20 ms·
Trends in the San Francisco (mostly dog?) poop crisis
- ill0gicity 7y agoThere are simply too many puns are floating around in my brain-- and they're all terrible. My wife has always said, "everyone likes a good poop joke", but I think that may have been targeted at preschoolers and not adults.
- foolproofplan 7y agon=1 but i like a good poop joke
- WhompingWindows 7y agon=2, shit's funny
- dmode 7y agoMods - can we update the title to “San Francisco dog poop crisis” ? Note that the category of tickets in 311 is “Human / Animal waste”. I personally went through 100 random tickets on the sf data portal and found that 95% were either dog poop or miss classified (eg abandoned car or trash collection). People automatically read the headline and correlate to human waste.
- cevn 7y agoHuh. This whole time I thought the crisis was around human waste.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoIt is.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoI wouldn't mind half the police force being reassigned to fine the sort of people who let their dog shit and run. My buddy had a small garden patch on the sidewalk in front of his house. It was the only patch of garden on the block, so it was basically chock full of dog feces within a day after he cleaned it from people walking their dogs. You'd get a whiff of it just walking to his house. He eventually had the tiny patch of land paved over.
- clairity 7y agoi have a dog and always pick up her poop. i also hate it when other owners don't. beyond being a nuisance, dog poop is actually more of a threat to dogs than to people (cross-species pathogens/infections are relatively rare). what i don't get are the folks who who go through the trouble of bagging the poop and then dropping the bag on the ground.
- ericmcer 7y agoYeh! I think it would really help law enforcement community relations if they moved away from ticketing people for violating letter of the law rules (street sweeping hours, etc.) and started ticketing people for stuff that lowers quality of life in the city: taking up two parking spots by not pulling forward all the way, not picking up dog poop, parking in bike lanes, etc.
- JimboOmega 7y agoDidn't we just elect a new DA who has openly stated he will not prosecute any quality of life crimes?
- mc32 7y agoHis childhood history of having parents who drove a getaway vehicle to a robbery resulting in a dead police officer apparently has colored his outlook toward policing. Hope springs eternal.
- jdavis703 7y agoWhy do we need someone with a gun to handle this? I'd much rather see a civilian from Vector Control or a similar city department enforcing this. If people fail to pay up the fines, maybe then the guys with guns can be dispatched to deal with "contempt of court" or whatever.
- dang 7y agoOk, I put dogs in there in parens. Open to better suggestions.
- squidsurfer 7y agoOh come on, we all know it's not because of the dogs. San francisco is in the midst of a homelessness crisis, and all that comes with that.
- kbenson 7y agoA response of "oh, come on, we all know.." to someone that said they personally went through 100 tickets is not really contributing much. Worse, actually, as presenting your assumptions without evidence as counterfactuals to someone that purports to have actually done legwork actively muddies the discussion.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoOf the more than 100 poop complaints I've filed with 311 the majority have been human sized. The one with a string/tapeworm coming out of it was ambiguously sized and spread out over like three blocks. Yesterday I submitted one of bloody handprints smeared all over a building on Mission St. Pretty sure those weren't dog handprints. I called it graffiti since I didn't see anything more suited towards "blood smeared all over someone's building". http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11720974 http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11720974 This was voluminous enough that I think it was probably human: http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11019074 http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11019074 Out in the western neighborhoods this size was more common (and I'd assume was dog sourced): http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11541986 http://mobile311.sfgov.org/reports/11541986
- kbenson 7y agoAnd that is a useful set of information to add to the discussion. I'm not sure how accurate size is as an indicator of species for feces, given that some dogs are quite large with large feces (and some many humans have small feces for dietary reasons), but it's not like the original commenter explained in much detail how they classified the feces either (other than indicating it was through images for many). Edit: Regarding your second link, I have a pair of 65 pound dogs, and their poop is generally about 1/3 to 3/4 that size. I assume it could be a ~100 lb dog, but agree it's more likely from a person.
- grandmczeb 7y agoI’m looking at the data portal and at least the last 300 waste complaints have no details (details field just says “Human/Animal waste” or is empty) - how did you figure out if they’re dog poop or misclassified? Edit: E.g this one https://sf311.org/track-case?ref=11716075&email= https://sf311.org/track-case?ref=11716075&email=
- dmode 7y agoLook at the mobile uploads. They have photos attached
- ng12 7y agoWhat is the methodology for classifying human vs. animal waste?
