

The news that the center will shutter in December comes at a fraught moment. Breed and the supervisors are hammering out a nearly $14 billion budget and must decide where to put resources to address some of the city’s most vexing problems, including homelessness, mental health and addiction.

Weeks ago, the supervisors voted to extend the center’s lease from June through the end of the year. And in early June the health department allowed the media, which had been shut out of the center, to finally tour it.

Breed spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh described the center in a statement as an “immediate intervention to stabilize the community in the short term while the city developed its longer term plans for the tenderloin.”

“The declaration of emergency enabled the city to quickly launch a service center as a safe respite from the streets,” Safarzadeh said.

While it was framed as a temporary solution to a chronic problem, the center appears to operate at high volume, serving about 400 people each day at its fenced-in site, according to Safarzadeh.

“We reversed overdoses — we saved people’s lives,” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRight 360, a nonprofit partner helping operating the center, said of her staff’s work.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that we would close one program without opening others,” she said.

Whether the center was cost-effective is difficult to know. In its first five months, workers logged more than 49,000 visits, but just 53 connections to substance-use treatment. The center has also made 900 placements into shelters and 150 placements into permanent supportive housing. Operating the center for the next six months will cost $10.6 million, though city officials haven’t in the past been able to say how much the first six months of operation cost.

Community organizer Del Seymour, founder of the workforce nonprofit Code Tenderloin, a partner in the center, is disappointed it will close.

Seymour said his organization has hired at least 40 people referred by the center’s case managers.

“Nobody ever said the word ‘permanent,’ and we understand that,” he said. “But now we’re seeing successes. So why give somebody something and then take it away?”

He said the site’s central location may have triggered resistance.

A new apartment tower and Whole Foods Market just opened in Mid-Market, signaling the possible turnaround of an area where businesses have long struggled with drug use outside their doorsteps. With more investment starting to pour into downtown, Seymour said he wouldn’t be surprised if complaints are piling up about the center. Seymour would like to see the concept continued but moved elsewhere.

Sara Shortt, a representative of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, also supported the model and methods of the center but questioned the execution. She remembered the bravado with which Breed announced her package of programs to clean up the Tenderloin and Civic Center.

Shortt wondered whether the city had just found an available space in UN Plaza — albeit one with a $75,000 a month rent payment — and “just jumped on it.”

“This was all done in a ‘grand gesture’ kind of way,” Shortt said. “For the mayor to just pull out of it at this point,” with no alternative for people who clearly rely on the services, “reinforces that it was perhaps only that — a gesture.” She worried the mayor, who is facing pressure to reinvigorate the local economy, may have buckled to neighborhood complaints.

Yet Breed’s spokesperson Jeff Cretan said residents’ misgivings never factored into the city’s decision to pull the plug. Officials anticipated strong feelings on all sides from the moment they announced the center, he said, which hasn’t stopped the city from methodically testing solutions.

The tenderloin emergency also added social workers and outreach staff to coax people into treatment. Breed has also publicly pushed for supervised drug consumption sites, a controversial strategy to alleviate the overdose crisis that has widespread political support in San Francisco.

Although the city’s behavioral health budget has enough money to support such sites, they are not sanctioned by the state or federal government and may face legal hurdles.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district spreads through downtown and the South of Market area, said Thursday that he needed more information before weighing in on the upcoming closure of the center, which is not in his district but is close to it.

Dorsey announced a plan this week for police to prioritize arresting drug dealers and seizing illegal drugs in areas where people are seeking help with addiction — such as outside a treatment center — that was partially inspired by neighborhood disenchantment when the city unveiled the center in UN Plaza .

He presented the plan as part of a “right to recovery” initiative intended to stave off overdose deaths and despair caused by fentanyl.

Residents and merchants “are going to be justifiably suspicious of anything we’re doing to encourage open air drug scenes and brazen drug dealing,” Dorsey said, standing at a parking lot near Sixth and Market streets on Thursday, where he’d attended the mayor’s press conference to announce a new housing ballot measure.

After speaking at the event, Breed declined to answer questions from reporters.

