This morning, there was a sit/lie rally happening at City Hall -- a protest against a law that would, if all goes according to plan, preemptively stop crimes from happening in the Haight. How so? Well, it would make it illegal to sit or lie down on public sidewalks. That is to say, it would attempt to legally extract the teen hooligans who, reported C.V. Nevius, have been using their pooches, cross words and stale body odor to terrorize residents and passersby on Haight Street.
The small rally stems from today's San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee debate at City Hall (or, "a political powder keg!") to "demystify" the proposed law. Haight business owners and residents are, of course, excited for the sit/lie ban to go into action. But homeless advocates are concerned, fretting and scratching their chins. Does this law -- adopted in cities like Seattle and Berkeley (even though filmy Berkeley residents, homeless or otherwise, still kick it on the sidewalks of Telegraph Avenue) -- target the homeless? Not according to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who explains to SF Examiner, "It’s not a homeless debate as much as it is a human debate ... The vast majority of people this would affect aren’t even homeless."
But Newsom, as we all know, loathes the housing-free who creep among us. So: grain of salt.
Feel free to read more about the law, which SFBG helpfully breaks down, to judge for yourself.