Street vendors who have voiced their concern about the pending ban on selling along Mission Street met Friday morning with District Supervisor Hillary Ronen to request that the ban be delayed until January, once the busy holiday period has passed.
“They have not taken us into account,” said Sofia Lopez, a vendor who has a permit for her accessories stall on 24th Street, in Spanish during a heated back-and-forth with Ronen involving some 50 vendors.
The vendors attending Friday’s meeting, most of whom are permitted, gathered in an empty store space on Mission Street — where the supervisor has proposed street vendors could relocate — to learn from the Office of Economic Workforce and Development on available resources during the 90-day ban, meant to go into effect on Nov. 27.
But the meeting quickly became an animated dialogue between Ronen and the vendors.
Ronen, also speaking Spanish, discussed her responsibility toward all residents in the neighborhood. “I worry about all of you,” she said. But, while the vendors are frustrated, so are those who feel unsafe walking around Mission Street, she said.
A vendor shot back, showing 17 signatures from what she said were retailers across 24th Street who signed in opposition to the ban. Mission Local could not identify the store owners.
“I am in your favor!” Ronen shouted back. That, however, does not mean she will delay the ban.
“Absolutely not,” said Santiago Lerma, a legislative aide for Ronen, after the meeting.
“The condition on the street is such that it’s an emergency,” he said. “You know we really need to put a stop to it.”
Last month, Ronen’s office announced the street vending ban, which will prevent both permitted and unpermitted vendors from selling along the Mission Street corridor, including in the 16th and 24th Street BART plazas. The ban was originally set to be enforced in early November, but the start date was later pushed to Nov. 27.
The banned area includes Mission Street and several side streets
= area of vending ban
Vending will be
prohibited on parts
of Erie St and
Woodward St
Woodward St
Erie St
Valencia St
Guerrero St
14th St
Mission St
Minna St
S Van Ness Ave
Julian Ave
15th St
Wiese St
Vending will be
prohibited on the
east side of Julian
Ave, but permitted
vendors will be
allowed on the
west side
16th St
BART
Plaza
An indoor market is
planned for permitted
vendors at 17th and
Mission – but it will not
open before the ban
Hoff St
17th St
Clarion Alley
Capp St
Sycamore St
18th St
Mission St
Vending will be
prohibited on the
west side of Capp St.
On the east side, it
will “be reviewed on
a case-by-case basis.”
San Carlos St
19th St
Mission
Playground
S Van Ness Ave
Folsom St
20th St
Capp St
Valencia St
21th St
Barlett St
22nd St
Between 21st and 22nd
streets, vending will be
prohibited on the east side
of Bartlett St but allowed on
the west side. Further south,
vending on the west side
of Bartlett St will “be reviewed
on a case-by-case basis.”
Mission St
23rd St
Capp St
24th St
BART
Plaza
Osage St
Lilac St
25th St
Mission St
Most vending directly
on the BART plazas,
as opposed to the
sidewalks next to them,
is banned already
26th St
Cesar Chavez St
= area of vending ban
Vending will be
prohibited on parts
of Erie St and
Woodward St
Woodward St
Erie St
Valencia St
14th St
Minna St
Mission St
S Van Ness Ave
Julian Ave
15th St
Wiese St
Vending will
be prohibited
on the east
side of Julian
Ave, but
allowed on
the west side
16th St
BART
Plaza
Hoff St
17th St
Clarion Alley
Capp St
Vending will
be prohibited
on the west
side of Capp
St. On the
east side, it
will “be
reviewed on
a case-by
-case basis.”
Sycamore St
18th St
Mission St
San Carlos St
19th St
Mission
Playground
S Van Ness Ave
20th St
Capp St
Valencia St
21th St
Barlett St
22nd St
Mission St
Between 21st and
22nd streets, vending
will be prohibited on
the east side of Bartlett
St but allowed on the
west side. Further
south, vending on the
west side of Bartlett St
will “be reviewed on
a case-by-case basis.”
23rd St
Capp St
BART
Plaza
24th St
Osage St
Lilac St
25th St
Mission St
Most vending directly
on the BART plazas,
as opposed to the
sidewalks next to them,
is banned already
26th St
Cesar Chavez St
Map by Will Jarrett. Information from Hillary Ronen’s Office. Basemap from Mapbox.
