[4K] Is San Francisco's Market Street infested with homeless & drug addicts? See for yourself. 

Thanks for this video. I lived in the Bay Area in the 1980s and exited BART at Civic Center every weekday. One aspect that is remarkably different now is the lack of small businesses along this walk. There used to be hundreds of small shops thriving and triple the amount of pedestrians. To my eyes, the place looks vacant now compared to then. San Francisco was amazing then…

Congrats on getting footage that carefully avoids the issue that San Francisco has per capita one of the biggest problems of any developed city in the world, with open air illegal drug use, rampant crime, vandalism and street campers. Stop the cap.

All you had to do was go a block or two over in either direction and you could have had a whole nother story but this isn't it

I lived in SF for almost 40 years . left in dec 2021. This looks like a lifeless city now. Compare these scenes to the years previous to 2020 . This city was buzzing with activity and people at lunch time in downtown and south of market. There were people everywhere . Businesses and restaurants were full of customers. People moved about with some purpose in their step. What i see in this video is a sad looking city that will take a least a decade to get anywhere near what it was. My wife and i moved to THailand and were in Bangkok last week and there is absolutely no comparison . BKK was clean , no needles , no junkies passed out , no murals of dead drug dealers , very little graffiti. A city of 12 million. It was polite and civiilized. Everyone courteous and helpful. beautful temples and a stunning mall that was more like a palace. The Thai people can have nice things without fear that a pack of feral animals will destroy it. I loved SF but this makes me sad to see it so lifeless.

As a local, I can tell you that the pedestrian traffic is only about 20% of what it was pre-pandemic, and about 50% of the shops and restaurants along Market are empty. Very depressing to go downtown, although if you go out into the neighborhoods west of Van Ness, things are very lively.

You walked from Civic Center to Montgomery and back to Powell. Go down Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Street. Walk around Civic Center, go down O'Farrell and Jones.

Just spent four days in San Francisco and twice road the street cars from Fisherman's Wharf to the Castro District and the homeless situation was no worse than I had seen prior to Covid. Basically, just as you saw in this video, minimal. Saw one homeless person in Union Square. Yep, there were some on Powell Street. Didn't see any at Pier 39. Walked up Columbus Street for an Italian dinner with the wife from North Beach and only saw a few homeless. Ate outside at the Stinking Rose Resturant on Columbus and was never bothered by any homeless. Never saw any homeless encampments anywhere. Walked my dog all over Fort Masson area, no issues other than a coyote eyeballing dogs running free. Spent a good portion of the day at Golden Gate Park and never saw one homeless person. There most probably are issues in the Tenderloin district and other areas, but there always has been and most people have no reason to go to those areas. I've been traveling to San Francisco almost yearly for the past 25 years and really didn't see any significant changes other than a lot of the stores have shut down. A lot. Would I be comfortable walking around downtown at night? No. But during the daytime and in the more touristy areas, no concern at all. Every big city has it's problems and problem areas. But from what I saw and experienced; the crime, drug addicts, homelessness, etc., way overhyped and sensationalized. Looking forward to my next trip back to San Francisco.

Wow it's deserted. I've never seen it so barren!

Cleaned up the place. SF does this routinely, it fills up again in no time. This is older footage. Nordstrom still has banners out. They’ve since closed as well

Why did you only go on market and not going near or into the tenderloin or market towards soma or van ness ? I’ve been here since 2008 and I’m leaving. I’ve seen too much here. You only covered the shopping area. Want me to film some stuff on market and I’m guessing you went early to mid afternoon? Half the stores are gone that’s why it’s clean. This false propaganda

*The results of pricing the unwanted out of housing and somehow thinking they'll vanish, and still work for $7.25/hr.*

If you’re homeless come to Monterey California, the weather is nice and they feed you seven days a week

Lived in walnut creek east bay 1998 2008. Worked for the city of San Francisco for 10 years and commuted by bart. Left in 2008. This doesn't look that bad. Hoping in the future it comes back to life more. More people. Lively. Shopping. Life.🎉😊😊

One of the better walking videos I have seen in terms of picture quality. What camera do you use? And please keep them coming!

It just only made me feel homesick for my Beautiful City by the Bay San Francisco, CA. I left there in 2001 and moved to Dallas, TX for 3 and a half years, then unto Albuquerque, NM. I miss my hometown so much, but realistically just can't afford to live there anymore. 😢. I didn't notice too much homelessness in your video. It's worse over here where I live in Albuquerque. Hopefully one day I'll be able to come visit again. Thanks for sharing.

I felt like I was there courtesy of your video. Minus the negative issues.

