WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
San Francisco: The Holy City of Progressivism
byVanderleunonJanuary 18, 2021
For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. — Yeats
Seen here are a number of lifestyle enhancements this street-junkie has at his camp on the sidewalk:
A. Cans in the sack as an emergency cash reserve.
B. Spare shoe for those carefree barefoot days in the sidewalk camp.
C. Personal security guard so no other junkie can interrupt your live-saving shot of Narcan.
D. Outdoor kitchen and dining area with condiments and sauces du jour.
E. Armchair for watching the passing parade from the gutter.
F. Neighbor junkie looking around to see if there’s anything he can steal.
G. Personal paramedic to make sure you get all the Narcan you need to breathe and move and shoot up and shit on the sidewalk for one more glorious day in San Francisco, that heaven for the homeless.
ELSEWHERE:MAKING HOMELESSNESS SUSTAINABLE WITH YOUR OVERPRICED PURCHASES
The “marketing” bumpf-bullshit-BS copy tells you that if you blow a hundred bucks on this feeble and highly overpriced blanket, the company behind it will send some sort of Progressive cocaine-dusting helicopter to coke dust the streets of San Francisco with blankets of a quality to be determined later from its profit and loss statement.
One thing you can know from this is not that a blanket will actually make it to somebody in San Francisco whose lifestyle includes smoking crystal meth, sleeping in a piss-soaked tent, aggressive panhandling for drug money, and defecating in the street. All that is obscure and not easily verified.
No, one thing you can know is that if you buy it World Market and the blanket company both have their margins and profit margins guaranteed. You will note that the company has thoughtfully trademarked the phrase “Sackcloth and Ashes” as in Sackcloth & Ashes™ .
I particularly have to admire the gorge-rising statement on the sell card:
“Box reusable for donations of items that shelters need.”
Yes, just take this second-rate blanket out of the box and then walk about your city home tossing in odd crap that you can dump on the doorstep of the homeless shelter as you drive-by en route to your beach house.
The marketing bullshit bobs soft and feculent on the web-page of these shameless white folks profiting off guilt. For instance, here’s a hot item from the blanket scammers: Leather Blanket Roll | Sackcloth & Ashes™
Handcrafted with full-grained, vegetable-tanned leather, this embossed Sackcloth & Ashes blanket roll is perfect for bringing your favorite blanket on your next adventure.
“vegetable-tanned” No sweet animals such as cows were harmed in the tannery by the use of gentle tanning acids featuring veggies.
“embossed” Just so you know how “aristocratic” the look of the product is.
“next adventure” Oh yes nothing beats feeling good abouty your guilt than wrapping this blanket around you and getting cozy around the campfire at your catered $25,000 African safari.
We are proud to partner with DECE, a Romanian organization whose mission is to empower, educate, and employ Roma families in their community. They are one of the only two World Fair Trade Organization approved producers in Europe and adhere to all Global Organic Textile Standards.
“a Roumanian organization” i.e. One far away and very, very difficult to audit.
“Roma families” i.e. Gypsies with their own centuries long legacy of theft, scam, and fraud as family values.
“all Global Organic Textile Standards.” i.e. A group you don’t know from nations you never think about that are , really, just making such standards up.
Leather is a natural material and if taken care of, will only grow more beautiful over time. Do not immerse or soak your leather products in water. Do not machine wash or dry – instead hand wash them using a soft cloth dampened with saddle soap or mild soap and cold water. Let them air dry.
“Leather is a natural material…” Who knew?
“Do not immerse or soak leather…” Who knew?
“hand wash them using a soft cloth dampened with saddle soap…” Who knew?
“Let them air dry.” Translation: Our guilt-drenched customers are so effing stupid they’d put a leather coat in the drier when they should be putting their guilt-drenched heads in ovens.
A few years back, I spotted a bum camping rough one winter evening at a local strip mall. Clean out of cash, I dipped into the trunk of my hooptie and grabbed him a $6 Mexican mercado blanket, made of the finest fake wool. “Much obliged,” he said, bundling up. He had moved on the next day.
