Haight street has a lot of homeless. The upper Haight, where Haight street meets Golden Gate Park, tends to have the heaviest congregation of people living on the street – offering easy access to the park and a steady stream of tourists to panhandle. Directly across from this location is a fast food restaurant.
The parking lot of that fast food restaurant was a prime location for people who live on the street to sleep. It offered a small area of wood chip covered ground in between zipcars and neighboring houses. Until recently, (I guess a couple month back) the wood chips have been replaced, and boulders along with large pointy plants were added.
According to an SFGate article, this particular fast food place has a not so good history when it comes to homeless relations. In 2010 it was accused of raising the cost of items on its low priced menu to “reduce the numbers of poor and homeless people visiting the fast food chain restaurant.”
Given that, and the fact that I don’t know too many fast food places that care about what the outside of their buildings look like, it’s hard to imagine the rocks and prickly plants are simply part of a beautification effort.
But who knows, maybe it is just an attempt to make a parking lot look better.
In any case, we will now return to our regularly scheduled programing of surfboards and animated gifs.
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