Literally beautiful NOTHING ABOUT IT SEEMS EVEN REMOTELY HOMELESS OR RUN DOWN!?! Nothing!!!

***DISCLAIMER*** So I’m just going to let you all know exactly how manipulated this video is. The video starts with the cameraman getting out of the Civic Center BART Station and walking Northeast. This is conveniently the cutoff of where Market Street starts to get really bad. The direction he’s heading is towards all the main shopping and tourist areas in the Powell/Montgomery/Embarcadero areas, eventually leading to the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. He sort of circles around several blocks yet they’re still all around that area with the office buildings and main downtown shopping and businesses that tourists frequent. Market Street is actually MUCH MUCH longer than these few blocks. If he had turned the camera around and started heading Southwest on Market Street, it would lead you to the Tenderloin area, which is where the infestation is. But, the fact that you can still see scattered homeless people in this video means things are REALLY bad, and that they’ve run out of room to the point that they have to start sleeping where the tourists and busy downtown areas are.

This is rather selective: notice that the author does not show the closed stores, and the door guards at the open ones. The issues are not just druggies and the homeless.

When I was back in SF in the spring, the Mission was a MESS! The Tenderloin was as bad as ever and it had spilled over into adjacent areas. Also parts of the city that used to be vibrant seemed eerily quiet and.. empty. So sad.

From what I'm seeing this video it looks pretty clean to me

What camera and mic are you using. Is it hidden so people don't freak out?

It's true lots of Homeless near Bart station scattered around begging and shoplifting , I love San Francisco❤️ but I don't have any plan of going back there anymore, so risky for a tourist😒

If you knew who the mayor is you would understand why this is happening!!😖😖 She's the true definition of WTF!

I see a fabulous city with fabulous people living, enjoying their best life. If you listen to YT videos you'd think all of America's cities are cesspool.

Looks okay, needs some more foot traffic and stores to reopen and it will be better. Continuous street cleaning and police patrolling is a must. Some downtowns throughout the country are emptier and some are busier so SF is probably somewhere in between

I will say your camera work is pretty good

Except for the few frozen, hunched over addicts, it's not as bad as people say it is on Market Street, at least in this video. The real bad areas are, and always had been, the streets just east off Powell, the Civic Crnter Plaza and stree5s parallelling Van Ness, going into the Tenderloin. If the City can attract businesses back on street level, the City can recover.

Great perceptive video now show The Real San Francisco ...... thanks

Cool, finally i could watch the street views other than New York.

Thanks for these videos. They help to cement my decision to never visit SF.

I just watched your lovely walk thru The City in the rain, yesterday 1/12/24. Market was empty of any campers whatsoever, between about Powell and the Embarcadero.

This is literally the most picture perfect paradise like utopia downtown I’ve ever seen!!!??? Ever!!!

I’m glad that more and more people are getting out of the house again. Things have never been the same since Rona. But yeah, there’s a big problem in most major cities. This video is for investors, not empaths.

I was on holliday in SFO from UK a couple of months after 9/11, stayed at holiday inn on vanness Av, the homless situation looks a lot worse now, Alcatraz was interesting

Me and my wife were on Bart last week and a homeless guy took a huge dump in Bart in front of us. My wife threw up several times as well as another person. It was the single most traumatic event in her life . She will never get on Bart again. The smell was horrific.

How old is the Bart Footage ? First off not one person on a phone 🤳 , second the clothing is from the 90s , and lastly the last time I was on the Bart it did NOT look like this. So you're obviously splicing it up here. The cars and busses are from the 90s. Some areas are current. If only it was truly like this. Maybe early morning certain areas.

38:36 Looks👀 like some visitors get "Lucky" 🤣🤣🤣

Go to Tenderloin and its surrounding streets and go to 6th street and Willow Street in Van Ness and see for yourself. In Market street, go around the Civic Center where the fountain is located and see for yourself. Homelessness and shoplifitng goes together, look for the statistics for the no. of stores closing

Looks beautiful to me

Thank you for the tour. Awesome ✌️

Amazing videos The videos shown numbers of retail shop winded up. The homeless and drug addicts are not swept under the carpet, they must have been vacuumed. 😂😂😂😂

If you want them to go away, don’t give them any food or money.

Man, Everytime I see someone sitting on BART, I just think of all the homeless I’ve picked up who have puked, shi*, and pissed all over those seats after passing out drunk or just falling asleep after a day of fent… god I’ll never take BART again after that.

I have traveled a lot around the world and USA is the place where I have seen the most people with drugs addiction. In Europe we have drug addicts but not as bad. The situation in the USA is horrific 😢

Just east of this video is Mission St. This starts a completely different world & continues through the Tenderloin district. Look it up if you want an accurate assessment of S.F.

