That corner is well known as one of the worst in the city. The first time I ever saw someone OD in person was directly across the street - dude was slumped over in the classic fentanyl lean when I went in, and by the time I came out there was another homeless man yelling at people asking for narcan. Bunch of dealers (who I assume sold it to him) standing right by his body too, looking super nonchalant. Pretty surreal experience.
I think two blocks away, at 6th and Market, is sometimes thought to be scarier.
Although that same corner where the Whole Foods was was the first place I saw someone openly injecting heroin on the street while other people were watching (while the Trinity Place building was under construction a few years ago).
There are a lot of weird and intense juxtapositions right over there.
All the areas around the BART stations are very sketchy now too. Mission St is even worse than it was a decade ago. We used to hang out in SF all the time, taking BART in, which was nice as we didn’t have to worry about parking and all the homies from around the bay could just jump on and meet up in SF. No one wants to do this anymore because every time riding BART is a thrilling experience of “is this dude going to stab us or is he just trying to smoke something?”, then the stations are like a round of Left 4 Dead. I love the Bay Area and really want to see this fixed, and it’s been extremely frustrating watching it get worse. Also frustrating are all these companies demanding that folks come back into the office, for no discernible reason aside from making good use of their overpriced commercial real estate.
