Results tagged “tenderloin”

KRON 4, in between a slew of easy-entry-walk-in-bath commercials, reports that an early morning carjacking at Sutter and Polk ended in a crash. No word yet as to the condition of the vehicle's owner. The suspect tried to run from police, but was arrested at the scene. (The cops "t-boned the guy," says Darya Folsom.) We'll update as soon as we hear more.

Prompted by City Attorney Dennis Herrera, notorious Tenderloin strip club Pink Diamonds was forced to shut its doors yesterday. According to SFGate, a judge ordered the, eh, burlesque club to officially close for a year and "directed its operator, Damone H. Smith, to pay at least $688,500 in fines after he violated a court agreement to bring the club into compliance with local and state laws." (The club actually ceased operations in early October, but this final nail in the strip pole, a request Herrera made to a SF Superior Court judge on on Sept. 30, made the closure official.)

At 5 pm today, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom will take a tour of the charm-free middling area of Marker Street. You know, the area between Sixth and Eights Streets where you were mugged. Twice. Yes, that one.

This heads-up comes to SFist directly via Johnny Funcheap himself. Seventy-four artists have collaborated to create sixteen site-specific art installations throughout the Tenderloin District (from Geary to Market, Larkin to Mason) in the month-long Wonderland exhibition.

How could a place so sweet sounding be so violent? When that place operates in the Tenderloin, it's damn easy. And, as he's done before to other heavenly establishments, City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to shut the place down. According to the CA Office, Herrera moved one step closer yesterday "to shutter the Pink Diamonds nightclub, a notorious public nuisance in the Tenderloin where a brutal June 27, 2009 slaying represented only the worst episode so far in a pattern of lawlessness that has required more than 230 service calls by the San Francisco Police Department in the last six months alone."

SATURDAY/MISSION: At around 9:40 p.m. at 14th and Mission streets, someone was stabbed. The victim was transported to San Francisco General Hospital to be treated for non-life threatening stab wounds. No arrests have been made, no suspect info is available.

AlertSF informs us that Eddy Street in the TL will be janky for most of the evening due to a busted water main.

John Montgomery, 37, has been identified as the 34th San Francisco homicide victim of 2009. Montgomery was stabbed at the Vincent Hotel at 459 Turk sometime around noon on Thursday. According to CBS 5/BCN, "[p]olice arrested another man in connection with the stabbing, but his name has not been released. " The Vincent Hotel, by the way, is a rather large housing unit for the city's homeless population, run by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

Has anyone heard of this thing called the War on Drugs started by President Nixon, in which drug dealers and users get thrown in jail in order to clean up our streets and save our great nation from ruin, only to have them be replaced by different dealers and users the next day? Well, our new police chief George Gascon apparently sides with Nixon and Reagan on this debate, and recently announced a sweep of the Tenderloin in which 300 people were arrested in an effort to rid the area of drugs and prostitution. Good fucking luck!

Not likely. But a new effort to sanitize Sixth Street is underway, starting this month, care of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. And what, exactly, will clean up San Francisco's scariest and urineiest intersection? Two-way radios. According to SF Examiner, "Two full-time officials will begin patrolling the street and its alleys this month. They will have two-way radios to report crimes, provide advice and clear paths for pedestrians." The city will dish out $150,000 to employ two full-time guides (not SFPD officers?) to "patrol the corridor for a year." SF Coalition on Homelessness, of course, thinks this is a bad idea. COH Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach tells the Ex that these kinds of programs simply "remove the presence of poor people," homeless or not.

According to ActionNewsSF, "Tendernob standoff now has Hyde closed Sutter-Geary & Post closed Polk-Leavenworth." Please adjust your route home as you see fit.

This photo on Curbed seriously made our afternoon. Apparently, a long-time Curbed lurker discovered this rooftop streamliner while doing a building inspection for a housing project in the Tenderloin. Blogger 40Goingon28 confirms it's located at the 100 block of Turk Street. Another Curbed commenter speculates that "All you need is an airsteam and a crane" to pull off this feat. See this beauty from another angle.