- captainill 7y agoThis. Would love to know but am not willing to scan photos of excrement to do my own analysis. I have my own personal experience of living in SF for 10 years, in the Mission. I’ve seen a lot of human looking fecal matter.
- balt_s 7y agoThis is why man invented machine learning...
- bananabreakfast 7y agolol, are you combing through photos of poop and categorizing them?? yeah right
- mc32 7y agoI’m sure looking at numbers it’s going to be mostly dog poop. There should NOT be ANY human poop at all!!! That it’s even trivialized goes to show the growing acceptance of this phenomenon. On a few occasions I’ve seen people (perhaps transients or whatever) going behind bushes in plain daylight. I’ve seen it on sidewalks and also on public steps. That should not be a thing in a country that emerged from outhouses and such a century ago and understand cholera etc...
- LegitGandalf 7y agoThis article is poopy!
- blackearl 7y agoDo colder climates have this issue at all?
- dang 7y agoPlease don't do this here. Edit: the comment was edited. (The original text was "Don't poo-poo this article or the factual fecal findings within".)
- frostyj 7y agodilemma probably is, if you build restrooms, they will do drug in there.
- J5892 7y agoIs that worse than them shooting up in the middle of the street?
- frostyj 7y agothat can be discovered and rescued, but not if they just shoot in a cubicle that no one even knows they are there I guess. That's the only(?) explanation on why SF closed up all public restrooms on Market street
- archie2 7y agoI've seen restrooms in businesses that are installing blacklights instead of standard fluorescent/LEDs to deter people from using drugs in them - because you can't see your veins under a black light.
- catalogia 7y agoI believe they use blue LEDs, not blacklights (which are UV.)
- KingMachiavelli 7y ago> that can be discovered and rescued, I don't know if anyone would describe being thrown in an American prison 'rescued'.
- J5892 7y agoI assume he meant given medical attention if they overdose.
- baddox 7y ago
- thereisnospork 7y agoI feel like if you can even ask that question then the answer is probably yes. This would make for a rare exception to Betteridge's law though.
- tome 7y agoEven though this is an exception to Betteridge's law, it seems that tome's law still applies! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549
- v64 7y agoBetteridge's law dictates that if the answer to the question is yes, then the headline is better as a declarative statement: The San Francisco Sh*tuation is Out of Control
- r00fus 7y agoHow much of the discussion is the open question vs the actual problem? e.g. "Pete Buttigieg has a AA voter problem" vs. his actually having that problem (which is not conclusive) The solution to this is usually some overwhelming action to not only mitigate but change the momentum of discussion.
- catalogia 7y agoSomething about this article pinwheeled Firefox on my mac for two minutes before I gave up and force killed firefox. Particularly strange since I have all javascript, including first party, blocked by default with uMatrix. I had to read it with emacs. Anyway, the fact that this is even a question people wonder about should be proof enough there's a problem. I lived in Philadelphia for many years and it's generally a filthy city. People who live there know it too. All kinds of liter all over the place, rats running around in plain sight. Trash cans getting deliberately turned over and emptied onto the sidewalk isn't uncommon. Vomit and the piss of drunks are common in alleyways. There is no shortage of abject poverty and homelessness. But shit on the streets? Not in Philly; not in this century anyway. This is one respect in which Philly is definitely cleaner. This discrepancy is something that I've never seen satisfactorily explained. I've heard all kinds of comments about poverty and access to public bathrooms and all those other explanations. But I've never been able to figure out why this impacts San Francisco so much more than a city like Philly. Poverty, homelessness, mental illness, income inequality, and businesses with no public restrooms are not uniquely SF problems. Edit for clarification: North and West Philly are filthy. North of Spring Garden or west of 40th or so. And Kensington is a festering wound. The alleys in downtown are filthy too, though the sidewalks of the major streets are generally cleaner. Maybe they've cleaned it up since I lived there; I moved away about 10 years ago. I last visited about 2 years ago and it didn't really seem like anything had changed.
- rtfeldman 7y ago> I lived in Philadelphia for many years and it's generally a filthy city. People who live there know it too. I moved from SF to Philadelphia 2 years ago and have no idea what you're talking about. None of the things you described are things I've seen more than maybe once in the 2 years I've lived here, and I walk everywhere just like I did in SF. Granted, all of those things I saw repeatedly when living in SF for 4 years beforehand. The one time I smelled urine in a street in Philly, my brain went "whoa, am I back in SoMa?"
- blackearl 7y agoIs it the ability to be on the street year round? Maybe the more comfortable you are living outside, the more likely to use it as a bathroom. Colder climates force the homeless to use shelters and similar resources during winter months.
- wuunderbar 7y agoI wonder how much this has to do with an increase in people knowing that there exists a system to complain about poop, versus the actual increase of poop itself.
- leesalminen 7y agoThe only place I’ve ever seen human feces on a public street is in SF and I’ve been to every major US city.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoThe only place I’ve ever seen human feces on a public street is in SF and I’ve been to every major US city. Are you not looking then? SF isn't even the only place in the Bay Area I've seen shit on the sidewalk.
- leesalminen 7y agoI don't think I'd consider any other city in the Bay Area a major US city. Maybe it's just California then? I've literally never seen this on the east coast, mid-west or south.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoSan Francisco is worse than any city I've been to but it's hardly the only one (major or not) with shit on the sidewalks. On the East Coast I've run into shit in Brooklyn, for instance.
- ExBritNStuff 7y agoYou've not been looking down then. I used to play "Human or Canine" while walking from the train to my office in Miami. I like to think I got pretty good at telling the difference after a while.
- catalogia 7y agoWhy would such a system be created in SF, let alone receive attention from the public, if not for the perception that it was already a problem?
- Animats 7y agoSF needs the Portland Loo.[1][2] The homeless-resistant public toilet. Not enough privacy for a drug deal. Water faucet on the outside, not the inside. Prison-grade stainless. [1] https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-29-la-na-08-29-portland-loo-20120829-story.html https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-29-la-na-08-29... [2] https://portlandloo.com/ https://portlandloo.com/
- sneak 7y agoThe idea that drug dealing is such a harmful thing (it's not) that we must deny homeless and poor people the basic human dignity of being able to use a toilet in privacy to avoid people being able to engage in it is an idea that needs to be extinguished.
- raxxorrax 7y agodrug dealing can be harmful, but you are correct otherwise of course.
- MaupitiBlue 7y ago> Not enough privacy for a drug deal. That is SF. Drug deals are done in broad daylight.
- jessaustin 7y agoIn that case the loo can't be blamed for "increasing drug deals", which is fine.
- VectorLock 7y agoIf anything people might be more worried about doing drug deals in a confined space and not being able to flee making it easier to be robbed.
- colechristensen 7y agoIt's true. I've seen them. Meanwhile there was that video going around of BART police arresting a guy for eating a sandwich on the platform.
- danschumann 7y agoYou could actually enforce the laws and put people in safe jails with better living conditions than they have now, outside the city limits. It seems like being more and more lenient is not a solution to a problem getting worse and worse.
- dfcagency 7y agoI know you think this seems very logical, sane - but you have a tell "outside city limits" - you want these people rounded up and bused out. it's not a solution. Sane policing, treatment programs, and massive development is the solution.
- malvosenior 7y agoOut of curiosity why is that not a solution? Why is it inherently better for them to live on the streets of SF than someplace with running water and electricity? It's also obviously better for the citizens of SF to not have to deal with human feces, dirty needles and massive amounts of property crime (at the least). There's tons of empty space in the US, it seems reasonable to move people who are breaking the law, causing chaos and public health hazards out of highly populated areas.
- jessaustin 7y agoYou can't keep humans in place, who don't want to stay in place. If you paid some benighted town in the Great Plains $500/head to accept your homeless, that town would just buy each transplanted San Francisco resident a sandwich and a bus ticket, pocketing the rest. It would soon become a joke on SF streets, "yeah I just got back from Nebraska!"
- dfcagency 7y agoI stopped replying because it's just classic entitled NIMBY-ism happening here. You're not going to get through to them.
- ilaksh 7y agoIt seems very wrong to describe it in those terms. I mean, what's next, an article in January about how DC has a "frozen bodies on the street" problem? It's a homeless crisis.
- sp332 7y agoMore than that, it's a lack of public toilets crisis. https://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/5/13845276/bathrooms-san-francisco-sf https://sf.curbed.com/2016/12/5/13845276/bathrooms-san-franc... "One for every 0.4 square miles, or one for every 6,857 residents, not even counting tourists, commuters..."
- dividedbyzero 7y agoIt's an amalgamation of several crises. Homelessness, extreme surge in costs of living, poor healthcare (esp. for psychological problems), public toilets, opiate use, ... I guess such things always are. It's pretty much never a single cause. Remembers me of mid-nineties Germany (where I've grown up) – in Munich (yes, Oktoberfest), Kindergarten teachers did rounds in the morning to clean up the fenced-in Kindergarten playground, remove the syringes the junkies left. In one of the better neighborhoods, too. Whole squares right in the city where hundreds of homeless did drugs with helpless police standing by. I remember being chased away from a playground in a well-off part of Bremen by an approaching mob of violent homeless junkies. Lots of refugees from the Balkan war, often in an absolutely desolate psychological state. That, too, was an amalgamation of lots of crises – reunification, economy doing poorly, a society built by the rules of Cold War, falling apart, war in the Balkans, huge reluctance to change the tiniest thing. But Germany really turned things around. A lot of targeted action, lots of reforms, lots of small changes to how the social security net functions, a big invest in robust police services, somehow mostly without the Police violence issues the US have. There are some corner cases where the social services still fail to help, other than that, it's become relatively hard to stay homeless for long. In Munich, you really have to know where to look to find any homeless at all (Hofgarten at dusk; one particular river bridge.) Being poor isn't fun, and it's comparatively harder to get out of poverty (though the US seem to be catching up there.) It's easy and cost-neutral (i.E. part of mandatory insurance or covered by social security) to get help with mental health issues – no doubt that contributed. No opiate crisis to speak of (got lucky there). A lot of money has been (and is being) spent on it though. It'll be interesting to see whether the US will do likewise, or find a way to make it work on a smaller budget, or simply fail to get things to improve.
- kragen 7y agoI prompted GPT-2 with the headline and date: Is the San Francisco Shtuation Out of Control? Originally posted on November 18, 2019 9:30 am It continued: We may be the "parking hell" of San Francisco, but at least we're predictable about it. Just like how we've been screaming for a protected bike lane all across the city, and it still can't be found. Well, we're not going to have a protected bike lane in 9 months because.. well.. UberHittingTaxis is totally derailing it and killing the entire project . That alone has me so pissy and pissed off I tried GPT-2 again: We will be celebrating both Thanksgiving and the 200th anniversary of Thanksgiving by receiving, reviving and celebrating the san francisco shtuation. Very few people know that the birth of frederic Felspike on the last day of 1847, resulted in the birth of a San Franciscan most certainly from all over. He was a true founding member of San Francisco history, at least a half of the San Franciscans who were still I tried GPT-2 a third time: by Edmund Kemper Now you can: - Save and share news and news stories from around the Bay Area - Mention SF Asks Now for special news updates when you're posting comments - Choose from many popular templates to create one of your own The San Francisco Sh*tuation ® began in early 2002 as a group of passionate Bay Area residents, many of whom had the same frustration with local politics, media, and society. Our mission is to provide a space I'm not sure what these GPT-2 results say about the news media or the society the humans have built. At least it didn't immediately infer that the article was going to be about people pooping on the sidewalks. (I, too, had serious responsivity problems with the article in Firefox.)
- dzhiurgis 7y agoCan human genome be sequenced from human poop? With sequencing getting so cheap, this might be an cheap data source for Hooli and the likes.
- kaikai 7y agoYes it can, and that method has been used to capture badly-behaved pet owners. There's even a startup for it: pooprints.
- varjag 7y agoOh… wow. It's like 23andme but for dog poop.
- cwkoss 7y agoIn a dystopian future, pooping at shopping malls and retail establishments could be harvested by data brokers for advertising purposes.
- undersuit 7y agoI don't like these cookies at all.
- DonHopkins 7y agoYou should check out the latest episode of Rick and Morty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Seat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Seat
- fludlight 7y agoThat's a nice population density map.
- 11235813213455 7y agoThe problem is not so much their poop, it's the pets themselves. For example, in USA, 25% of the meat production is meant for pets [1], it's huge, given also that meat production is not environmental-friendly. The whole pets products industry is really large, there are maybe close to 1 billion pets worldwide. Other example, cats affect negatively ecosystems (birds, little reptiles, some important insects, ..) My proposition is simply to cut down pets population, how? I don't know, a law if necessary, nowadays the environment comes before having a toy animal in your home. It's an easy thing to do with a significant impact, there are others, like cosmetic products, plastic wrappings, .. [1]: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503376/all-meat-pet-food-has-big-environmental-impact https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503376/all-meat-pet-food..., https://www.treehugger.com/pets/cats-dogs-meat-environmental-impact-in-US.html https://www.treehugger.com/pets/cats-dogs-meat-environmental...
