After a night of celebration and vandalism in the Mission, many businesses on Mission Street woke up to see their storefronts tagged up and covered in graffiti. Here’s your Afternoon Report:
For businesses that boarded up their windows, the damage from the World Series revelers who partied until early this morning, the damage wasn’t so bad. But a slew of businesses on Mission Street faced thousands of dollars worth of damage from broken and scratched windows as well as tagged walls and windows.
At the new Vida development construction site on Mission Street, vandals cracked or shattered up to six glass windows. Workers at the development that will open in early 2015 said it will cost about $10,000 to get them replaced.
At the Vanguard building on Mission at 21st Streets, the damage was considerable. Although no one was available to give an estimate, the real estate agency’s employee cleaning up outside said it would cost approximately $1,000 to replace one of the large broken windows. Removing the graffiti from the stone and repainting the wall will take about three hours, said Alfredo Jimenez, a Vanguard employee.
It wasn’t just real estate businesses and luxury condos that became targets for vandals.
Further north on Mission Street, across from the now tagged and abandoned building where T-Mobile used to be, the pharmacy Milagros de Mexico had its storefront and six glass windows tagged. Maura Huerta, an employee of the pharmacy, said city workers have already stopped by to ask them to remove it. The city issues a minimum fine of $500 to business if graffiti is not removed within 30 days.
Huerta, who has worked at the store for the past nine years, estimates it will cost her $100 in paint to cover up, plus about five to six hours of work.
The windows at Milagros de Mexico, scratched with a sharp object, will end up costing a couple thousand dollars, Huerta said. She wished the city had set up barricades to prevent damage “It wouldn’t hurt if they gave us a hand,” she said.
At the travel agency at 2392 Mission St, Adolfo Carranza, said his windows will also have to be replaced. For him, at least, the damage was worse worse in the Mission this time around.
At Siegel’s, Juan Carlos Gutierrez and Blanca Rosales were taking down the spray paint from the glass windows and getting ready to repaint a portion of their wall. They had put up wooden boards on Wednesday to prevent the windows from being broken, but that couldn’t keep the spray paint off. Carranza and Huerta said the City should bear the costs when events like the Giants celebration happen.
“Vandalism can’t be stopped but the City should give a hand, that’s why we pay taxes,” said Gutierrez.
At Plaza Adelante, a building which primarily houses nonprofits, MEDA’s Executive Director Luis Granados said they had planned ahead for Wednesday because they had been caught off guard by the vandalism after the Giants won the 2012 World Series.
He said they hired a security to guard to work from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Nevertheless, he said, at least three of their eight glass windows and outside walls were covered in tags.
Grandos said the security guard, which cost them $3000, may have felt threatened and taken shelter inside the building. To repaint the walls it will cost $2,500 and to replace the film on the windows another $2,000. “We could spend that money on our clients instead of on this. It’s demoralizing,” said Granados, whose organization works with small and immigrant-owned businesses.
At the soon to be opened Hapa Ramen, Danielle Seiple had taken precautions and boarded up the glass windows. They didn’t spend too much money on the paint for the walls because they have been remodeling and had some spare paint.
“We live in the city and knew Mission Street was going to go crazy, so we put up the boards,” said Seiple.
The staff at Southpaw, on 2170 Mission Street, remained in the business until one in the morning and kept their trash cans inside to prevent revelers from lighting them on fire. The manager arrived this morning to see that their glass windows had been tagged. It took a couple hours to remove it, said sous chef Cory Tohill.
At 2224 Mission, Ian Muntzert, chef du cuisine at Commonwealth restaurant, said that the increased police presence and the closing of the streets early proved to be efficient. This time around, their glass windows were not tagged. In 2010 and 2012, their windows had been tagged and broken. “We spent time, money and frustration,” he said of the previous years’ cleanups.
At Jim’s diner, Ok Kim, the manager, said all of their windows had been tagged up. Her husband, who helped her clean the windows, will also paint over the walls that were tagged. A city employee today told her she needed to get rid of it soon, but Kim asked for a one day extension.
The City needs to pay these businesses monies to help clean up the tagging and also why should these business have to incur the costs of replacing their windows? The people who do this are nothing but criminals and animals. They have no sense of responsibility and in every event, they feel it is justifiable to do major damages. The police and Courts are no help either. They don’t care and the criminals only get a “slap on the wrist” instead of real jail time, fines and work off the damages they do instead of having the business carry the burden of destruction. With the City demanding a clean up of graffiti in 30 days or $500 fine – that is ludicrous! This City should “foot the bill” for this useless destruction but what can you say about politicians – they’re only for themselves and they don’t care!
I think the corporation of SF Giants should step up here. Why not make a public statement by giving some money to the damaged businesses and having Posey or one of the guys do a service announcement of how uncool it is to trash the streets in their name?
This is exactly what should happen and I don’t know why they haven’t even mentioned it or attempted to help. Another reason I can’t stand to watch a bunch of pot belly jerks run around a field spitting brown juice every five seconds. Where are all the intelligent people?
Welcome to the the ghetto. Who says that gentrification is happening too fast?? Not fast enough is more like it. Of course this site can’t resist glorifying the vandalism by posting photos of tagged businesses.
The only way this kind of stuff is going to stop is if the business owners take the matter in to their own hands. The police obviously don’t care about property owners. If I owned a business on Mission street, I would sit on top of my building with a paint gun and start shooting every tagger trying to vandalize a building. If we put paint snipers on top of every building, you could really get these guys. These occasions don’t happen very often, but when they do, it’s guaranteed to bring in all the thugs from all around. Maybe if they have to walk around with paint splattered all over them, they would think twice about damaging other peoples property.
I would suggest dumping hot tar on them, but I guess that would be a tad extreme…..although it would be effective.
You are allowed to use force, up to and including deadly force, to protect your family and your possessions. I think these thugs figure that nobody will do that in SF, whereas in Texas or some such, many of these thugs would have been shot.
Maybe it is time for decent, law-abiding citizens to arm themselves, and fight back.