Good video. Looks like they're definitely making a concerted effort to clean the place up. I'm going to take a tour of the tenderloin tonight and see how it looks…

I didn’t see any homeless?? Guess it’s getting better ❤️‍🩹 Time to go back home 🏠 😊

Yeah market Street and the tenderloin in particular have always been thus. Things have gotten a bit worse just like any city in America and the world in general actually. Cost of living is going up and getting crazy all over the world and people are giving up. It's sad but I don't blame them. I'm about there myself.

The video is nothing like the last two times I visited San Francisco, when it was overrun by homeless, obviously drugged out, people, many passed out on the streets and the BART train cars had been taken over by homeless, where they tore up the sets to many beds and living in the cars. Maybe they cleaned it up but since moving out of the US in 2000 and returning to my home area only 5 times in those years, it was too sad to see what the most beautiful and interesting city in the US has deteriorated so much. It has been 3 years since that last visit. There must be new politicians on charge. But can it be saved or its reputation is just too damaged for retail stores to return.

When Michael Douglas (Kirk Douglas son) was young he was the star of a TV cop show called "The Streets Of San Francisco"

I didn't see an infestation. Definition: the presence of an unusually large number of insects or animals in a place, typically so as to cause damage or disease.

Nah, you got it wrong. I'm saving my money to leave San Diego, I'm an old unskilled worker grew up in 16 foster homes now a recovering addict. Now I'm living in 'housing first ' building. Its all the paperwork for section 8, medi-cal etc. One slip-up and you don't sign that form in time, and you can lose it all. I'm 63 year's old and push shopping carts. Theres no health insurance for my job level at a UNION GROCERY store.

It ain't nothing like Kensington.

What's with the crocked trees?

In the 1990s, I worked near the Civic Center station at night. This video shows that not much has changed. Although it looks a little cleaner now. When you use the term "infested" you really show much more about you than the people on the street.

I remember when marked street was a great place to shop, now its a no go zone. 🤢

Finally good music

I AGREE I ALSO LIVE IN SF, IT NEEDS SOME W0RK BUT OVERALL ITS GOOD

Wow. They sure cleaned up Market Street since the last time I was down there.

Odd, but when we went to SF for a meeting, we had to step over poo, lots of needles laying around, and were occasionally accosted verbally by the aggressive homeless. The capper was the dead person on the beach when we went to look at the ocean.

How little we do for a homeless problem is a big indicator of how little we care as a nation. COVID made changes within business operations and real estate use all over the country. Working from home changed transportation needs, purchasing routines, and life routines completely. We will not return to exactly what we had because business found out that it didn’t need all the space. So empty buildings! Money and prices moving upward have changed the definition of “class”. Many cannot afford housing prices. NYC average is $5500 for an apartment. We are mostly just one tough time away from living on the street. Changes are needed now in the function of cities. Finland solved its homelessness. We can do the same but it will take cooperation and possibly less profits going to the wealthy.

Looks clean for the most part

The fact that cities; not just SF, let people lay on the sidewalks with absolutely no intervention of any kind;(arrest, hospitalization, any sort of action by either authority or passerby, tells me the problem will get much worse much much much worse.

I just love how a bunch of trolls keep commenting under the video without watching it just to be all brokenhearted when the video turns out not to be anti-SF propaganda 😁😁😁😁

" I especially love clean, safe and organized cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Makati City & BGC in the Philippines, etc. What do they do to keep these cities safe and clean?" They keep the bums out. Next question.

I completely agree with your premise about what this video shows. That SF is not falling apart. Good video to prove things are fairly nornal considering we just got out of a pandemic that killed millions. BTW, the main reason the cities you list in your intro about being generally being more pristine has to do in large part because they are mono-cultural. When the vast majority of your residents have been raised in the same culture you have the same traditions and view on life so you build a society that conforns to those qualities. It's much more difficult to do in multicultural societies because they're more differences. Of course, the political and legal structures play a role as well.

This makes me feel very sad. I’m from London uk and the last time I went to San Fran was 2002, there were homeless people even then - but they were the veteran homeless - the last of the flower power generation from tye 60s and 70s , they weren’t shooting up in the street in full view of everyone. And back then San Fran had GREAT stores for shopping - it’s down town area was on a par with London’s Oxford street and regent street - considering London is twice the size of even New York that was impressive for San Fran back then - looking at this I can see where the Irgun mega store used to be and ALL the other missing stores Oxford street in London is still buzzing -lots still packed - the lack of people in this video is REALLY unsettling The worst thing to happen to America was Amazon For the sake of mental health and American jobs and malls tye USA governmen should compulsory purchase Amazon to close it down and keep it closed and anything similar to it. Just because you can shop online doesn’t mean you should It’s destroying everything

The sidewalk travvix is a fraction of what it used to be. It is spooky.

