16TH STREET SHOOTING GALLERY

As City's Heroin Problem Grows, Inner Mission Corner Is Still Ground Zero

He worked as a barber. He used to be a nurse's aide. And he once had a
family.

Now, the man who calls himself Heavy is a resident of 16th and Mission
streets, with no home, no job and no regular income. His three
children live with his mother; he sees them three or four times a year.

The one thing he does have, the thing that sticks with him like gum on
the bottom of his shoe, is his 20-year heroin habit. He has tried to
beat it, but the withdrawal is excruciating.

"To kill that pain, you gotta put more drugs in you," Heavy
said.

The 39-year-old is just one of many heroin addicts in this area of
town - an area described by neighborhood organizers as the center of
The City's heroin trade.

It is the place where hundreds come to buy their dope, activists and
police said. They come from Haight-Ashbury and Pacific Heights, from
Oakland and Petaluma. But unlike Oscar Scaggs, the son of singer Boz
Scaggs who died of an apparent heroin overdose there on New Year's
Eve, they go mostly unnoticed by the media.

"It's tragic what happened to Boz Scaggs' son, but it happens all the
time," said Richard Marquez of the Mission Agenda, a nonprofit agency
that works with poor people living on the streets and in the Mission's
56 residential hotels.

He pointed to the public toilet near the corner, the "green monster,"
as people here call it. "It's sort of a shooting gallery," a place
where addicts go to inject themselves with heroin, he said. "It's
cheaper than a hotel room."

Police say the area is certainly one of the three or four worst in The
City for heroin dealing.

"Historically, 16th and Mission has always been it," said Inspector
Bob Hernandez of the police narcotics division. "That's always been
the spot."

One addict who gets his supply there is a third-generation buyer; his
father and grandfather also frequented the corner, Hernandez said.

Since the 1970s, when the intersection became the site of a BART stop,
its popularity has grown.

Good prices in City

"Anyone from anywhere can come in, get off the train, get their drugs
and get back on," said Sgt. John Murphy of the narcotics division.
According to Hernandez, they make the trip to San Francisco because
they know they can get a good price for the drug here.

Moving west, toward Valencia Street, the hard-core elements of Mission
Street give way to the hipster clubs and trendy restaurants that have
made Valencia one of the hot new places for 20-somethings.

Marquez pointed to a bar on 16th Street, the Skylark, between Mission
and Valencia. It used to be a trans-gender gay Latino bar called La
India Bonita, he said. "Now it's a total yuppie site."

The contradictions are stark.

Marquez peered into the window of a popular restaurant on 16th and
Valencia called Ti Couz. "Yupsters are lining up here on Friday night
to eat crepes, and across the street, people in those (single-room
occupancy) hotels are shooting up," he said.

But the two groups have one thing in common: The young partiers often
stop on the corner to score some heroin while they're in the
neighborhood, Marquez said. Since the drug is increasingly snorted or
smoked, some of its formerly forbidden nature is gone.

A man who gave his name as Semaj, a heroin addict himself, said he
makes a little money by setting up customers with drug dealers.

"You can tell the customers that don't belong in the neighborhood.
They just look different," he said. He's seen doctors, lawyers, even
morticians come around for their heroin fix. "I even had a guy from
the funeral home, he come over here with a body in the car once."

Police agreed, saying that people from all walks of life and all
incomes frequent the area. Murphy said he recently arrested a Stanford
professor on suspicion of heroin possession.

The addicts who live in the neighborhood have found that drugs are far
more readily available than treatment programs.

According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, there are
about 13,000 heroin addicts in The City. Only 4,000 were getting
treatment last year, said Barbara Garcia, director of community
substance abuse services.

Treatment centers scarce

There are currently no treatment centers near 16th and Mission; the
closest one is at San Francisco General Hospital at 22nd Street and
Potrero Avenue, Garcia said. The department has funded a new
residential treatment program scheduled to open nearby in about a
year, but it will have only six beds.

Citywide, addicts must wait anywhere from three to six weeks and even
longer before they can get into a treatment program, Garcia said.

Hernandez, the narcotics officer, said he is working on a new program,
funded by the federal government, that aims to reduce the number of
overdose deaths and help people take advantage of the available
treatment options.

The addict who gave his name as Heavy said he would like to get
treatment - especially since he also struggles with diabetes. While he
stands on the corner talking to a reporter, a young man sidles up to
him.

"Thirty dollars," the young man says, opening his palm to reveal a
ripped plastic Baggie with a brown rock the size of a large raisin.
It's half a gram of Mexican heroin. "Thirty dollars."

Heavy declines, saying he doesn't have the money right now. The young
man moves on.