Gatherings of habitual drug users and dealers that used to occur primarily on Sixth Street and in the Tenderloin have shifted to other neighborhoods thanks to the mayor and SFPD's "cleanup" efforts, and neighbors on one Mission District alley held a protest about it.

There was a rally Thursday on Julian Avenue in the Mission where residents say they are fed up with the recent uptick in open-air drug use and vagrancy that moved onto their alley — which is a half-block away from Mission Street and intersects with 16th Street. As the Chronicle reports, a group of about 50 residents from the area gathered with signs saying things like "Drug Enablism Kills" and "Drug-Free Sidewalks," and called on the mayor and police department to stop the game of Whac-a-Mole that has most recently shifted illegal activity to their block.

One longtime Julian Avenue resident, Amilcar Cortez, tells the paper, "It seems like everything they do is just temporary. They’re doing something, but it’s not effective."

To that point, Mission Local has been documenting the 16th & Mission BART plaza and the nearby alleys, including Julian Avenue and Wiese Street, every day for the past two months. As of Day 60 of their project, they report that the activity on Wiese Street isn't exactly constant ("Mornings are generally emptier, and afternoons busier. Sometimes, police drive vans down the alley and move everyone along, before they amble back."), but it certainly feels that way to residents.

As SFist noted in March, the drug activity that had been concentrated by the BART plazas has largely moved to the alleys due to more constant harrassment by police.

"We’ve got kids on this block. You come home from school and people are passed out on our porch," said Julian Avenue resident Andrew Wickens, a father of two who has been documenting the scene on Xitter, speaking to Mission Local. "We’re tired of sweeping up needles and skin and fentanyl smoke just to get our kids inside."

Speaking at the rally Thursday, Wickens told the crowd that when he is walking his kids home from school sometimes, they encounter "20 people using drugs on our front porch, with diarrhea, with needles, blowing fentanyl smoke in our windows."

He also described having to sweep up a man's dead skin that he had been picking off his ankles onto Wickens's front steps.

Neighbors complain about the Gubbio Project, a harm-reduction non-profit that has been operating out of the nearby St. John the Evangelist church, providing food and daytime shelter to people on the street. Residents say that the place is an unofficial safe-consumption site that is enabling drug users and attracting them to the area. (The 21-year-old non-profit was attempting to set up an officially sanctioned safe-consumption site several years ago, but the city ultimately pulled the plug, worried about legal blowback.)

One photo from Mission Local shows a child holding a hand-written protest sign saying, "Harm Reduction Kills Neighbors." And, as Mission Local reports, one individual among the ralliers allegedly walked into the church just before the rally and shouted at Gubbio Project staff members, demanding to speak to a supervisor.

Mission Local also reported on an alleged assault that occurred after the rally, in which local poverty pornographer jj smith, aka Omar Ward, whose tweet is posted above, had his Meta glasses — which he was using to take video — knocked off his face.

The Chronicle also headed to Hayes Valley, where alleyways have also begun to attract homeless individuals and/or drug users seeking peace and quiet. One neighbor there said that the presence of people camped on the street seemed to  have increased recently.

One 50-year-old homeless man, Michael Barton, told the Chronicle that he'd been given a room in an SRO to sleep in, but he preferred camping out on the streets in Hayes Valley because it was quieter — and the SRO felt loud and chaotic at night.

Previously: New 16th Street Police Presence Just Moving Blight to Nearby Alleys, Residents Say

Photo by Andrew Wickens/X