Street Fighter

The sun is setting but the night is blooming, bright with possibility. I'm headed to the Mission, to the Make Out Room, where I'll watch women read erotic literature - with piano accompaniment, of course. I happen to know the pianist. The word pianist sounds like a kid with a lisp trying to say penis.

A few friends might meet me there later, to make mayhem. First, I'll need to stop somewhere and find something to eat. Earlier today I tasted three different kinds of home-brewed eggnog and my stomach seems to be planning some subtle subversion, so I'll need to choose my meal wisely, lest he (my stomach) should lay waste to my bowels. This irritable scoundrel, entombed in my abdomen, has been floating idle threats upward toward my nose, each time more heated, more foul. They smell like fallen down angels moving in reverse.

There's traffic. Marvelous. Getting home seems to take longer everyday. It's a terrible thing to have to be subjected to. Especially with your stomach perfuming the recirculated air with its uniquely organic aroma. Mmmmmm.

Speaking of traffic and shuttles, there's been an ongoing controversy in San Francisco as of late, concerning privatized charter buses employed by the bay area's budding tech companies. There's a growing consensus that somehow, the mere presence of these buses in the streets of San Francisco is a blight on our city. There are issues surrounding the legality of said buses utilizing public bus-stops for passenger loading and unloading. While this is a valid concern, it obfuscates the alleged underlying issue, which is class inequality, exacerbated by greedy and opportunistic landowners in San Francisco who seek to capitalize on the steady influx of young tech workers and their disposable incomes, perpetuating rapid displacement of lower income occupants through misuse and abuse of the Ellis Act.

So protesters have gone to the streets, taking matters into their own hands, sticking it to the man by temporarily blocking the transit of randomly targeted tech-buses. Wait, why you ask? Why inconvenience innocent people just trying to get out of the city and get to work? Surely they aren't the problem, they're just trying to live where they want to live and do the jobs they went to school to do, right? Wrong! These goddamned techie bastards deserve every rotten thing they've got coming to them. They're part of the problem; any dolt with half a brain could tell you that. If it weren't for those piss-ant tech-workers, these companies would be nothing! Do you think they could just hire a whole new set of employees? Of course not! Haven't you learned that nobody is replaceable in this world? They sit in their luxury coach buses with leather seats, tinted windows and climate control, protected from all the harsh realities of public transit in San Francisco. I mean only degenerate scum like the lower middle class would be caught dead riding transport lacking some type of air-conditioning. All those poor suckers ride around in hand-me-down cars from the 70's, gas guzzlers limping across the pavement without the modern conveniences or amenities afforded to these elite twenty-something techies careening recklessly around side-streets in their Porches and Ferraris, with an exuberant sense of entitlement and a depraved indifference to human life. Damn them all! They are pushing us out of our homes!

Sadly, this caricature I've painted is a mentality that actually exists in the minds of some misguided but well meaning San Franciscans. The truly sad part though, is that their attempts to gain traction and raise awareness through these public demonstrations merely deepen the divide between the working class and further confuse the real issue by drowning it in deeply entrenched classist overtones. This is not an issue about the proletariat - the haves vs the have nots - it is an issue about the law failing to properly serve its citizenry; failing to protect its people from unlawful and atavistic practices spurred by avarice and apathy.

Take the protest to city hall, not the charter buses. The people on them want to live in this city as much as you do. Everyone has a shared interest here: no one wants to be bankrupted by the absurd cost of housing. Work together and seek reform, strengthen your legal recourse and protect your rights.

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As I finished typing the above post I received a text from a friend who alerted me that a Google bus was attacked in Oakland. The windows were smashed and they beat the shit out of it like it was a bonus level in Street Fighter.

There goes any chance of reform.

Now you're terrorists.