ON THE FENCE AND HATING IT

Having lived in the Haight Ashbury for 25 years, I have very strong opinions
about my turf. I just don't know what they are.

We moved there when the stores on Haight Street were all boarded up, when
the neighborhood was still reeling in the wake of the Summer of Love. We
couldn't afford to live in Pacific Heights, so we settled for a neighborhood
that made five banks look at their maps and reject our mortgage application
before we found one that would lend us the money. We liked it just fine
there, planting trees on our block, getting to know our neighbors and
watching out for each other.

We marveled at the transformation, as boarded-up storefronts on Haight
Street gave way to small businesses. ``Who ever thought we'd live within
walking distance of a bagel bakery and a patisserie?'' asked my husband.

As the beards of the veteran street people grew gray, tattooed teenage
runaways showed up to share the sidewalks, as did faux runaways who hung out
when classes at nearby private high schools were over. Two neighborhood
associations had two world views: The Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association
believed in less spit and more polish; the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood
Council was live-and-let-live.

In Cole Valley, which became a mecca for yuppies, the Neighborhood
Association, said to be represented pro bono by one of the city's fanciest
law firms, was constantly at odds with Food Not Bombs. The problem, I
thought, was that the people who'd spent big money for their houses thought
the high price tags defined the neighborhood as another Union Street. I felt
wise in understanding that it would never become another Union Street.

Now, the war's heated up, escalated in part by Chronicle reports of squalor
in Golden Gate Park. The mayor's decision to fence off the eastern end of
the park -- supposedly for improvements -- forced park dwellers onto Haight
Street, where there are daily confrontations with middle-class
errand-runners forced to step over them, ignore their pleas for money and/or
insults and skirt the array of mongrels many lead around on ropes.

Some neighbors are fighting the relocation of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic
to an abandoned Christian Science church; others stand on street corners
giving out leaflets about doing away with drug dealers and cleansing the
neighborhood of criminals; others have placed signs in their windows to show
that they're standing strongly against bad elements.

Opponents remind them that street people were in the Haight long before
homeowners with BMWs, and that the problem is really the lack of low-cost
housing. Every defense is met with a story of personal atrocity:

``My kid found a needle in the sand of the playground. He could have been
stuck!'' ``How would you like to find human waste left in front of your
front door every day?'' ``I saw a gang of kids in the Panhandle use a stick
to beat a pigeon to death? Is that what you like?''

I think about schoolkids being offered LSD on Haight Street and I shudder.
And then I think about the homeless guy who told me a pal had died after his
blankets and possessions were confiscated when the park was fenced off, and
I shiver.

I'm an old-timer in the neighborhood, and I have every right to weigh in.
But I still don't have a sign in my window, or a slogan in my head. If I
were to venture an opinion on either side, I know I'd be shouted down by
opponents sure that the laws of righteousness are with them.

As for myself, I realize it's an unproductive position, but I just don't know.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett