There seems to be an understanding between many I’ve spoken to that the level of crime in Bayview is so high as to be unique. There is a sense, not among everyone, but among enough people I’ve spoken to, that this neighborhood is singular in its share of San Francisco blight, murder and drugs. While these things happen (most people I’ve spoken to who live here have more than one story of being witness to drug activity or the victim of theft), the statistics tell a different story.
Which is the truer take? Is there something the numbers don’t account for? Why is there this disconnect?
Shirley Moore, the vice president of the Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association, is an example of an exaggerated view. When talking about crime in her neighborhood, Moore’s voice becomes louder and more strained. She can’t walk her dogs anymore, she says, because one day she found a note in her mailbox. It said, “I follow you home.” She’s tired of seeing glass from car windows on the street when she leaves her home in the morning. When her car gets broken into, she says, she doesn’t report it, knowing it will just make her premiums go up.
“When I want a nice cup of coffee, I make it myself,” Moore says. “Or I have to drive in my car to a mall in Portola.” Continuing, Moore uses phrases like “held hostage.” When talking about where they live, she and others in Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association tend to paint a picture of siege.
Statistics tell a different story. A mapping application on the San Francisco Police Department Web site shows where various crimes. Incidences come up in color-coded dots, blue, green, yellow, red.
On the map, Bayview has its share of colored dots, certainly. But they’re nowhere near as dense as the dots in the Tenderloin and South of Market.
It’s the same for subsidized housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a similar map for housing projects, it’s own, and those run by other organizations. Again, Bayview has a few, downtown San Francisco has many more.
The list continues this way, for the number of people who are homeless, the number of registered sex offenders. One by one, the statistics show something less dire than the picture painted by Moore and others.
But it’s comparative gain. Bayview’s bad numbers are consistently trumped by the Tenderloin’s.
Also, the financial center and the tenderloin are less residential, if you look at the numbers. Bayview has a much higher number of single family homes and rental housing units. Though downtown San Francisco has higher statistics of crime, that place may be less of a home to more people.
The Glamour of the Tough Neighborhood
Talking to residents and outsiders, Bayview’s reputation precedes it. I’ve seen craigslist ads for apartments in the neighborhood, many of them with qualifiers like, “yeah, I know, Bayview…”
When I’ve told people I’m reporting on their neighborhood, they tend to ask me to focus on the good things this place has to offer. This has happened more than once. More than once, I’ve also heard the phrase, “after a while I stopped calling the police when I heard gunshots.”
In reporting, there seems to be an almost willful focus on the neighborhood’s weakest attributes.
I’ve noticed it in myself. The Bayview district, according to the city’s formal boundaries, run much father north and west than the common understanding of where Bayview, as a neighborhood, begins and ends. I’ve often had to choose which information to use, data from the larger or smaller Bayview. In these situations, I’ve felt a dark little temptation to use the information that gives the worse impression.
This could also be due to expediency. Official data is easiest to get for the larger, district Bayview. Census data is easily had by zip code—94124 falls loosely in line with the district boundaries.
I can understand the temptation to paint a place you don’t live in as worse off than it is. But what seems unique to me, rather than Bayview’s crime rate, is the tendency of some people here to exaggerate the negative. To an outsider, which I am, it comes off as a myth.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday Streets Festival
Today was a good day in Bayview for nostalgia.
For the first time, the Bayview neighborhood was a part of Sunday Streets, when volunteers block off major streets to car traffic. Rollerbladers, bicyclists, pedestrians, had most of Third Street to themselves. Sunday Streets was a part of other Third Street events, rather than its own entity.
Sunday is a good day for foot traffic in this neighborhood. Many of its residents go to church on Sundays, and more importantly, many of them go to churches they can walk to.
Add to that local art shows. Local, black-positive artist Malik Senefru showcased at the Bayview Opera House, which marked the end of the Sunday Streets route.
Hats and Foot Traffic
Bayview has hats like nowhere else in San Francisco: big, wide-brimmed hats, wrapped hats in colorful printed cloth, hats with glitter and rhinestones, hats worthy of Aretha Franklin.