So there, I’m done, and $94 ahead, without contributing to the sub optimal life choices of Romanian Gypsy Textile Standardizers, or Vegan Leather Tanners.
EX-Californian PeteJanuary 18, 2021, 1:05 PM
Ah….San Franshitsco- the PERFECT example of what Liberals will try to turn the rest of America into!
Let’s list all the great things about that Liberal city-
1) Built directly on an active fault line, with a history of total destruction from it.
2) A city built on non-indigenous, improperly compacted soils.
3) A city hastily rebuilt after a huge quake with very few building codes/enforcement followed.
4) Notoriously high real estate prices, rents, and taxes.
5) A crime rate only surpassed by Chicago or Detroit.
6) More daily car break-ins than any other CA city.
7) Over 400 restaurants recently closed down and left, along with thousands of other businesses.
8) Public nudity, urination, and defecation is LEGAL there.
9) The only city know worldwide for the “CRAP MAPS” detailing where the TONS of human feces and used syringes are located.
10) A huge amount of drug-addicted, drunken, worthless “unhoused” people, and more every day.
11) Nancy Pelosi runs it. (Right into the ground)
12) Militant lesbians, AIDS-infected sodomites, child molesters, and sex offenders a-plenty there.
13) More deaths from drug overdoses in 2020 than from Covid19.
14) It’s gotten so bad that even far-left Liberals are moving out in droves!
Kevin in PAJanuary 18, 2021, 1:07 PM
Great job enumerating the “lifestyle enhancements” for street junkies in S.F., Gerard.
What would be truly instructive is a break-down of costs. While I suspect that most of what has been gathered to that camp is likely stolen goods, Personal Security guards and Personal Paramedics don’t come for nothing in the big city. Neither is that NARCAN cheap! Not to mention the drain on local business. I mean who the hell wants to do business in a disease infested doper’s alley?
A side note, different part of the once “Golden State”. I made two trips with overnight stop in LA back in 2018 and 2019. I have to say I was shocked at the number of homeless encampments. Not just a few tents here and there. There were dozens of places populated with scores of tents in each place….under bridges, in warehouse commercial districts, city parks, vacant lots, everywhere.
Well, this street junkie’s “lifestyle enhancements” are the end result of the primacy of secular humanism’s hold upon many individuals’ minds. Secular humanists’ only concern is for men’s bodies, not their minds, as is well evidenced by this particular street junkie’s body being serviced by his private paramedics, his street side encampment, and the targeted marketing of corporations to fools to keep junkies’ bodies warm while the junkies minds waste in the gutter. The induced guilt white folks minds are wasting away, too, just at a slower rate, and the corporate white folks’ minds are only focused on paychecks and stock holder value.
ghostsniperJanuary 18, 2021, 2:55 PM
I’m in the habit of not giving anything to strangers, cept lead if they demand it.
Nope, if I don’t know of them aforehand they don’t get jack.
Further, notice if you will, that it is the sorry assed gov’t that causes both of these sorry assed entities to exist in the first place. The gov’t largely creates an hostile environment to where when people get upside down financially it is almost impossible to right oneself. I won’t go into detail as if you aren’t up to speed already you shouldn’t be reading this. And, the sorry assed gov’t creates the vector to which parasitic entities can spring up to fleece the population at large under the shameful guise of helping those at risk or disadvantaged, whatever, while simultaneously scraping a whole bunch off the top to pad the wallets of their extensive and shameless board of directors.
A battalion of homeless bums should storm the headquarters of that establishment and separate the livers from the cavities of those board members and then roast said livers on their enflamed corpses.
This entire planet would be 500% better off if this rotten assed, thieving, lying US gov’t were to cease to exist, and the sooner the better.
TerryJanuary 18, 2021, 3:53 PM
The “City” as the locals call it, must smell like sh*t now. Smelled like dope when I was attending a local hell hole college there.
If one wants to piss off a local, refer to the town as, Frisco. For some reason that really gets them un-nerved.