- LoSboccacc 7y agothis went from being environmentally sensitive to culling species wholesale real fast remember last time we culled cats what happened?
- gojomo 7y agoI don't "remember" what happened last time "we" culled cats, so what happened? (If you're alluding to the idea that the "black death" plagues were worsened by cat culls, that's an oft-repeated story but somewhat dubious with regard to verifiable facts. Cats themselves can carry the plague bacteria & transmit it to humans – eg https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/08/us/house-cats-spread-human-plague-in-southwest.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/08/us/house-cats-spread-huma... – and even regions where cats are superstitiously cherished suffered repeated plague outbreaks.)
- LoSboccacc 7y agolol no first of all you have to control prey population because pests will balloon with the increased safety and consume resources, strangling the prey population. secondly if you can't control the whole area Predator population will follow the pest increase, often resulting in larger problems or an out of control spiral of environmental issues you don't have to go back to pre scientific anecdotes like the stories around the pest, just check the Australia history with cats and rabbits here's a substantial population study with ferrets in UK https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-011-9965-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-011-9965-2 mainland control is only worse
- umeshunni 7y agoMore broadly, the San Francisco livability crisis is out of control. Poop is only a visible and easily disagreeable symptom of the broader problem. The local government can patch symptoms of the problem but some of them (housing, mental health, opioid epidemic) are state-level or national problems that the local government have very little power or ability to solve. Some of the law and order issues are issues the local govt can solve, but there isn't an incentive to solve them.
- weberc2 7y agoGenuine (outsider) question: how is housing not a uniquely-SF problem? The rest of the country and even other parts of California seem to have affordable housing, at least relatively speaking. EDIT: RE downvotes, shame on me for not being familiar with SF politics, I guess. It is, after all, the center of the universe. (◔_◔)
- ng12 7y agoIt's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis. The truth is well-paying (i.e. middle class) jobs are coalescing in a small number of cities which have failed to adapt to the growth. As a software engineer this means I can either make great money in one of the aforementioned cities or a fraction of it in an "off-brand" city. Lucky for me I can afford to pay out the nose for my apartment but this causes incredible pressure on the housing supply, especially for those less well-off.
- weberc2 7y ago> It's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis. I was responding to the claim that it's a state- or national-level problem. Perhaps you would argue that this meets some criteria for being a 'national-level' problem, but it's not obvious to me.
- 7y ago
- Animats 7y agoOK, how about "Uber for toilets"? Clean a toilet, get paid. Cameras and machine learning to check what a clean and dirty toilet look like. Sign up, and you get access to cleaning supplies and can turn the hose on. Works like retrieving dockless scooters.
- manux 7y agoWhat's wrong with the city/state having properly paid employees doing the cleaning? Why the need to create _more_ precarious typically underpaid jobs? I really don't get it.
- newfriend 7y agoBecause then you get massively overpaid jobs with no oversight, which taxpayers are forced to fund. [1] SF already has massive taxes and too many overpaid workers, and the city is still a mess. There is no accountability. Throwing more money at it is not going to help. > San Francisco’s budget totals an astounding $9.6 billion this year — more than the budgets of 13 states and scores of countries around the world [2] > By far the biggest chunk goes to pay city employees. Almost half — $4.7 billion — is spent on the salaries and benefits of 30,626 city employees. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/how-one-bay-area-janitor-made-276000-last-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/how-one-bay-area-janitor-mad... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Billions-of-dollars-flow-to-SF-s-army-of-city-9188428.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Billions-of-doll...
- trhway 7y ago> Clean a toilet for that you really need to have the toilets to begin with. SF, and in general American cities, have no public toilets ( i mean the number they have is just a noise around 0).
- khazhou 7y agoDid anyone else smell poop while reading this? (there's gotta be a word for that effect)
- mzg 7y agoWell, now it's the Zhou effect. Congrats!
- confidantlake 7y agoA huge problem is the lack of public toilets. When I first lived there, I got locked out of my apartment and could not find anywhere to go to the bathroom. I had to wait until my roommate got back. If I did not have a place to go back to, what could have I done except poop on the street?
