June 5, 2007
And Now Some Very Sad News
It is with a very heavy heart that we report the passing of Hugues De La Plaza. The young audio engineer was returning to his home in Hayes Valley last night at around 2:15; his neighbors called police when they saw a struggle outside his apartment; and his body was found a few hours later. Friends have set up a memorial site, and have extended to the world an invitation to remember Hugues:
Hugues neighbors have encouraged friends and family to stop by and leave flowers, pictures, poems or candles. Please feel free to stop by Linden Street (between Laguna St. & Octavia St).
That's pretty much all the information we have -- from how it sounds, the SFPD is asking for folks to come forward with leads.
Our heartfelt condolences to Hugues' family and many many friends.
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people in SF get killed every day and if they're lucky you throw them a line in the Blotter but what-- he's hip and white and probably gay and so it's supposed to be this much more sad news than whoever you report died in the blotter. you guys are fucked up.
This along with the assertion in the Chronicle that if you're asked "Who do you represent?" by some thug, you'll likely get a good beating or killed reminds me why I miss my concealed carry gun permit.
What a sensitive and helpful observation.
It's true, SFist's official policy is to only run obituaries for people who are hip and white. For gays, we'll add a tone of remorse, and if you're vegan we'll send flowers to the wake.
Thank you Matty for the post. I randomly knew him on the internet. I would've never known.
MattyMatt, while hater's choice of tone and language comes off as abrasive, he does raise a legitimate point - based on SFist's track record, being upper-middle class and hip appears to be a requirement for SFist to run an obituary or memorial post.
For the rest of us curious and concerned non-haters, does SFist have a meaningful response?
this is really sad. the violence in this town is getting worse every day. i'm not exactly sure where it's coming from, the oakland drug trade, the rediculous amount of marijuana dispensaries, the t-thug third line making it so easy for our favorite criminals to criss cross the city. who knows.
one thing is for sure, we are quickly putting our entire town at risk by not focusing on what's easy and important, keeping the entire downtown area clean and safe.
cleveland turned their entire city around by starting with that philosophy, chicago keeps theirs progressing with the same.
why can't we do the same?
when you let downtown go, all the periphery areas are doomed. you can't stop it.
This is the first time that I've had a reader contact me to point out a memorial blog, and I believe it's the first time I've written about someone passing away. (I have a little over 500 posts on SFist, so it's hard to recall; but I don't think any of them are death-related.) In fact, now that I think of it, I don't recall ever seeing any other obituaries or memorial posts on SFist.
The staff of SFist is largely composed of people who are white, middle-class, and probably gay. It is unpleasant to admit, but I'd have to say that our demographics probably do affect our coverage.
"..his neighbors called police when they saw a struggle outside his apartment; and his body was found a few hours later."
Wow, SFPD has cut down their response time down to a few hours!!!! Glad to see improvement!!!
Got no beef with the dead, but sfist sure does to everyone else. snark snark cool hip snark. Yeah, sensitive. then a young white hipster dies then oh-so-tragic (Now, Without Irony!) How about you treat everyone who dies the same, okay? Grow up.
Actually, I just thought of one other death that we've covered -- James Kim.
For what it's worth, I did a post about six months ago about a missing African-American male right after the James Kim story. It garnered only three comments, the first of which said he was killed by a pimp.
Ok people you need to get a grip. So what, SFist should sh*t on this guy for getting killed instead? would THAT satisfy your sicko cravings?
chew on this....the fact is that the murderer won't get caught because the SFPD is too busy sucking down big pay to do nothing and are more scared of criminals than the littlest girl in third grade, and because our cutie patootie DA spends all her time looking cute in the society pages instead of fighting crime because she doesn't give a f*ck and can't do the job. And oh yeah, the Mayor "Qualit of Life" Newsom presided over all of this and once said he should be recalled if the murder rate didn't go down (it didn't), and just laughs now when he hears about a person getting killed (hey he has to get to a date with his best pal's wife, or worse)
and oh yeah what about the Board of Supervisors who don't care about crime, and hey, how about the fact you haters suck ass, if you don't like SFist go write your own fucking blog and see how well you do, douches.
