Friday, August 7, 2020

Meanwhile In San Francisco: Watch The Homeless As You Dine Inside Your Plastic Bubble

Come for the food, stay for the ambiance.
From The San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco restaurant turns to dome dining amid growing homelessness on streets
For struggling San Francisco restaurants, adding outdoor dining means facing a variety of elements on the city’s streets — including a homelessness crisis that’s worsened during the pandemic. In the case of one fine-dining restaurant, it means enclosing diners in transparent geodesic domes on the plaza outside its doors.
On Wednesday, Hashiri, a Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant, began seating diners inside these domes — or “garden igloos,” structures covered in clear plastic that are sometimes employed by rooftop bars during winter in New York or Chicago — for a $200-per-person kaiseki and omakase sushi dinner.

Hashiri tried seating diners outside once before during the pandemic, but Manager Kenichiro Matsuura said the setting didn’t make it feasible. Hashiri is in Mint Plaza, an area near Fifth and Mission streets where homeless people often congregate.

Encampments have long been a common sight in Mid-Market, but some nearby residents and restaurants sued the city last month, alleging that officials have been negligent during the pandemic. In the suit, Montesacro Pinseria noted that business plummeted because tents blocked its front door. In Hayes Valley, Nightbird resisted adding outdoor tables at all because of the presence of human feces and syringes....
....MUCH MORE

These big American cities are literal cesspits.
And it's deliberate. The same people have been running the show, depending on the city, for 40 to 100 years.
Amazing.