Despite city officials’ repeated assurances that they are pursuing a viable long-term plan to curb drug use, Eisen of HealthRight 360 said she scoured the budget for any alternative programs, and found nothing. She worries for the hundreds of people who rely on the center each day for everything from work referrals to overdose treatment to cell phone chargers. The demand, she said, is clear.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer JD Morris contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sara Shortt’s name.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

The post San Francisco’s Tenderloin middle will shut in December as funding dries up appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Juliana McNeil greeted reporters in what’s known as the living room, a tranquil space with yellow walls where people use computers, read books and unwind.

She was there as a kind of ambassador for the visitors who come in regularly, and had glowing reviews of her experience at the Tenderloin Center.

McNeil said she had been sleeping on the streets in Oakland before she arrived at the site. She said staff helped her find housing, mental health support and mentors.

“Places like this need to exist in other counties because when you’re homeless, you feel like you have nothing,” she said. “They got me not only a hot meal, they gave me a hygiene kit, clothes. They basically linked me back up to where I’m building myself again, my trust with people.”

Juliana McNeil told members of the media she lived on the streets of Oakland before finding support at the Tenderloin Center. (Holly McDede/KQED)

Donna Hilliard, executive director of Code Tenderloin, took reporters to the courtyard.

“What we tell people is, ‘Welcome to grandmother’s backyard,'” she said.

She pointed toward a mobile shower and laundry station.

“You can come in smelling like pee, but guess what, we have a shower, and we’re going to give it with care,” she said.

Hilliard nodded toward the game area and where guests can get coffee, and gray-and-blue reclining chairs arranged in a circle where people wait for services or nap.

Then reporters were escorted to what staff called “the overdose prevention area.”

The area is pretty basic. Plastic tables and chairs are set up for people to use drugs with relative privacy, while staff are nearby to reverse overdoses.

“There are people we don’t see in treatment, people who leave treatment and have reoccurrence of drug use. And for those people, we believe we have an obligation to care for them so they don’t die of a drug overdose,” said Vitka Eisen, president and CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, a nonprofit health provider that offers harm-reduction services at the Tenderloin Center.

On a typical day, in this outdoor lounge area at the Tenderloin Center, guests wait for services. Vitka Eisen with HealthRIGHT 360 said staff have reversed overdoses at this spot and that naloxone is readily available when needed. (Holly McDede/KQED)

Naloxone, the drug used to reverse overdoses, and clean needles are at the ready. No one has fatally overdosed at the Tenderloin Center, and staff have reversed over 90 overdoses since the site opened in January, according to data from the San Francisco Public Health Department.

Eisen disagreed that the site is a safe consumption site, however, and preferred to call it an overdose prevention site.

“The safe consumption sites are typically indoors. They have nursing staff, a medical model, and this is outdoors in a tent,” she said. “It’s rugged.”

The post Inside San Francisco’s Tenderloin Heart, Which Serves A whole bunch Each Day appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin Center, a building at UN Plaza where people on the streets can drop in and receive basic services, including connections to substance abuse treatment and housing, will close in December.

Conceived as a centerpiece of Breed’s state-of-emergency initiatives in the Tenderloin, the center opened in January as a safe harbor for homeless people and part of the emergency’s push to deal with skyrocketing overdoses. City officials used emergency powers to bypass the city’s typical contracting process and quickly secured a lease for the building, while Breed announced efforts to crack down on drug dealing in the neighborhood.

But the center met resistance early on after it came to light that the city allowed people to use drugs there. Critics argued that it enabled addiction and that very few people were connected to drug treatment through the site.

The news that the center will shutter in December comes at a fraught moment. Breed and the supervisors are hammering out a nearly $14 billion budget and must decide where to put resources to address some of the city’s most vexing problems, including homelessness, mental health and addiction.

Weeks ago, the supervisors voted to extend the center’s lease from June through the end of the year. And in early June the health department allowed the media, which had been shut out of the center, to finally tour it.

Breed spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh described the center in a statement as an “immediate intervention to stabilize the community in the short term while the city developed its longer term plans for the tenderloin.”

“The declaration of emergency enabled the city to quickly launch a service center as a safe respite from the streets,” Safarzadeh said.

While it was framed as a temporary solution to a chronic problem, the center appears to operate at high volume, serving about 400 people each day at its fenced-in site, according to Safarzadeh.

“We reversed overdoses — we saved people’s lives,” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRight 360, a nonprofit partner helping operating the center, said of her staff’s work.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that we would close one program without opening others,” she said.

Whether the center was cost-effective is difficult to know. In its first five months, workers logged more than 49,000 visits, but just 53 connections to substance-use treatment. The center has also made 900 placements into shelters and 150 placements into permanent supportive housing. Operating the center for the next six months will cost $10.6 million, though city officials haven’t in the past been able to say how much the first six months of operation cost.

Community organizer Del Seymour, founder of the workforce nonprofit Code Tenderloin, a partner in the center, is disappointed it will close.

Seymour said his organization has hired at least 40 people referred by the center’s case managers.

“Nobody ever said the word ‘permanent,’ and we understand that,” he said. “But now we’re seeing successes. So why give somebody something and then take it away?”

He said the site’s central location may have triggered resistance.

A new apartment tower and Whole Foods Market just opened in Mid-Market, signaling the possible turnaround of an area where businesses have long struggled with drug use outside their doorsteps. With more investment starting to pour into downtown, Seymour said he wouldn’t be surprised if complaints are piling up about the center. Seymour would like to see the concept continued but moved elsewhere.

Sara Shortt, a representative of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, also supported the model and methods of the center but questioned the execution. She remembered the bravado with which Breed announced her package of programs to clean up the Tenderloin and Civic Center.

Shortt wondered whether the city had just found an available space in UN Plaza — albeit one with a $75,000 a month rent payment — and “just jumped on it.”

“This was all done in a ‘grand gesture’ kind of way,” Shortt said. “For the mayor to just pull out of it at this point,” with no alternative for people who clearly rely on the services, “reinforces that it was perhaps only that — a gesture.” She worried the mayor, who is facing pressure to reinvigorate the local economy, may have buckled to neighborhood complaints.

Yet Breed’s spokesperson Jeff Cretan said residents’ misgivings never factored into the city’s decision to pull the plug. Officials anticipated strong feelings on all sides from the moment they announced the center, he said, which hasn’t stopped the city from methodically testing solutions.

The tenderloin emergency also added social workers and outreach staff to coax people into treatment. Breed has also publicly pushed for supervised drug consumption sites, a controversial strategy to alleviate the overdose crisis that has widespread political support in San Francisco.

Although the city’s behavioral health budget has enough money to support such sites, they are not sanctioned by the state or federal government and may face legal hurdles.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district spreads through downtown and the South of Market area, said Thursday that he needed more information before weighing in on the upcoming closure of the center, which is not in his district but is close to it.

Dorsey announced a plan this week for police to prioritize arresting drug dealers and seizing illegal drugs in areas where people are seeking help with addiction — such as outside a treatment center — that was partially inspired by neighborhood disenchantment when the city unveiled the center in UN Plaza .

He presented the plan as part of a “right to recovery” initiative intended to stave off overdose deaths and despair caused by fentanyl.

Residents and merchants “are going to be justifiably suspicious of anything we’re doing to encourage open air drug scenes and brazen drug dealing,” Dorsey said, standing at a parking lot near Sixth and Market streets on Thursday, where he’d attended the mayor’s press conference to announce a new housing ballot measure.

After speaking at the event, Breed declined to answer questions from reporters.

Despite city officials’ repeated assurances that they are pursuing a viable long-term plan to curb drug use, Eisen of HealthRight 360 said she scoured the budget for any alternative programs, and found nothing. She worries for the hundreds of people who rely on the center each day for everything from work referrals to overdose treatment to cell phone chargers. The demand, she said, is clear.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer JD Morris contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Sara Shortt’s name.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

The post San Francisco’s Tenderloin middle will shut in December as funding dries up appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

This project challenges city leaders and the entire Bay Area to care more, to do more, and to help build a better Bay Area for our future. We address the problems within the district from the inside out.

Join ABC7 in our commitment to reporting from the Tenderloin. Watch our latest 30-minutes streaming special, “50 Blocks: Stories from the Tenderloin,” in the video player above.

Or by downloading the ABC7 Bay Area App to watch on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple and Android TV.