Didn't I just see a posting in the past week about a missing older asian male?
If you don't like what you read here, go to another site. The internet is still (kinda) free.
Yeah, I wrote about my wife's grandmother dying once on SFist, a couple years ago. She was not young, middle-class, white nor even a San Franciscan. Probably not gay either.
Totally hip, though.
Hayes Valley? Well, we know his killers weren't white and gay, that's for sure.
Just a suggestion...maybe SFist should have a policy? Or at least include a few words about your connection to this individual? Obviously this entry was well-meaning, but it probably caused some head-scratching. And you don't want other people in the future wondering why you didn't print their obituaries.
I would hope that it never becomes necessary for SFist's policy of "don't be a racist" to be anything other than unspoken and assumed.
My connection to the individual is that I read about him on a blog that someone told me about.
I'm an old friend of Hugues who is trying to find out what's happened and I have to say that the first thing I've turned up is these comments and that's pretty ugly.
As someone who was hanging out with him that night, probably within minutes or hours of this, I can say that the people who are calling for help in this are a multitude of friends who very much cared for this person. I did not know him, but my friends who did are in much pain now.
The guy's family are all in France and he had moved to SF only four years ago. READ: HE HAS NO FAMILY IN THE US TO PRESSURE THE POLICE TO SOLVE THIS HORRENDOUS MURDER. As a younger citizen, I should remind "hater" that the reason the story was posted here was due to an outpouring of grief and concern from friends who have access to the internet. It is common for white, middle to upper class people to frequent the internet, and this is a way to memorialize this tremendous loss. "Analog" fliers are being posted in the area as well in order to spread the word.
Also, violence between known gang members is quite common in the City. You will find that many reports of violence and murder in the City involve gang activity. To my knowledge Hugues wasn't involved in any gang, but rather worked long, hard days at a company that makes childrens toys.
Hater - I think if you lost a friend to such injustice, you'd do what you could to make sure the person/s responsible was/were caught. That's what we're doing.
He is not gay either, to my knowledge, but I don't see how that makes any difference. There are real people reading this that knew him and loved him. Your uninformed vitriol is exactly what causes racism and homophobia to flourish.
I didn't know this guy, but apparently various random people I know were friends with him. So perhaps his mention here is because he was more a part of the community that frequents SFist than other random homicide victims. Perhaps we could just mourn this particular loss instead of arguing about how much every loss of life should be mentioned on the site, regardless of how anyone knew the victim, because that sounds hard. I'm just sayin'.
I support SFist getting the word out about this horrible crime and what seems like a life cut way too short. My condolences to his family/friends that may be reading this blog.
From the memorial blog link, it says he was seen at Haight/Webster at 230am. That is the same block where there have been several murders already this year from gang/drug violence. You can even look at Google's street view and watch the dealers. Walking from there to his home on Linden would be directly through a public housing project. I have no idea what actualy happened, but he was in a pretty dangerous area to be walkng alone in the middle of the night.
I think the postings about his race/sexual orientation/hipster status are in poor taste. Let the man rest in peace.
I know sfist routinely posts articles about people who are run over. Perhaps only young, white, hip, gay people are hit by automobiles in San Francisco, but I somehow doubt this...
I live a block away, saw the flyers & flowers on my walk home from work last night, and I'm glad that SFist reported on this tragedy.
In my experience reading them the big difference between the [city]ist sites and, for example, TV news, is that the authors don't pick stuff up off the newswire, they write about what they know personally, heard from a friend, or found through a friend of a friend.
This wasn't chosen from a stack of reports of who died last night and it most certainly wasn't chosen because of the victim's age, race, gender, or shoe size.