During a VIP tour of San Francisco's Historic Tenderloin District, new San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón was rendered flummoxed -- especially after a drug deal went down right before his very eyes. (Whoops.) Anyway, his main goal for San Francisco? To "make San Francisco the safest largest city in America." How will Gascón accomplish this feat of metropolitan comfort? reports, "He said he hopes to make the 'first cut' on reorganizing the department within 90 days. To do so, he will dispatch detectives, most of whom now work at the Hall of Justice, to district stations. He also intends to combine the patrol and investigations functions, which are now headed by separate deputy chiefs, under a single operations command." He will also hold public meetings where city's district stations will "be questioned about crime trends."

Over in the Tenderloin yesterday evening, some pieces of molding fell down from the top of the old Hibernia Bank Building at 1 Jones Street on McAllister. Why? Because the place is old and needs to be renovated. Soon. (Preferably not into another inane museum no one will visit, ever.) SFPD and firefighters showed up at the scene to investigate the fallen bricks, which could've smacked somebody on the head, killing them. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Yet. Check out SFCitizen for more shots of the the dilapidated building's droppings.

This man, whose name we believe is Bob, grew up in Vallejo and moved to San Francisco in 1979 to pursue his dreams of being a postal clerk and (possibly) becoming a liberated gay man. Bob now curates this awkward site of internet oddities, and appears quite put off by things like Roseanne Barr and bestiality. Rather than write his memoirs, Bob is vlogging them, and this 9-minute bit of YouTubery is a fine example of why oral histories are sometimes a bit more ramble-y than written ones. He describes the horrors of his first apartment -- a room in the cockroach infested SRO known as the Civic Center Hotel, which still stands today at Market and 12th Street -- and one has to wonder what irresistible joys this town had to offer which kept Bob living this "nightmare" for six straight months rather than at home with mom in Vallejo.

"Please, Get Out Of My Store!!" by Plug1 of What I'm Seeing.

A heroin smuggling ring that involved transporting hundreds of kilos at a time hidden in train engines and compartments has been busted up by federal authorities, as announced yesterday by Acting U.S. Attorney Larry Brown. The heroin operation first came to the attention via two undercover cops in SF's Tenderloin, who ultimately helped trace the drugs back to Michoacan, Mexico, from whence they were smuggled in trains through Southern California, up the Central Valley, and ultimately being sold in SF, Oakland and East Palo Alto. The operation, codenamed "Operation City Commuter," uncovered 200kg of the good stuff and $670,000 in cash, and the whole ring was estimated at over $17M. So remember to take pity when you see those smack kids (who all have dogs, by the way) asking for change: their heroin just got a lot more expensive.

In an effort to appear more quality of life-ish, the intersection at Eddy and Taylor received a makeover. (Taylor and Ellis got the same design yesterday too.) This Tenderloin spot, best known for being a crime magnet where you never want to be after the sun goes down or up, got new designs on their crosswalks.

Speaking of body parts, a woman was shot in the leg last night in the Tenderloin. According to CBS5 / BCN, the incident occurred at around 9 p.m. last night at (where else?) Eddy and Leavenworth streets. "The victim suffered a gunshot wound to her leg and was taken to San Francisco General Hospital to be treated for the injury, which was not considered to be life-threatening." No arrests have been made.

Sad news. The Tenderloin Y will officially shut its doors today, just short of its 100-year anniversary. "The eight-story, 150,000-square-foot building at the corner of Leavenworth Street and Golden Gate Avenue," which "opened in 1910 to replace San Francisco’s original YMCA center, which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake," according to the Examiner, was purchased by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. a couple of years ago for $12.2 million. The goes on to say, "The Department of Public Health and the Mayor’s Office of Housing are providing funds to turn the building into affordable housing units for homeless and low-income residents." Another YMCA will, hopefully, "open nearby in about two years."