- blueadept111 7y agoWouldn't a restaurant or fast food outlet let you use their bathroom? I think if you make it clear that your options are to take a dump either on their toilet or right where you're standing, they would show you the toilet immediately.
- confidantlake 7y agoI went to a fast food outlet, the toilet was so full of waste that it was overflowing onto the floor. Super disgusting. All of the restaurants did not have public backrooms. I guess I could have begged them, and they probably would have let me because I was not homeless. But that is not a sustainable solution. Do we really want homeless people begging restaurants to use the bathroom every time they need to poop?
- asveikau 7y agoThis thread is reminding me that the ease of finding a good toilet in SF varies a lot with the part of town. In my experience the east side of town, especially the financial district, businesses start being cagey about letting you use the bathroom. Going westward, when you get to the Lower Haight or so, I can start naming many coffee shops with decent bathrooms and no lock on the door. And decent park bathrooms too.
- supernova87a 7y agoI echo the point that this is merely a symptom of SF's inability to be a little bit more hardnosed and solve its problems. As an example: I called 311/911 to report a trio of homeless guys, operating a bike chop shop in broad daylight on a Saturday in downtown (and blocking the sidewalk, and creating piles of junk). The operator said that she would report this to the "neighborhood outreach / management team" or something similar I've forgotten the name of. And she said they would likely be dispatched to resolve it within 2-3 days. I asked, incredulous, "isn't this a police matter that you should pursue right now? How will they still be here in 3 days?" She gave some unsatisfactory answer of course. Any other rational city, and the police would be cuffing these guys and hauling them in for questioning about clearly stolen bikes. But here in SF, it's "too inequitable" to be targeting homeless people for actively and visibly engaging in criminal behavior. This is to the point that car break-ins are considered minor acceptable crime. This city has lost its senses, in the name of thinking it's some post-modern utopia that has to treat everyone equally and naively, and ignore the obvious bullshit going on right in front of our noses.
- pesfandiar 7y agoThis has been the trend in Vancouver, BC as well. Property crime under a certain amount has (de facto) been decriminalized, especially if the perps are perceived to be drug addicts or living in the streets otherwise. The main problems here are limited law enforcement budget, and lenient justice system that merely results in catch-and-release operations for the police.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoJust wait until every restaurant is Taco Bell.
- thephyber 7y ago<Fry Meme> Not sure if this reference is for Idiocracy or Demolition Man...
- jessaustin 7y ago
- TwoNineFive 7y agoI am in the middle of an interview process with a company in SF right now. I like the company and the job but I'm not sure about SF. I had already been thinking about the well-known poop problems before I saw this post. This will be a factor in my decision to take the job or not.
- mav3rick 7y agoIf you live in a nice neighborhood it's not an issue.
- taobility 7y agoSV should have some startup to create autonomous tool to clean up the poop on the street, which could solve this practical issue
- linusnext 7y agoI've never seen so many people who feed their dogs corn.
- linusnext 7y agoWe call it "culture". Public restrooms don't help, people do it despite those, and often near them. We've had people come in during a change window late at night, and go right outside our office door. The custodian said he passed the person on their way out, and had to clean it up. Then there is that moment you realized someone tracked some into your office after walking to get lunch. It's very offsetting.
- RickJWagner 7y agoI went to a big tech conference in San Francisco a couple of years back. Walking back to the hotel from Moscone Center, I found myself pacing evenly with what looked to be a bag lady. All of a sudden she loudly yelled "Watch out for that sh*t!" I honestly thought she was having some sort of episode. But then I looked down and saw I'd stepped in it. She tried to warn me.
- mambodog 7y agoSan Francisco needs more public restrooms. I think any map of SF's poop should also show how few city-provided restrooms there are, so I made one: https://sf-restrooms-and-poop.glitch.me/ https://sf-restrooms-and-poop.glitch.me/ Compare with Australia's National Public Toilet Map: https://toiletmap.gov.au/Find/20547 https://toiletmap.gov.au/Find/20547
- pressurefree 7y agoi always enjoy having rabbits as pets
- varenc 7y agoTracking the increase in number of SF311 "Human/Animal waste" reports over time isn't as meaningful as it seems...because a larger number of poop reports are duplicates! You need to the Open311 API and not just the DataSF 311 case dump to see this unfortunately. But SF311 closes a large number of tickets with "duplicate of SR #<....>" So without this data it's unclear if the poop is increasing, or if it's just that SF311 usage is way up and duplicate reports are increasing.