Phil_in_EnglewoodJanuary 18, 2021, 4:07 PM
Outstanding rant, beautiful in its perfectly targeted skewering of idiocy that is manifested four ways, long, wide, deep, and constant. Icing on the cake to read the comments from the ever-outstanding commenters on AD, the best on the Internet. I feel refreshed by the pointed illumination of reality. Thank you Gerard and all who visit here.
captfleeJanuary 18, 2021, 5:12 PM
Well, that there trajectory appears to be approaching the vertical, not to say terminal. I spent a couple of years in the early 80s casting a baleful eye downward from my seventh floor corner perch at the Hotel El Cortez, a few blocks from Union Square, where I dwelt and from which I sallied forth every afternoon to my ship in sunny Oakland, returning after midnight from the Market Street BART, even then a bit frayed, and emerging onto street level amongst scenes of horror and depravity worthy of old H Bosch himself as I traversed the Tenderloin up to the Theater District and home. At least then the rot was confined to a few dozen blocks. In those years the Big Easy was home base, so I was rather more familiar with the nonsense one encountered in the East Bay (the sort of street anarchy one is blessed with in diverse locales) than with the Bedlam then on offer in “The City”, but even then I could hazard a guess as to where it would all end up. I don’t think they’re anywhere near the bottom, and it seems to me they’re still diggin’ pretty assiduously.
Terry;
On a return in the early 90s, during which a RORO pier at Hunters Point was home, and during which I had the opportunity to hone my defensive driving techniques against the torrent of projectiles hurled onto the roadway from de projecks above, I resorted to carrying around a card in my shirt pocket, on which I had scribbled some anodyne pleasantries which would have certainly been approved of by the Chamber of Commerce, with which I would reply to inquiries from denizens of “the City” as to, “What do you think of SF?”, having learnt the folly of answering over-truthfully, as this was prone to elicit the occasional psychotic break from locals, and as a gentleman, one hates to needlessly rile up the emotions of others. Even then, some seemed rather quick to take offense and to accuse your friend and humble narrator of insincerity, if you can imagine.
Gordon ScottJanuary 18, 2021, 5:32 PM
A few years back I was on my way into a grocery store to do some work. I was approached by a bum who wanted a few bucks to buy some food. I told him, follow me. I went to the hot food deli and purchased half a pound of chicken wings, and some jojo potatoes. All the while, he’s telling me if I just give him cash, he can buy some frozen wings and cook them and so on. Yeah, right. Here’s your meal, next one’s down 7th street at Mary’s Place.
There is a long street just across the freeway, about a mile east of here. The city started letting truckers park there when the feds imposed much more stringent rest rules, because the rest areas don’t have enough spaces. Around here, there are electric signs on the freeway telling truckers how many parking spaces are open at the next two rest areas.
So, it started with the truckers. Then, you’d see a few vehicles parked in medium-term storage. Then the buses and RVs started showing up, along with folks just sleeping in the cars. When the RV campers started putting up shade tarps and deploying furniture, the city started pushing back, mildly.
Now there are about four camping three blocks from here. It’s in the shadow of the many million dollar Minnepolis schools HQ. Tarps, furniture, trash piles, and so on. It won’t stink, much, until spring thaws the shit and piss.
The lefties of Minneapolis have always looked to San Francisco as an elder brother to be admired and imitated.
Sam L.January 19, 2021, 9:15 AM
The STUPID! It BURNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns.
AnonymousJanuary 19, 2021, 9:24 AM
Gerard, there’s brutal, and then there’s Lawrence of Arabia attacking the Turkish column fleeing the village of Tafas shortly after being sodomized by Jose Ferrer brutal
Your takedown was all that and more … to the power of 10 more
captfleeJanuary 19, 2021, 10:59 AM
Yes, anonymous, it’s one for the ages. ’bout near as elegant as Velociman’s “Man in the Lavender Automobile”.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
The “marketing” bumpf-bullshit-BS copy tells you that if you blow a hundred bucks on this feeble and highly overpriced blanket, the company behind it will send some sort of Progressive cocaine-dusting helicopter to coke dust the streets of San Francisco with blankets of a quality to be determined later from its profit and loss statement.