ABC7 News has covered stories in the Tenderloin ever since the station was founded in 1949, but this recent commitment came about after one particular event.

In December 2021, Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin in response to the city’s drug overdose crisis. The mayor stated more than 700 people died due to drug overdoses in 2021, which at the time was nearly double the city’s COVID-19 death toll.

The ultra-lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl was believed to be responsible for the crisis and the vast majority of all fentanyl sales were happening in the tenderloin.

After this announcement, ABC7 News committed to reporting on how the emergency initiative unfolded, what difference it made, and what happened after the declaration was over.

This is a timeline of our reporting:

December 2021

Dec 17: State of Emergency Declared

When Mayor London Breed declared a State of Emergency in Tenderloin, she explained the keys to her plan would be, “To disrupt the illegal activity in the neighborhood, to get people the treatment and support they need, and to make the Tenderloin a safer, more livable place for the families and children who call the neighborhood home.”

She cited the COVID-19 emergency declaration as a template that allowed them to “cut through the bureaucracy and barriers that get in the way of decisive action, we can get things done and make real, tangible progress.”

One of the key pieces of her plan was the opening of a linkage center, which would connect Tenderloin residents with basic health and human services quickly and easily, including behavior health care, substance abuse treatment, and housing assistance.

ABC7 examined the mayor’s plan to figure out how it would work to make the city safer for residents, visitors.

Jan 2022

Jan 18: Tenderloin Linkage Center Opens

Officials said once fully staffed, the center on Market Street would be able to serve up to 100 guests at a time, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“I am optimistic that the new Linkage Center will provide new and useful services for Tenderloin residents who are battling mental illness and drug addiction,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “I am also watching its success closely to see if it could be converted into a Citywide resource as the permanent site of the upcoming Mental Health SF Service Center.”

Mayor Breed appeared on ABC7’s Getting Answers show to talk about the center.

February 2022

As the mayor’s plan began to actually happen, ABC7 News started actively reporting in the tenderloin to see how it was going. We walked through the streets with the captain of the Tenderloin station as he explained why 85% of SF’s drug arrests happen in this district.

ABC7 News also talked to a Tenderloin historian about how its rich history sheds light on its current role as a containment zone for vice.

Feb 8: Drug Addicts’ Families Protest Linkage Center

Not everyone was in favor of the new Linkage Center. A group of mothers staged a protest at the center because it has a safe injection site. That’s a place where drug users can take drugs while being monitored by a staff member so they do not overdose. The Department of Public Health said the staff has already reversed an average of three overdoses a week since the site opened. But the protestors say the site may only be making the crisis worse.

“You have to quit enabling them,” one demonstrator exclaimed. “Giving them everything they need. Why would I ever leave?”

Feb 23: Nonprofit Worker Shot In Broad Daylight

At the end of the month, a city ambassador from the nonprofit Urban Alchemy was shot, prompting residents to plead for more help saying, “It’s the Tenderloin. Nobody feels safe in the Tenderloin.”

Mayor Breed said this to ABC7 News, “We are definitely going to need to step up our presence. Both our wellness teams and our police and a number of other resources in order to ensure safety. Not just for people who are part of Urban Alchemy , but the entire community.”

Concerns later surfaced that the nonprofit, that received millions from the city to hire ambassadors, might be exploiting a loophole that exempts charitable organizations from having employees receive standardized security training. ABC7 News talked with our colleagues at the San Francisco Standard about this claim.

March 2022

Part of the mayor’s plan was to make the tenderloin a safer and more livable space. One key to that goal was to literally make the streets cleaner. ABC7 News went along as cleaning teams went out to work on cleaning up the Tenderloin’s streets.

“It’s daunting to be honest, because we can clean the street and 10 minutes later it looks like we have never been there.”

ABC7 also followed along with one family to see how they viewed the effort. Jacques Bidjima walks his two children to school in the Tenderloin everyday. They have two routes available. One could be described as bad, the other as awful.

“I start hating myself,” he said. “How can I have my kids growing up in an environment like this? I don’t have much choice.”

March 16: Mayor Breed Ends Emergency Declaration

Ninety days after the State of Emergency was declared, it came up for review. Mayor Breed announced she would allow it to expire and said the Tenderloin’s emergency declaration improved conditions, but still had a long road ahead. The city reported that 345 people were placed in shelters with another 154 going to permanent supportive housing.