They come out on early Sunday afternoons, after church. Third Street is something to see at noon on Sunday—over the course of church-going hours it’s transformed from a ghost town to a small town thoroughfare. The streets are full of marvelous, old-fashioned outfits.
So it’s a good thing Sunday Streets happens on Sundays. The crowds outside Bayview’s major churches, vendors, bicyclists passing through from neighborhoods further north mixed together.
Third Street businesses put out balloons and played music.
It felt great, and strange, to walk in the streets.
For the first time, the Bayview neighborhood was a part of Sunday Streets, when volunteers block off major streets to car traffic. Rollerbladers, bicyclists, pedestrians, had most of Third Street to themselves. Sunday Streets was a part of other Third Street events, rather than its own entity.
Sunday is a good day for foot traffic in this neighborhood. Many of its residents go to church on Sundays, and more importantly, many of them go to churches they can walk to.
Add to that local art shows. Local, black-positive artist Malik Senefru showcased at the Bayview Opera House, which marked the end of the Sunday Streets route.
Hats and Foot Traffic
Bayview has hats like nowhere else in San Francisco: big, wide-brimmed hats, wrapped hats in colorful printed cloth, hats with glitter and rhinestones, hats worthy of Aretha Franklin.
They come out on early Sunday afternoons, after church. Third Street is something to see at noon on Sunday—over the course of church-going hours it’s transformed from a ghost town to a small town thoroughfare. The streets are full of marvelous, old-fashioned outfits.
So it’s a good thing Sunday Streets happens on Sundays. The crowds outside Bayview’s major churches, vendors, bicyclists passing through from neighborhoods further north mixed together.
Third Street businesses put out balloons and played music.
It felt great, and strange, to walk in the streets.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
An Anecdote, Over a Beer
It would be easy to miss the Speakeasy Brewery. The building, which shares turf with light industry (The San Francisco Examiner’s printing press is a close neighbor), doesn’t have a written sign. Instead, a pair of shifty eyes painted red, black, and large above the building’s sole front door mark the brewery’s entrance.
At its weekly happy hour (Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m.) it doesn’t sell beer. Rather, it sells tokens (printed with the emblematic criminal-looking eyes) for three dollars each. Inside, one token buys a pint of the brewery’s mobster-themed beer: Prohibition Ale and The Old Godfather Lager, to name two.
At happy hour, the crowd inside is, alas, homogenous. Twenty-something white kids, most of them bicycle enthusiasts and many of them new residents, are gathered inside and within the brewery’s “yard”—an area of the street enclosed in twice-as-high-as-me chain-link fences.
“Never the Twain Shall Meet”
Along Evans Road, at the bottom of Hunters View Hill, The speakeasy brewery is a neighbor to many of Bayview’s HUD housing complexes. Jim Ansbro, who frequents the happy hour, recounts a story about trying to encourage the brewery’s neighbors to come and mingle a bit.
“I offered them a free beer the first time they came,” Ansbro says. “Nobody came.”
Ansbro pauses.
“Well, three of them came. But that’s not very many for a free beer,” he says.
At its weekly happy hour (Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m.) it doesn’t sell beer. Rather, it sells tokens (printed with the emblematic criminal-looking eyes) for three dollars each. Inside, one token buys a pint of the brewery’s mobster-themed beer: Prohibition Ale and The Old Godfather Lager, to name two.
At happy hour, the crowd inside is, alas, homogenous. Twenty-something white kids, most of them bicycle enthusiasts and many of them new residents, are gathered inside and within the brewery’s “yard”—an area of the street enclosed in twice-as-high-as-me chain-link fences.
“Never the Twain Shall Meet”
Along Evans Road, at the bottom of Hunters View Hill, The speakeasy brewery is a neighbor to many of Bayview’s HUD housing complexes. Jim Ansbro, who frequents the happy hour, recounts a story about trying to encourage the brewery’s neighbors to come and mingle a bit.
“I offered them a free beer the first time they came,” Ansbro says. “Nobody came.”
Ansbro pauses.
“Well, three of them came. But that’s not very many for a free beer,” he says.
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