(So tempted to vote…)
Weird. I don’t recall hearing about this on the local news at all. I’m tempted to ask how you found it WTF-AKUMA-HAX, but that means I’d end up staring into the textual abyss too long, so I’ll pass–yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy.
@Million, this is same city has The Castro, as you are no doubt aware, which is arguably the most homosexual area in the entire world. Even with all the man-on-man dicksucking for drugs that doubtless goes on in the Tenderloin and with that name, it literally can’t out-gay the Castro (or even fucking Folsom and its horrible, horrible annual sex events).
Yeah, as much as I also don’t like blame the victim (unless they do something stupid enough to merit their injuries, which doesn’t seem to be the case here), it is a decently easy place to avoid going into the interior of if you’re not some hapless tourist.
That said, for the sake of people who either don’t live in, live near or have never even been to San Francisco (which I don’t fault you for), I’ll explain that the Tenderloin, despite being a wretched hive of scum and villainy and the aforementioned fellatio for crack, is somehow “lovingly” nestled between the utter tourist trap of downtown San Francisco and City Hall. Additionally, one of its edges runs–bleeds? crawls? festers?–along Market Street, which is arguably the busiest street in the entire city, and thus makes it pretty damn unavoidable to at least brush and morbidly gaze upon. It is literally right next to some of the more expensive hotels in the city, which is part of the reason that downtown S.F. had such a problem with panhandling a while ago (and still kind of does); it’s right next, to wit, some of the more well-known stage-theaters, (technically) two college campuses, the Asian Art Museum and some other stuff furthers the absurdity, like an IRS building and a courthouse.
“Thankfully”, the craziness of it doesn’t slip out of the edges too often, but between all that and the recent attempts at “improving” the area, more people who aren’t drug addicts, mentally ill and/or homeless have been going into recently than would be the case. I mean, you can’t look at the photo of the guy that stabbed and tell me he doesn’t look like one of those people (read: yuppie scum) who like to “improve” (read: gentrify) areas for their own benefit. That fucking hat says it all.
Getting back to seriousness, the area is otherwise pretty easy for the city to ignore for the city despite the massive blight and plight there. That rather glaring hypocrisy of that level of poverty right next to such affluence is one of the reasons why I’ve never much liked S.F. even though I lived there half my life, so while I’m surprised I didn’t hear about this, I’m unfortunately not surprised this happened despite most mentally insane people being more at risk for violence than violent themselves; so “El Gato” was probably on drugs or just a sociopath/psychopath.
That said, as rarely as the “crazy” slips over onto the main streets of Market or some such, I have witness more altercations on Market between homeless people this year alone than I have in past half a decade despite having been to S.F. like maybe a dozen times this year. Shrug. It’s probably because, given the way humanity can’t control its damn population growth, more (mentally ill/homeless/drug-addicted) people have doubtless also been seeping into the area in general, especially with all the many homeless/disowned LGBT(QA+) teenagers who end up coming to S.F.
TL;DR: As far as the three big “bad areas”–The Tenderloin, Mission beyond 24th (arguably 20th or even 16th), Bayview Hunter’s Point–of San Francisco go, The Tenderloin is actually the most difficult to avoid, especially if you’re just there on vacation. (Also, I think “El Gato” did it because while Cody is an asshole, he’s not a murderous asshole, even if you’re in Mad Gear. Pretty sure Haggar knocked Belger (?) out that window if anyone did.)