The city agrees changing the persistent culture there will take more than 90 days and says the Linkage Center will continue to operate through June, but now under the direction of the public health department.

April 2022

April 4: Linkage Center Protests Escalate

The same group that protested the Linkage Center’s safe injection site escalated their protest by purchasing a billboard in Union Square calling out open drug use. The billboard read, “Famous for the world over for our brains, beauty and now dirt-cheap fentanyl.”

Organizers say they put the billboard up in response to the Mayor ending the emergency declaration and then heading to Europe to pitch San Francisco as a tourist destination.

“And we’re like, wait a minute, it’s not changed,” one organizer said. “We should still be in a state of emergency. And then she went to Europe and said, ‘Come to San Francisco. It’s fine.’ Um, no, it’s not fine. It’s really not.”

April 29: Another Urban Alchemy ambassador shot

The shooting happened in broad daylight and police said a search for the suspect was underway.

June 2022

June 16: City Announces Tenderloin Linkage Center Will Close In December

While the center got a 6-month extension to operate until the end of 2022, Mayor London Breed declined to fund the center in her latest budget proposal. A spokesperson for the mayor said the Linkage Center was only meant to be a temporary solution until they could develop longer term plans for the tenderloin.

June 23: City Announces Opening Of First Sobering Center

The center named SoMa RISE was described as , “a safe indoor space for people who are intoxicated… to come in off the streets, rest and stabilize, and get connected to care and services.”

They also said it would service the Tenderloin neighborhood by helping fill some of the void left by the Linkage Center.

So Where Does That Leave The Tenderloin Now?

ABC7 News is trying to answer that in our latest 30-minute streaming special, ”50 Blocks: Stories from the Tenderloin.”

You can stream the full documentary by downloading the ABC7 Bay Area App to watch on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple and Android TV or by watching it in the video player on this story.

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The post 50 Blocks: Tales from San Francisco’s Tenderloin District appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

I could always tell how late it was by the cold and the sound. Like clockwork, the chilly San Francisco air would creep into my family’s one-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin by 10 pm The breeze would slip through the slits of the rotting wooden window frames, rustling the newspapers we used for insulation.

But one November night, the sound was different. I heard scratching—it had to be a mouse.

I dashed to the bathroom and slumped onto the toilet seat cover. I looked upward and cursed the God that would allow people to live in these conditions. It was only then that I noticed threads of gray and black mold decorating the bathroom walls like strings of Christmas lights.

Our home was a biohazardous wasteland.

Moving around the apartment, I saw my mom in the kitchen cooking pho for the next day. The floor started to give beneath her as she carried scallions the few feet from the refrigerator to the sink. It was only a matter of time before it caved in.

She lit a piece of paper and transferred the flame onto the stove. I watched the steam from the boiling water travel up the wall to the kitchen vent, in front of a patchwork of orange and black mold.

At the time, I was in high school. My immigrant parents didn’t see anything wrong with our apartment — it was no different from many of the ones they’d seen in their home country of Vietnam. They did not know or care about the possible health complications from inadequate insulation and chronic rodent and mold exposure. They accepted our lot — even as our daily commutes would take us past the pristine marble floors and chandeliers of the Olympic Club hotel, just a couple blocks from our building.

But I couldn’t.

San Francisco, supposedly the most progressive city in the country, didn’t give a damn about us.

It was naive to assume that these problems were isolated to our fifth-floor apartment. Older residents lamented in Vietnamese to my parents about the infestations in their homes. Occasionally, I was invited into their units. They, too, were cramped dungeons with cracks in the walls wide enough for mice to travel through. Sticky mouse traps lined countertops and floor perimeters, but the mice grew wise and found other routes throughout the building. Some residents eventually grew tired of constantly cleaning the mouse droppings. Pellets began to accumulate on furniture and crevices, outlining the edges of living space.

We all generally understood that we had the legal right to a safe home. But no one in our immigrant-rich apartment complex knew how to advocate for themselves; they could barely speak English, and their English-speaking children were not old enough to take on the burden.