The marketing bullshit bobs soft and feculent on the web-page of these shameless white folks profiting off guilt. For instance, here’s a hot item from the blanket scammers: Leather Blanket Roll | Sackcloth & Ashes™
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
A few years back, I spotted a bum camping rough one winter evening at a local strip mall. Clean out of cash, I dipped into the trunk of my hooptie and grabbed him a $6 Mexican mercado blanket, made of the finest fake wool. “Much obliged,” he said, bundling up. He had moved on the next day.
So there, I’m done, and $94 ahead, without contributing to the sub optimal life choices of Romanian Gypsy Textile Standardizers, or Vegan Leather Tanners.
Ah….San Franshitsco- the PERFECT example of what Liberals will try to turn the rest of America into!
Let’s list all the great things about that Liberal city-
1) Built directly on an active fault line, with a history of total destruction from it.
2) A city built on non-indigenous, improperly compacted soils.
3) A city hastily rebuilt after a huge quake with very few building codes/enforcement followed.
4) Notoriously high real estate prices, rents, and taxes.
5) A crime rate only surpassed by Chicago or Detroit.
6) More daily car break-ins than any other CA city.
7) Over 400 restaurants recently closed down and left, along with thousands of other businesses.
8) Public nudity, urination, and defecation is LEGAL there.
9) The only city know worldwide for the “CRAP MAPS” detailing where the TONS of human feces and used syringes are located.
10) A huge amount of drug-addicted, drunken, worthless “unhoused” people, and more every day.
11) Nancy Pelosi runs it. (Right into the ground)
12) Militant lesbians, AIDS-infected sodomites, child molesters, and sex offenders a-plenty there.
13) More deaths from drug overdoses in 2020 than from Covid19.
14) It’s gotten so bad that even far-left Liberals are moving out in droves!
Great job enumerating the “lifestyle enhancements” for street junkies in S.F., Gerard.
What would be truly instructive is a break-down of costs. While I suspect that most of what has been gathered to that camp is likely stolen goods, Personal Security guards and Personal Paramedics don’t come for nothing in the big city. Neither is that NARCAN cheap! Not to mention the drain on local business. I mean who the hell wants to do business in a disease infested doper’s alley?
A side note, different part of the once “Golden State”. I made two trips with overnight stop in LA back in 2018 and 2019. I have to say I was shocked at the number of homeless encampments. Not just a few tents here and there. There were dozens of places populated with scores of tents in each place….under bridges, in warehouse commercial districts, city parks, vacant lots, everywhere.
Well, this street junkie’s “lifestyle enhancements” are the end result of the primacy of secular humanism’s hold upon many individuals’ minds. Secular humanists’ only concern is for men’s bodies, not their minds, as is well evidenced by this particular street junkie’s body being serviced by his private paramedics, his street side encampment, and the targeted marketing of corporations to fools to keep junkies’ bodies warm while the junkies minds waste in the gutter. The induced guilt white folks minds are wasting away, too, just at a slower rate, and the corporate white folks’ minds are only focused on paychecks and stock holder value.
I’m in the habit of not giving anything to strangers, cept lead if they demand it.
Nope, if I don’t know of them aforehand they don’t get jack.
Further, notice if you will, that it is the sorry assed gov’t that causes both of these sorry assed entities to exist in the first place. The gov’t largely creates an hostile environment to where when people get upside down financially it is almost impossible to right oneself. I won’t go into detail as if you aren’t up to speed already you shouldn’t be reading this. And, the sorry assed gov’t creates the vector to which parasitic entities can spring up to fleece the population at large under the shameful guise of helping those at risk or disadvantaged, whatever, while simultaneously scraping a whole bunch off the top to pad the wallets of their extensive and shameless board of directors.