The policy has faced pushback from vendors, and is set to last for 90 days, but what will come after that remains unclear. Vendors on Friday requested that the ban be lifted after this time period, so that they could return to their original locations to sell.
“It could be 90 days, it could be a year. I don’t know,” said Ronen in Spanish.
Ronen emphasized the resources that have been made available to vendors, namely the alternate spaces that will be created for vendors to set up their stalls: The parking lot at 24th and Capp streets, and the large store space where they were meeting, at 2137 Mission St. between 17th and 18th streets. It was formerly occupied by a discount furniture store. The nonprofit Clecha has leased the property and will call the market “Tianguis,” a Nahuatl word for an open-air market.
Vendors, who already went through one permit process to sell goods on Mission Street, will have to apply for a second permit to set up shop at these locations, according to Lerma.
Ronen also pointed out that the ban only affects the Mission Street corridor, and that vendors can still sell their items elsewhere. “There’s the whole city,” she said.
But vendors were not reassured by these accommodations, and they made it clear that they do not want to move from their neighborhood’s main artery.
This is our neighborhood. Our clients know us, and know where to find us, said Maria de Jesús. “Somos de la Misión.”
Sidewalks are for walking and movement. Stores are for selling things. There are no shortage of empty stores. Urban reality 101.
The city can refund permit application fees for people who feel shorted.
That said, this partial measure, even if fully enforced, is just going to move the cycle of blight, sale of stolen goods, and fentanyl sales/use half a block away.
A storefront on Mission Street costs what? five, six thousand minimum a month just for rent—that will go up every year. These are people who support their families by selling $2000 of products a month. Does everyone need to be rich to live in San Francisco?
(For the record, I support this long-overdue ban, given the police’s refusal or inability to enforce existing laws.)
‘“I am in your favor!” Ronen shouted back. That, however, does not mean she will delay the ban.’
The ease with which Ronen lies is as impressive as it is offensive. If she lies to her colleagues like this, that goes a long way to explaining why she’s not achieved any leadership positions on the Board and why her legislative product is so thin.
Who can do business with someone who cannot be trusted to honestly tell the time of day?
Marcos,
What you are saying is simply not true.
Your ad hominem attack is vulgar and you are better than that.
While I disagree with my Supervisor on this issue, I think she’s done a great job given that it is pretty basic that Moderate mayors shortchange D-9 and she’s had only conservative mayors to work with.
Go Niners !!
h.
Lol, when was the last time San Francisco had a conservative mayor? George Christopher in the early 1960s? He was a Republican, but I doubt he was a conservative. However, you probably think that anyone to the right of Fidel Castro is “conservative.” Thanks for giving me my laugh of the day.
Jordan, Brown, Newsom, Lee and Breed have all been pro-biz conservative Democrat mayors who have repeatedly gone to the mat to keep progressives out of political power. Breed endorsed Bloomberg.
Dude, you’ve not been in meetings with her when everyone around the table agrees that her reinterpretation of her commitments to us was not our recollection of the terms, or when she just makes shit up and immediately folds when confronted. How can anyone do business with that?
The attenuation of progressive power from Ammiano’s last term to Campos to Ronen has all but neutralized it. These people are nothing but technicians hooking up their nonprofit racketeer friends to city contracts in exchange for campaign work. They’ve got Jon fucking Jacobo out there repping the vendors. A protection racket?
This crowd got their clocks cleaned on both recalls, got gerrymandered out of relevance, Campos got thumped hard, they lost D4, all as they moved towards the center and are now articulating themselves to cater to their new alt right masters.
20 yr ago we were running the living wage and police reform ballot measures and came within a hair of taking room 200. Like Eric Mar, progs can’t fog a mirror right now.
The more things change… from the LRB review of Charlie Taverners “Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London”
For a long time, even as London changed, hawkers traversed the city and fed its residents in ways that kept faith with the practices of their early modern and medieval forebears. Taverner says they ensured that the street remained ‘a place of petty commerce, where everyday essentials and occasional treats were bought and sold’. Efforts to get hawkers off the streets and into purpose-built premises commonly fell flat, as in the case of the ill-fated Columbia Market in Bethnal Green, which lasted only lasted six months after it was opened with great pomp in the spring of 1869. Hawkers preferred not to be herded into Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts’s carefully designed neo-Gothic market; the view its founder took of them might have seemed clear from the way the space was decorated with injunctions to ‘Be Sober’ and ‘Be Courteous’. Meanwhile, street markets, which saw hawkers take over whole streets at appointed times of the week, flourished in places like the New Cut, Petticoat Lane and Chrisp Street – King Street market in Hammersmith was described by one observer as the ‘great weekly shopping carnival of the poor’. The Victorian journalist George Augustus Sala visited a street market in Whitechapel, invoking for his readers ‘the noise! The yelling, screeching, howling, swearing, laughing, fighting saturnalia; the combination of commerce, fun, frolic, cheating, almsgiving, thieving, and devilry; the Geneva-laden, tobacco-charged atmosphere’.