It was past my bedtime. I returned to the bathroom and splashed my face with water. Before I could dry off, I felt something grace my feet. Maybe it was another mouse — or maybe it was the same one I’d heard before.

I sighed, headed back to bed, and cried myself to sleep.

Our apartment was a death trap but we couldn’t move out. It was my low-income family’s only affordable option. With rent control, my parents paid less than $1,000 per month. Even then, they barely made enough to pay for rent and food, so an exterminator was out of the question.

My parents wouldn’t take action, so I contacted the apartment owners and pleaded for help. They responded by telling me I shouldn’t have been living in my parent’s apartment in the first place.

The owners were aware of our living conditions. They made periodic inspections, presumably dismissing the unit’s numerous health and safety code violations. They did the same with the other apartments in the building as well.

After a few years, some younger residents grew frustrated and moved out. They had graduated from college and had incomes that could support more expensive, safer apartments. Although they were aware of their right to a safe home, they knew that a lengthy legal battle with the building owners was not worth the time and stress, especially when they had the means to get out.

It only took the owners a few months to transform those vacant units into luxury-style apartments that they could charge double or triple the rent for.

Two years ago, a full college scholarship got me out of that place too — and out of the Bay. I would like nothing more than to leave that squalid apartment behind, just like those other young people did before me.

But I can’t.

My parents still live there, as do so many of my childhood neighbors and friends. They all deserve better.

Danny Nguyen is a writer who grew up in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. He recently received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University, where he studied molecular and cellular biology, and medicine, health and society.

The post I used to be born and raised within the Tenderloin. San Francisco doesn’t give a rattling about us appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A California First District Court of Appeal decision released on Monday ruled that a ban against four drug dealers from a 50-block area of ​​the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods is illegal, upholding earlier rulings on the matter.

The case, The People v. Padilla-Martel, stemmed from an action by former San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and the City of San Francisco two years ago. In 2020, authorities had a hard time culling rampant drug use in the Tenderloin area of ​​the city. Needing a new way to keep out a few dozen drug dealers who were responsible for a large percentage of drug dealing in the area, Herrera sued 28 of them that September from entering a 50-block area of ​​the city. As most had several drug dealing priors, and all but one living outside the city, the city thought it had a strong case for public safety. The tenderloin still is an epicenter of drug dealing and overdose deaths in the city.

However, the matter was quickly challenged by the dealers as violating their constitutional right to travel and not having a local or state law to back the widespread ban. In May 2021, the San Francisco Superior Court ruled it unconstitutional. The city quickly appealed to the ruling, where it was soon heard again in the California First District Court of Appeal.

This led to a 3-0 ruling issued on Friday and released on Monday by the Court, in which it upheld the Superior Court ruling and said that while stay-away orders were usually legal in some circumstances in small areas, a broad 50-block ban for dozens of people was simply unconstitutional.

“We are mindful of, and sympathetic to, the challenges faced by the city in addressing the issues of illegal drug sales, drug use, and the drug-related health crisis and its effects on the people who live and work in the neighborhood,” Justice Marla Miller said in the court’s ruling. “Although the city contends these defendants have no reason to ever even be in the 50-square-block Tenderloin neighborhood except to sell drugs there was evidence that many community resources and government agencies are located in the Tenderloin.”

“The court finds it credible that the suspects were interested in taking advantage of the employment, treatment, housing, and health services available in the 50-square-block neighborhood. The SFPD declarations did not show that any of the defendants has been convicted of selling drugs, possessing drugs for sale, or violating any pretrial stay-away orders.”

Reaction to the ruling

The ruling led to a generally negative reaction in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday. A spokesman for current San Francisco Attorney David Chiu said that the office was disappointed by the ruling. Others were worried what this would mean for crime in the city.

“Right now we’re still in [San Francisco District Attorney] Chesa Boudin’s San Francisco, where most of these guys get off anyway,” one San Francisco police officer said to the Globe on condition of anonymity on Tuesday. “Now we can’t even keep these guys away. Drug dealers certainly are taking advantage of the tenderloin, but you can bet it’s not for treatment or housing services or anything else the court listed. Well, except employment, but you have to sell drugs somewhere.”