FRIDAY / MARINA: Marking a rare guest appearance on SFist Blotter is the controversial Marina neighborhood. [cue Ritual Roasters coffee spit take] See, during a two-hour standoff inside a Marina hotel at 11 p.m., Waddell Williams, 33, allegedly shot at officers from inside his "touristy hotel room." The incident occurred at the Chelsea Motor Inn, located at Lombard and Webster streets. No one was injured. Williams was arrested. No word yet as to why he shot at SFPD officers.

With the second major underground fire in four years roaring last Friday -- spectacularly so, we might add -- Mayor Gavin Newsom wants some answers from PG&E. If you recall, in August 2005, an underground PG&E vault blaze occurred in the Financial District, critically injuring a passerby. That fire, according to CBS 5, "was caused by high levels of moisture in the oil inside the high-voltage chambers on the transformer." A follow-up investigation reveals that five additional transformers within in San Francisco "had high moisture levels" as well. Anyway, Newsom claims to be unhinged by last week's manhole blaze, saying. "I've been at this a lot as mayor of San Francisco, some more problematic events, not just this event. We'll work through them." PG&E promises a thorough investigation. Polk Street at O'Farrell remains closed for investigation.

You might want to reconfigure your route home, readers. According to ActionNewsSF, who have been updating all afternoon on today's underground Tenderloin fire, "Northbound Van Ness [is] closed, O'Farrell, Polk and Larkin also closed. Traffic on Hyde is a mess." And don't even think of taking the 47 or 49 buses right now. We'll update around the 5 o'clock hour with more traffic details, which (hopefully) might ease as the day wears on. Also, according to abc7newsBayArea, "The shelter in place around O'Farrell and Polk has been lifted." Update: Word is "[a]s of 3:00 p.m., the 47 and 49 routes have resumed normal service. The 19 and the 38 are still being re-routed." Update II, "Traffic moving again on Van Ness, Larkin, and Hyde. O'Farrel & Polk still closed. Traffic lights out at various intersections."

        

Breaking news, folks. According to Alert SF, "Avoid the area of Polk / O'Farrell for next hour due to fire in underground vault. Heavy smoke. Traffic in area is impacted." Also, as always, you could very well get shot and killed at Polk and O'Farrell, or groped by bachelor party revelers from the nearby O'Farrell Theater, so do be careful

Today's Photo du Jour goes out to the Merrill's on Market Street, may it rest in peace.

With all of the crime happening over in the East Bay, it's nice to see San Francisco finally play host to some as well. According to the Examiner, "[a] man was hospitalized early this morning after he was shot during an argument in the Tenderloin" over on the 500 block of Leavenworth just after 2 a.m. this morning. "The victim was shot by another man after the two engaged in a verbal confrontation," according to police. Thew victim was whisked away to SF General. His condition is not yet know. Oh, and guess what else? No arrests have been made.

SFist commenter Oskarv sent us the above image taken from that famous billboard at Larkin and Turk. Why? Because weblog naysayer and SF Chronicle scribe C.W. Nevius's golden nuggets of wisdom made it up on said billboard

Over on the glamorous intersection of Turk and Taylor -- do you think rent for a studio is still astronomical over there? Even though it's in the pit on the TL? Even with what we're about to tell you? -- five people were shot last night at around 10:30 pm. One woman (described as "nice, pretty, educated and outgoing") died as a result of the shooting. A silver Mercedes SUV was involved in the shooting. After the attack, said vehicle headed across the Bay Bridge. Although a chase ensued at speeds of up to 110 mph, SFPD and Oakland police "eventually lost track of the Mercedes" somewhere in the East Bay. No word yet as to a motive. Update: According to a commenter, the Mercedes was "torched" after the chase. Dramatic.

TENDERLOIN / WEDNESDAY: A man was stabbed to death in the TL last night. At around 5:30 p.m. an unidentified man, according to the police, "the victim walked into a hotel in the 100 block of Jones Street at about 5:30 p.m. stating he had been stabbed." The victim was then whisked away to SF General where he was later pronounced dead.

We've all been bummed out here over the sudden demise of Adam's Block. It was fun, legal, and helpful. And now? Well, this happened.