S.F.’s Dirty Secret

Here was a political scene that you might not witness in another American city. Ten candidates for mayor, among them two Socialists and a nervous man who made his oratorical points by falling to his knees, had collected themselves for a campaign debate. The setting was a gloomy auditorium and the subject on everyone’s mind was filth.

We are not talking here about filth of the soul, about moral corruption or deviations of the flesh, all the things you might expect from San Francisco. No, we are talking about literal filth. Garbage and urine in public places. Human bodies sprawled in doorways. A city in physical decline.

Filth, in fact, appears to be at the core of San Francisco’s race for mayor. Angela Alioto, daughter of Joe and now running for mayor herself, walked to the podium and hit the filth theme early. She recalled the city of her youth, she said, a city that was fresh, clean and full of hope. The sidewalks always seemed filled with flowers. The bums were polite. The buses ran on time.

But that city is no more, she said. Herds of the homeless now wander from neighborhood to neighborhood. The buses are smeared with graffiti and the bus drivers insult the oldsters. Grime is everywhere. San Francisco is a city that has fallen from a state of grace.

Then came candidate Tom Hsieh--if you’re not Chinese, just say “shay”--who more or less rattled off the same grocery list of urban shames. At several points he mentioned his disgust over “dirty sidewalks” which, in this campaign, appears to be a code phrase for public defecation and urination. Hsieh promised to put an end to “dirty sidewalks.”

As did the others. Even the Socialists, one of whom announced her intention to seize the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. if elected, agreed that dirty sidewalks had to go. Filth, in all its ramifications, has unified this campaign.

As such, this race may eventually be regarded as a political watershed here. Not that filth, truly, is about to overcome the city. In fact, most visitors from Chicago or New York or, for that matter, Los Angeles would probably see San Francisco’s squalor problem as something less than big league.

The filth issue looms large because it represents a kind of sea change in the way San Franciscans regard themselves and their city. For many years, political campaigns here operated on the assumption that San Francisco, as a city, could not be improved, only protected. San Francisco was fine, nearly perfect, thank you. Just leave it alone.

Politicians were expected to be the keepers of this grail. They did not speak ill of The City. They preserved the Victorians, protected “the neighborhoods,” looked suspiciously at all things modern.

With this race, the rules have changed. Every candidate, with the possible exception of the mayor, has endorsed the notion that San Francisco has slipped into a state of decay. Suddenly it’s permitted to speak honestly not only about the filth but about a larger, more generic disease.

The symptoms of this disease can be seen everywhere. A port that is now only a memory. A dozen corporate headquarters packed up and gone. A downtown that never recovered from the earthquake. A city that depends more and more on tourists because it has lost most of its old economic roles.

Just the other week, two years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, the last of the shattered Embarcadero Freeway was pulled down and carted off. Two years. The actual tearing down required only seven months. The rest of the time was consumed by political paralysis.

Other damaged freeways still stand, or remain unrepaired. And in the meantime the city’s economy stays shackled by their loss.

San Francisco, in its own way, presents a paradox to outsiders. It remains nearly as beautiful as ever and the tourists--many of them, anyway--keep coming. Amid the restaurants and conventioneers and new hotels, the disease is hard to see.

But it’s there. And has been, for many years. The only difference is that now, Alioto and her cohorts are willing to talk about it. Whether or not they win, the change has been made.