The 16th Street BART plaza had long been important to Yolanda Valdez and Camanza Murillo as a place of business. Then it became a matchmaker.
They were going through a difficult time, 76-year-old Valdez remembers. Both she and Murillo had recently lost their spouses, and one of Valdez’s eight children had been killed in a car accident.
Still, they continued trying to make a living as vendors. One day, Murillo came over to Valdez’s spot to see if she was hungry. She was. They got tacos at Pancho Villa down the street. He paid.
That was several years ago. Nowadays, Murillo bikes down 16th Street to fetch Valdez cups of water from the corner store when she’s thirsty. Meanwhile, Valez sits in a folding chair overseeing their goods, an eclectic collection now sold together near Caledonia Street, across from the taqueria.
Giants caps are laid next to a neat row of wrenches. Spanish music plays from a speaker. A fur coat flutters from a hanger on the fence next to Caledonia Street.
That side street is one of the alleys near the plaza that the city has targeted for drug activity. Neighbors have complained of users loitering and littering the road with trash, saying they’re afraid to leave their homes.
But Valdez, who has lived on Valencia and 15th Street for 40 years, isn’t afraid of people using drugs. “They’re in their own world,” she explains in Spanish. “They don’t bother anyone.”
On the contrary, Valdez recognizes many of the people who walk by pushing beat-up bikes or walking scruffy dogs. She greets them with a smile.
“You ask them to move and they do,” Valdez says as she acts out someone hunched over, a side effect of fentanyl use. “They say sorry.”
“They have feelings and lives,” adds Murillo, who is in the last phase of a recovery program. “They want money to eat.”
Murillo says he understands why the presence of drugs makes neighbors nervous. But he agrees the people using the drugs are not scary. He thinks many want to change their lives.
“We are doing this to live,” Murillo says of their street vending. In his free time, he adds, he volunteers at Centro Latino, a nonprofit that assists Latinos.
In Valdez’s opinion, 16th Street is safer than it was when she first moved to the Mission from Texas four decades ago. There are more drugs now, she supposes, but fewer smashed windows and motorcycles racing down the street. “Es tranquilo,” she says with a wave of her hand towards the alleys.
Since arriving at the plaza in March, she notes, the police drive by every hour. They help keep the sidewalk clear and prevent theft, which has been a problem, Valdez says as she clutches her small black purse closer.
The BART plazas down the street are sunny and clear. Mission Street between 16th and 15th streets, however, is lined with vendors selling everything from quesabirria out of a pop-up tent to packaged electronics in a wheelbarrow to eyeshadow pallets on the bare concrete.
Four workers from the Department of Public Works and a police officer chat on the corner of 16th and Mission streets. Despite a ban on Mission Street vending, the workers don’t bother the vendors.
On 15th Street near Mission Street, Paula Saulsby is set up in the same spot she’s had for the last four years, selling jewelry, baseball cards, and vintage men’s magazines — to entice clientele, she jokes.
Saulsby, 75, has worked as an in-home supportive service provider for over a decade, and is a member of SEIU, one of the largest unions for home care workers. She’s lived in San Francisco since she was two years old.
The money she makes as a vendor is nice, she says, but she also got a permit to sell because “It’s fun, I like it, and I meet people from everywhere, everywhere, and that’s wonderful too.”
Some buyers are homeless. Some have two homes. Some are business owners. Some are entertainers.
On Saturday afternoon, many do not speak English. They purchase children’s toys, compliment a sweatshirt that reads “I am a happy person who thinks pretty thoughts,” and flip through the “Busty Ladies” magazine.
At first glance, Saulsby seems aloof in her sunglasses, bucket hat, and blue medical gloves. Given time, she’ll banter with anyone, offering deals and asking about people’s lives, even a man who stumbles up with a drink in hand and another in his tote bag.
A group of people a few feet away from Saulsby are lighting a pipe, and the vendor says she thinks Mayor Daniel Lurie is “moving in the right direction” in his efforts to remove drugs from the streets.
Her comments on the issue, though, remain strictly courteous: “I don’t like it because I don’t like a person to be ill.”
Misery loves company, who knew?
I love when a transplant from NY tells us that we should allow criminals to sell stolen goods openly on the street because two illegal immigrants, who have been in this country for over 40 years and still cant speak English, say it’s OK.
A mess.
Vendors, users, dealers have to go. one way or another. Just move to Florida (state not street).
Glad to see them trying to support themselves .
What about the majority of people who hang out on the sidewalks all day doing nothing, getting high , getting drunk, and not working?
Those persons need to get off their butt and get working .
The city should be most concerned about that section of society .
They should be required to get off the street and get ajob .
May be no job inSF , but there a hundreds of thousandsof jobs elsewhere in this country .
Need to go and live where the jobs are .
Welcome to America .
Would rather see the city spending taxpayer money to pay for a ticket and get these people relocated to a place where they can work .
Why the taxpayer needs to pay to support them to stay here where there are no jobs is stupid.
I just wanted to comment on what I have witnessed firsthand. I’m not saying that the lady written about is doing this because I don’t know. However what I do know is that the majority of these street vendors are selling stolen merchandise that either they or someone else bought from the civic center area from homeless or drug users. During the day but mostly at night after 12am hordes of people flock around the area trying to sell what they stole from stores and/or from breaking into cars.
now that is the real of 16th street. been there for 40 years and knows it was way worst. not afraid of people just cus they re on drugs. recent transplants are just scared of anything that they re not used too. cant even walk down the street and look people in the eye or say hello. they should put these two in charge of community ambassadors.