Door knocking in Duboce Triangle and beyond...

Wednesday two weeks' back saw a small group of us go out knocking on doors for No on G, save Sunset Dunes Park. We tackled an area of town called Duboce Triangle, a densely populated strip between Haight St. and Market St. near The Castro, handing out literature to interested parties who opened their doors to us. 

Highlights of the event: A shirtless man answered his door, looked at us, then bellowed NOT interested in our faces. A middle-aged woman barked at us about the city of San Francisco trying to take away parking spaces for cars. (And what does that have to do with the park?) 

I have committed to spending two hours each week at Sunset Dunes with literature and a smile to share what voting for Prop. G would bring. It would bring, should it pass, an end to the park. All of the park infrastructure would be ripped out--benches, refuse bins, hammocks, play structures, the skate park, parallel bars, art installations, the kids' pump track, etc. It would all be removed and the city would have spend circa 10 million dollars to convert the park back to a road for cars. 

Highlights so far: Multiple older white men feeling no compunction about screaming FUCK in my face in order to emphasize how much they hate the park while USING the park. I did respond to one such an individual with, 'Why don't you go walk in the street then?' while gesturing toward a neighboring road. Spying my narrow-minded anti-park neighbor walking in the park until she was close enough to my contingent of pro-park peeps at which pointed she pivoted away, removing herself from the stretch of old road she professes to hate.

***

I had an interesting interaction with a customer at my job the other day. He'd mentioned that he'd moved away about 20 years ago and that it was nice to be back in town. -turns out he grew up in Pacific Heights in the 80s and 90s. For those who are unfamiliar, Pacific Heights in one of the poshest sections of SF. I don't know how we got on the subject of the current Mayor of San Francisco, Dan Lurie, but we did. This customer had attended private school with Lurie. I expressed a distaste for the Mayor, citing his having grown up an heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune as being one reason why he was unfit for the job. There was no way, in my opinion, that Dan could be a man 'of the people' as he had grown up in rarefied air, if you will. I knew that the person with whom I was speaking would, too, have grown up in priveledge based on his zipcode and the fact that he now lives abroad in one of the richest countries in the world. What I didn't know was that I was speaking to someone who was the son of billionaires who were decades-long politicians in their country of origin. He listened to me spout upset about Mayor Lurie and then said something to the effect of: People are complicated; many politicians publically espouse positions that they then do hold personally. That is, of course, the case, but it doesn't make fighting for what is right any easier.

Apropos of this post, I will leave you with an image of the stunning Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in existence in the world.