The McDonald’s at Seventh and Market is really creepy and getting creepier. It’s a strange mix of crackheads, career alcoholics, street people, and very scrubbed but very lost foreign tourists. How so many tourists end up here I don’t know. For some reason I felt extremely paranoid there today; the place usually doesn’t phase me. It got worse when this really scary guy brushed up against me as he got in line behind me. When I reached for my wallet to pay, it wasn’t there. I freaked. It turned out I’d left it at home, but this thought didn’t even occur to me at the time.
Why am I so paranoid lately? Frankly, I usually feel safer in SF than almost anyplace else. But I’ve noticed myself being much more apprehensive lately. I find myself checking my back pocket constatly to make sure the wallet’s till there like I do in New York. I’m afraid every time I go to my car that I’ll be missing a window. I’m more likely to keep the windows rolled up and the doors locked. Muni is getting more and more frightening.
The neighborhood’s getting annoying. Too much construction. Too many noisy, drunk yuppies. Not nearly enough parking, even on my sticker-protected street. More on this soon. But doing any of the following one more time may cause me to snap and go “postal”:
- Standing in line behind one more stoned trendoid who takes ten minutes to decide on one bottle of liquor at the corner store.
- Walking in the middle of Folsom Street because Julie’s Supper Club can’t contain all its loud-mouthed slumming stockbrokers or even make them leave a path on the sidewalk.
- Getting a parking ticket on a street two blocks from my house because the Department of Parking and Traffic can’t seem to control the non-residents parking on my own sticker-protected street which is where I SHOULD have been able to park in the first place.
- Being awakened early in the morning by whatever that pounding sound is at the building they’re renovating up the street, which is no doubt in the process of being converted into yet another zoning-exempt “artist’s loft” which no artist could possibly afford.