I am continually bewildered by the rock-throwers who just don't seem to get the way the web works. You've got a comment field here, people. You've got plenty of free ways to start your own blog. TELL THE NEWS YOU THINK ALSO NEEDS TO BE REPORTED.
Who else died whose stories we need to hear?
And don't piss on other people's grief; that's low and wrong.
Don't bitch - get off your ass and write. Help SFist become the site you want it to be or go start another or go read another.
Pitchin' criticism from the sidelines is lazy and in this context, incredibly rude to the victim's family & friends.
Well I certainly didnt read about this in the Chronicle, Hater-type person, but I was able to find it here. Now how do you like it?
Sat nite was Drunk and Horny at UndergroundSF
I wonder if he was there that night or if the police talked to the bar staff--also, this is probably doubtful but maybe those cameras at Haight/Webster caught something.
It wasn't "Drunk and Horny" at Underground SF, it was a night called "Die, Die, My Darling" and there were many friends with him at the time he was "last seen". As far as I know, he was going to make the short walk home. I used to live on the same block as Hughes, and I would walk from the Top, which is now Underground SF. I believe it was easier to walk down Linden from the projects, but I'd walk down Fell instead to be safe, then cut over. Gang violence is very common in that area -- I personally heard gunshots and saw the dead young man on Buchanan and Hayes several years ago. Although it was gang-related, the Chron DID report on that murder, yet they have yet to report on Hugues' murder. How about that, Hater-ade, you troll.
(From the memorial site):
Night Vigil in Memory of Hugues De La Plaza
When: Thurday - June 7th, 2007 at 8:00pm
Where: Linden Street [between Laguna St & Octavia St]
Please bring flowers, pictures and candles. Hugues Family arrives earlier this evening and it would be nice for them to see that we cared for him.
The culture of violence in this City is out of control. Maybe SFist should try to recruit some young native San Franciscans to contribute.
To make things more inclusive, how about a moment of silence for Jamar White? He's the Mission High senior who was killed a couple of weeks ago at 10:30 in the morning at Eddy and Laguna. Here's a heartbreaking Examiner article about him:
www.examiner.com/a-747491~High_school_senior_gunned_down_in_broad_daylight.html
"After struggling academically during the first two years of his high school career, he got serious in the last two years and begged Mission High School Principal Kevin Truitt to let him take a second senior year.
“He wanted a real high-school diploma. He did not want a GED,” Truitt said Thursday."
Here's a picture of Jamar I found on myspace:
i68.photobucket.com/albums/i18/lildora4152/Jamar.jpg
And Mo wrote a poem about Jamar on her myspace blog:
www.myspace.com/voteformorgasm
At the bottom of the blog post she has a video about the Beacon Community Center that includes some shots of Jamar.
PLEASE NOTE:
Regarding the memorial - the date has been changed
"Night Vigil in Memory of Hugues De La Plaza
When: Friday - June 8th, 2007 at 8:00pm
Where: 454 Linden Street (between Laguna & Octavia) in San Francisco
Please bring flowers, pictures and candles. Feel free to forward this information
to anyone who may be interested in attending. We are hoping for a large turnout.
Thanks,
Neil"
I met Hugues through work. After a few projects working together we became friends. He was a kind, fun and sweet person, incapable of hurting anyone. No matter race, color, social level discussions, I can say he was just a happy person, who treated people well, loved to travel and enjoy life. Please respect his memory, his family and friends and stop writting destructive blogs in this space.
Hugues was a great guy - full of life, kind and incredibly smart. His smile and laughter will definitely be missed.
Thank you for posting this tribute and news item. I haven't seen any mention of it in the papers ... as if it doesn't matter.
It matters!
There's a short article in the Chronicle
To correct a minor mistake in the report: a neighbor called the police Saturday morning when he saw signs of a struggle (read: blood) on the porch; the police arrived about three minutes later and found the body about two minutes later (after breaking down the door to Hugues' apartment). As far as I know, no one saw the struggle, and the police responded with alacrity.