“I’m not a lawyer, so maybe it did violate their right to travel or whatever, but these people are hurting people and making the lives of residents worse. We arrest them, they’re out soon enough. We try and force them out, court puts them back in. People try and clean up the area, and you have their cars and homes broken into. The judges obviously never had to respond to a call at 2 AM to find another person dead because of an overdose and then pass by on the way to the morgue a known dealer. We have to uphold the law, but let me tell you, it can be trying some days.”

“This is the San Francisco we have now in the Tenderloin. And these judges just stopped one of the few things left we can do to try and bring it back.”

As of Tuesday, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office is deciding whether or not to appeal the case to a higher court.

The post CA Appeals Courtroom Guidelines San Francisco Can’t Ban Tenderloin Drug Sellers appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The grim toll of drug dealing in San Francisco’s Tenderloin does not give the city legal authority to ban four suspected dealers from a 50-square-block area of ​​the neighborhood, says a state appeals court.

Then-City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit in September 2020 seeking stay-away orders against 28 people from a large area of ​​the Tenderloin, the center of the narcotics trade in San Francisco. Police said there were 600 drug-dealing arrests in the Tenderloin in 2020 and crime rates there were three times the city’s overall rate. Out of 699 drug overdose deaths in San Francisco in 2020, more than 40% were in the Tenderloin and South of Market, officials said.

The injunction would prohibit the named individuals from entering the area except while passing through by bus or subway, or walking a short distance to a court hearing. Violations would be punishable by fines of up to $8,500.

The city’s first attempt to enforce the ban, against four Oakland residents who had been separately arrested on suspicion of illegal possession and sale of drugs, was blocked last May by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman. He said state law did not appear to authorize a court to prohibit someone from entering a geographic area — but even if it did, the proposed order was so broad that it would violate the constitutional right to travel.

On Friday, the state’s First District Court of Appeal said a local government may be entitled to issue narrowly targeted stay-away orders to wrongdoers in some circumstances, but not one that was this broad.

“We do not minimize the serious and pervasive harm caused by the flood of street-level drug sales in the Tenderloin,” Justice Marla Miller wrote in the 3-0 ruling. “We are mindful of, and sympathetic to, the challenges faced by the city in addressing the issues of illegal drug sales, drug use, and the drug-related health crisis and its effects on the people who live and work in the neighborhood.”

Miller said, however, that “although the city contends these defendants have no reason to ever even be in the 50-square-block Tenderloin neighborhood except to sell drugs there was evidence that many community resources and government agencies are located in the Tenderloin.” She said Schulman was entitled to believe the four people’s statements “that they were interested in taking advantage of the employment, treatment, housing, and health services available in the 50-square-block neighborhood.”

The city’s lawyers cited a ruling by the state Supreme Court in 2016 upholding a judge’s order requiring a defendant who had been convicted of robbing a Home Depot store to stay away from all of the appliance chain’s outlets in California. But Miller said the order did not interfere with the right to travel because the defendant was still allowed to go anywhere else in the area.

In this case, she said, each of the four defendants was accused of crimes in a relatively small area, and one has two daughters who live in the tenderloin.

Herrera left the city attorney’s office in November to become head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and was succeeded by David Chiu, a former state assembly member. Chiu’s spokesperson, Jen Kwart, said Monday the office was disappointed by the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal.

Still, “we are pleased the Court of Appeal agreed that we can continue to pursue creative remedies in similar public nuisance cases,” Kwart said, referring to the state law against private actions that harm public health. “We are currently evaluating potential next steps, and we will continue to look for ways to use civil law to promote and increase public safety in the Tenderloin.”

But Chessie Thacher of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer for the four defendants, noted the court’s observation that, under the law, “human beings do not constitute nuisances in themselves.”

“The city should pursue remedies, but not on the backs of these individuals,” Thacher said.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

The post San Francisco can’t ban suspected drug sellers from Tenderloin, court docket guidelines appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A shooting in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood left one person dead Wednesday, according to police.

The shooting was reported at 3:19 am in the first block of Leavenworth Street.

The victim was later identified as Byron Cheeves Jr., 36, of Antioch.

San Francisco police said an arrest has been made in the case, but they did not immediately release any details about the suspect or the circumstances of the shooting.

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