A century later, street selling was viewed as an antiquarian curiosity – why elbow your way through the barrows or pick a path over traders’ leavings when the new supermarkets offered a cleaner, quieter, more efficient experience? But after the 2008 financial crash, street food once more became big business in London. Food trucks and street markets brought a seemingly improvised, itinerant feel to London’s culinary scene. Repurposed shipping containers and street food markets popped up around the city, though these were curated spaces whose operators could pick and choose their traders, and where price points were modest only to those with money to spare.”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/john-gallagher/shriek-of-the-milkman
Very interesting. Thank you.
Reminds one of the taxi medallion scam in which driver/owners paid – what – 250K – for a now almost worthless medallion after The City pulled the rug out from under them.
“Vendors, who already went through one permit process to sell goods on Mission Street, will have to apply for a second permit to set up shop at these locations”
More ultra-idiocy. Why?
A perhaps rational person may suggest strictly enforcing and penalizing un-permitted vendors. Evidently that’s not possible cause – you know – San Francisco.
I suppose she was directing ““There’s the whole city” to the permitted vendors but it don’t take much of a stretch to see the recommendation apply to the un-permitted.
Hey – the whole city gets a schmear of The Mission!
Nice to walk to the corner in say -The Castro – and get your Tide Laundry detergent at a discount. For The Mission, I suggest the wide sidewalks around Dolores and 18th. Tool Man and Tool Man 2 can really spread out. Funny – can’t find one used DeWalt driver for sale on Craigslist in San Francisco yet the Tool Men have a booming inventory. And the pile of socket stuff! Wonder if they carry Snap-on.
It’s amazing what happens on the horizon when Election about to take place. All these politicians want to clean up the mess they let get out of hand. All of a sudden there concerned about the neighbourhood.
I really don’t understand how it’s so difficult to come up with a way to quickly approve specific kinds of vendors and even potentially limit how many are able to congregate in a certain area. A super simple way would to be permit only vendors who have carts or moveable stands—which immediately makes all of the people selling stolen trash on the ground (or neatly placed on a towel) easy to spot and stop. I mean, other than the regular BS that we’re used to seeing and hearing, what’s really stopping this from being solved in a mutually amicable way?
San Francisco does not crack down on open air hard drug markets. But we crack down on open air City registered vendors.
Ronen is so over her head.
We are witnessing the endgame of Ronen’s defective worldview; the profound cognitive disconnect that occurs when one’s ideology comes in contact with reality.
She really should step aside / resign and let someone more capable take over.
Karl,
I believe that Supervisor Ronen has done the best job any supervisor can do in an environment dominated by a Strong Mayor and unresponsive police force.
h.
While this is all true, she’s not wrong — for once — about this street vendor ban. It’s an extremely rare example of one of the progressive supervisors actually considering what’s best for the city.
These individual vendors benefit from clogging up Mission Street, but they’re chasing away tourists that brick-and-mortar places need to survive.
That is such BS, Candace. Aside from the fact that tourists have NEVER shopped at brick-and-mortar stores on Mission Street, if those fictional tourists did exist it would not be the permitted vendors chasing them away. It’s the people who do gangbusters in reselling stolen goods and who are often aggressive, that’s the problem. And this ordinance will do nothing about that. They are certainly not going to pay attention to any regulation and the city will, as per usual, do absolutely nothing to remove them. All this does is punish people who play by the rules.
First, you have no clue about tourists, they absolutely come to the Mission. Second, the whole point of this IS to address the main problem. The current situation is measurably bad & can’t continue. As for the vendors, there are other streets, and there will be storefronts. Once they know their options, It will get sorted out. It’s time to clean up Mission Street.
Bravo to Ronin for sticking to her guns & doing what’s best for the rest of us.