A battalion of homeless bums should storm the headquarters of that establishment and separate the livers from the cavities of those board members and then roast said livers on their enflamed corpses.
This entire planet would be 500% better off if this rotten assed, thieving, lying US gov’t were to cease to exist, and the sooner the better.
The “City” as the locals call it, must smell like sh*t now. Smelled like dope when I was attending a local hell hole college there.
If one wants to piss off a local, refer to the town as, Frisco. For some reason that really gets them un-nerved.
Outstanding rant, beautiful in its perfectly targeted skewering of idiocy that is manifested four ways, long, wide, deep, and constant. Icing on the cake to read the comments from the ever-outstanding commenters on AD, the best on the Internet. I feel refreshed by the pointed illumination of reality. Thank you Gerard and all who visit here.
Well, that there trajectory appears to be approaching the vertical, not to say terminal. I spent a couple of years in the early 80s casting a baleful eye downward from my seventh floor corner perch at the Hotel El Cortez, a few blocks from Union Square, where I dwelt and from which I sallied forth every afternoon to my ship in sunny Oakland, returning after midnight from the Market Street BART, even then a bit frayed, and emerging onto street level amongst scenes of horror and depravity worthy of old H Bosch himself as I traversed the Tenderloin up to the Theater District and home. At least then the rot was confined to a few dozen blocks. In those years the Big Easy was home base, so I was rather more familiar with the nonsense one encountered in the East Bay (the sort of street anarchy one is blessed with in diverse locales) than with the Bedlam then on offer in “The City”, but even then I could hazard a guess as to where it would all end up. I don’t think they’re anywhere near the bottom, and it seems to me they’re still diggin’ pretty assiduously.
Terry;
On a return in the early 90s, during which a RORO pier at Hunters Point was home, and during which I had the opportunity to hone my defensive driving techniques against the torrent of projectiles hurled onto the roadway from de projecks above, I resorted to carrying around a card in my shirt pocket, on which I had scribbled some anodyne pleasantries which would have certainly been approved of by the Chamber of Commerce, with which I would reply to inquiries from denizens of “the City” as to, “What do you think of SF?”, having learnt the folly of answering over-truthfully, as this was prone to elicit the occasional psychotic break from locals, and as a gentleman, one hates to needlessly rile up the emotions of others. Even then, some seemed rather quick to take offense and to accuse your friend and humble narrator of insincerity, if you can imagine.
A few years back I was on my way into a grocery store to do some work. I was approached by a bum who wanted a few bucks to buy some food. I told him, follow me. I went to the hot food deli and purchased half a pound of chicken wings, and some jojo potatoes. All the while, he’s telling me if I just give him cash, he can buy some frozen wings and cook them and so on. Yeah, right. Here’s your meal, next one’s down 7th street at Mary’s Place.
There is a long street just across the freeway, about a mile east of here. The city started letting truckers park there when the feds imposed much more stringent rest rules, because the rest areas don’t have enough spaces. Around here, there are electric signs on the freeway telling truckers how many parking spaces are open at the next two rest areas.
So, it started with the truckers. Then, you’d see a few vehicles parked in medium-term storage. Then the buses and RVs started showing up, along with folks just sleeping in the cars. When the RV campers started putting up shade tarps and deploying furniture, the city started pushing back, mildly.
Now there are about four camping three blocks from here. It’s in the shadow of the many million dollar Minnepolis schools HQ. Tarps, furniture, trash piles, and so on. It won’t stink, much, until spring thaws the shit and piss.
The lefties of Minneapolis have always looked to San Francisco as an elder brother to be admired and imitated.
The STUPID! It BURNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns.
Gerard, there’s brutal, and then there’s Lawrence of Arabia attacking the Turkish column fleeing the village of Tafas shortly after being sodomized by Jose Ferrer brutal
Your takedown was all that and more … to the power of 10 more
Yes, anonymous, it’s one for the ages. ’bout near as elegant as Velociman’s “Man in the Lavender Automobile”.
If only we could sent our bums to Washington like we do our crazy politicians.