2 weeks Ago By Junyao Yang
Sign up below to get Mission Local’s free newsletter , a daily digest of news you won’t find elsewhere. Help grow our newsroom , joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below. On Saturday morning, both the 16th Street BART plazas were moderately clean and lively with people selling food, giving speeches in Spanish and taking in the morning sun.
The side streets were littered with trash, mostly food packaging. At the southwest plaza around 10:37 am, an officer sat in the mobile command unit, a brown bag on the dashboard. Another two police SUVs were parked on the southwest plaza, but no officers were inside.
Right next to the command unit truck, Latino middle-aged men sat on the plaza stairs, hanging out and enjoying the morning sun. Nearby, a man, with a light pink blanket wrapped around him, sold orange boxes of faux eyelashes neatly laid out on the ground. Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.
Twenty minutes later, he was packing up those same boxes. At 10:40 a.m.
, the northeast plaza is mostly clean. Among a group of people, a man was giving a passionate speech in Spanish facing a camera recorder. A vendor walked around, discreetly, with a plastic bag filled with perfumes.
Closer to the bus stop, there were smaller pieces of trash: cigarette butts, spilled yogurt, wet cardboard. Caledonia Street was mostly clean. One person rested on the left side of the street.
At the end of the alleyway, there was a blue tent and two people having a conversation. Things seemed quiet. On Rondel Place, a man lay on his back in the shade.
A woman biked by him with two kids in tow. Julian Avenue was littered with scraps of plastic and food wrappers. On Wiese Street, a trash can was tipped over next to the barricades.
Three people chatted on the right side of the alley. Down the street, a woman sat on the ground, enjoying her breakfast. Around 10:45 a.
m., Capp Street was a mess — definitely in the worst condition of the side streets. Trash abounded and the street smelled foul.
Some five or six people rested, sitting on the sidewalk. A public works truck stopped briefly at 16th and Capp, but ended up taking a left turn at 17th. We're a small, independent, nonprofit newsroom that works hard to bring you news you can't get elsewhere.
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