Ice Cream shop with security guard-hmmm. I’ve watched several hours of videos of San Francisco in the past month in anticipation of a possible trip (Ive been there 8 times in the last 20 years). In all those hours of watching, I’ve only seen one FedEx and one UPS truck, which were on this video. I’m not sure what day of the week this video was done, but the others I’ve watched were on weekdays, with none seen making deliveries in the business district.

Thank you, I felt like I was back home again . Looks the same to me before I left in 2018. Super duper had the best spiked shakes lol.

Homeless and drug addicts is a crime now in many well-to-do countries, so San Francisco is no exception.

It looks like a nightmare to me but what do I know? I live in Missouri where it is illegal to camp on public land such as parks, sidewalks, parking lots, along freeways, etc.

Going off subject. What ever happened with Papa Paulie Pelosi's Hammer Time case? That one disappeared fast

maybe you should walk to the tenderloin

The amount of addicts actually looks pretty darn typical and mellow for market. Just you're normal everyday TL street residents to me 🤷‍♂️💯. ☝️However, what's noticeable is even the non addicts seem to be in a sad dreary robot mode just as much as the junkies. It's definitely clear the tourist attraction is zero now. You're no longer hearing multiple languages muttering about taking pictures and looking at maps and such or even seeing groups of people on tours or field trips of any kind anymore. Market used to be the meet and greet starting point for most adventures within the city. I don't even see the vendors. I honestly hope they've found other means for themselves because jeez some of them had been out there for years 😢. I haven't been back in years, but from what I understand SF is one of the only cities that hasn't even remotely recovered since lock downs and has progressively gotten worse on CRIME. Addicts will always be everywhere and people move about their business around them as they always have, some even come just to see that particular part of the city for whatever reasons, ☝️but safety is a whole other topic and that's what's causing people to both move away AND choose other places to visit.

Thanks for showing the truth

This video didn't show homeless & drug addicts as titled.

Why are there so many stores closed?

I have to say, I miss the BART of the old days. I know they've purchased/upgraded new cars. The old cars had upholstered seats and carpeted aisles. Made the cars quiet and comfortable. I used to take BART 3 days a week from SF to Berkeley and back for school. Loved passing through all the neighborhoods whizzing by; the darkness while going literally under the watery bay and then coming back up into the light. It's a shame San Francisco and Oakland are both going to have to implode in a major, catastophic Dark Night Of The Soul before either city can be made right. *EVERYTHING* has to crumble completely before it can be rebuilt... May God have mercy on all the souls living there

U GET WHAT U VOTE 4 !!!!!

Seattle Washington is well on its way to being just like this

I accidentally watched this video but I found it interesting. What is the reason for closing stores? After all, people have to buy things somewhere and the city center is naturally the best place. There are no stores in all of SF? I don't understand.

So many people walking around in the fresh air wearing face masks ?

whats the gear? gimbal on chest?

It would have been simpler and less expensive to have never allowed SF to fall into disrepair in the first place.

Not the way I remember it! It was always busy and entertaining! Doesn't seem fun to me😢😢

Of course, even in Gotham, people still live there and there are good neighborhoods, I'm pretty sure.

Its way busier than that every moment and it is never that clean for more than a block or 2 at a time!

Just like Las Vegas, downtown is Junkie Hobo City.

Looks fine. Wth is wrong with you guys

Just looks like a normal day in America 🇺🇸 all be it looking like a ghost town as to a city

Thanks Newsome

13.50. I admire that man setting up his wares and making a honest living.

Honestly, by us city standards?!? THIS IS SURREALISTIC BORDERLINE PICTURE+PERFECT!?! It really doesn’t get much better than this from a big city standpoint

Empty sidewalks, empty buses, empty buildings. I think my small city has 5 times the people and auto traffic has SF.

You should have walked the opposite way by Tenderloin.

❤

"oh, its not that bad!" That's what the folks said in Dante's 4th circle of hell in the Inferno. It's worse in the 5th circle. Other cities are doing well without all the homeless and drug problems, but SF voters don't have the heart to make tough decisions.

Like it happened in a blink of an eye. i lived in ChinaTown (2021-2022) walked to work and businesses were good. Moved to Excelsior and i hear that Old Navy and everything else closed on Market. #RiP