Here's The Tenderloin, The WORST Neighborhood In San Francisco. Heartbreaking.

How did we get to this point everyone?

Ask anyone who lives or has lived in the Bay Area about the Tenderloin and you’ll get some pretty interesting reactions. Yuck. Gross. Scary. Weird. Heartbreaking, disturbing, tragic, dire, and heart wrenching. It’s bad here and it has a terrible reputation. Whenever you hear about homelessness and crazy people and drug addicts in San Francisco, this place is the center of it all. It’s worldwide famous for being a place of misery and of grief.

So of course I had to go there. On an early morning in late October, before most of the city’s workers had even begun their office commutes, I took a drive through this notorious neighborhood. It was everything I thought it would be. Especially with the windows down. Which I would soon learn would be very dangerous. A second time.

And then, just to make sure I got the full experience of the Tenderloin, later in the day, I tried to walk through it. As I discovered, it was probably the riskiest walk I had ever taken for a YouTube video.

The Tenderloin district is a smallish neighborhood that takes up about 225 square acres of downtown San Francisco. It’s about 50 square blocks, and it’s wedged about halfway between Chinatown and the Mission District. According to the internet, this neighborhood is home to art spaces, concert venues and a mix of upscale and trendy casual restaurants. But even if those do things exist here, they’re simply overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of the worst human condition I had ever seen.

This part of town has the highest rate of homelessness and crime in the city of San Francisco. The district got its name because like a Tenderloin, it is the soft underbelly of the city. Back in the big earthquake of 1906, this place was destroyed, and in its place they put up a bunch of seedy hotels and gambling halls. In the 1920s, it first became known as a place for graft and drug use, prostitution and an alternative lifestyle. Later in the 1970s, this part of town became home to a large number of refugees from southeast asia.

As you can tell, this part of town has resisted gentrification and today, it almost looks like it’s been handed over to the saddest lot you can imagine. The squalid conditions, the drug use, the shootings and stabbings, the graffiti and liquor stores and the strip clubs all serve as a backdrop for a population of residents that have all but been separated from the rest of society. Just a few years prior, 300 lamp posts in the Tenderloin had to be replaced because they had been corroded by urine.

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[jeancapretti]

Hard to believe..in my using days I was homeless in skid row and the tenderloin..never was hurt nor attacked...maybe because I was a drugged out...thank you God for 4 years of sobriety...

[Jlac]

As someone who grew up in San Francisco I’m disgusted with the political structure of the city which has allowed this cancer to grow over the last 4 decades, it will only get much worse

[AJX-]

The trans rights flag hanging over a homeless encampment is the most Californian thing I've ever seen.

[goyoelburro]

I was born in San Francisco. I spent most of my youth in suburbs of it. When I moved there to work with my new wife and child, all of us recently arrived from where I was living in Chile, the rents were high (to me at the time). I lived on Ofarrell between Hyde and Leavenworth in a One Bedroom. It had a large walk in closet that we used for the "baby room", since it had two doors and served as a small room. We paid $1, 150 in rent.
When I divorced my ex in 2009, many tech workers from the Peninsula were moving to SF "Because it's cool". That apartment now rents for $3, 500..
Why did this happen: Wealthy entitled folks moving to SF, who drove up the rent and demonized the homeless. That and a city government that refuses to address the issue, much like every city in the USA.
I have lived in Latin America for half of my life. Poor countries that Provide Housing to folks. The USA is a disgrace and SF is just a reflection of it.

[whathe]

They’ll throw you in jail for unpaid parking tickets but the government let’s people put up tents and give them hypodermic needles.

[ryanslings]

"Some bums just threw a bottle at my car, I think I'll go back!"

Lol.

[incurableromantic]

When I was a kid, I saw footage of slums in India with a main road going past it, and I used to wonder - "How can those people drive past this everyday and just ignore it?"

Well, as San Fran shows: people just get desensitized when they see it everyday.

[Donner]

It's a Party, man - - - for the INSANE. But the Governor still enjoys his $350.00 lunches at the French Laundry Restaurant.

[lafayettedad]

I lived in the Tenderloin for many years when I attended UC Berkeley. In fact, you passed my old apartment building on your video. What I remember about the 'Loin was that there were lot's of families with kids; this was in the mid to late 1990s. The problems you speak of were there, for certain, when I lived there. But even now, there still remains many families with young kids in the Loin; these are families that are doing the best they can to make ends meet and put food on the table. There was this odd sense of dual realities going on..the crime and drug and homelessness reality, and then the little Chinese grandmothers walking their children to school, the old black men dressed in their sunday best on their way to chruch, the lovely woman who sold tamales on the corner of Hyde and Turk streets, greeting me every morning with a "good morning mister amigo." For the most part, these two realities lived side by side but lived separate existences. There are other hoods that I would say are more dangerous than the 'Loin, such as Oceanview, Bayview, and the Excelsior district. They do not have the notoriety of the 'Loin, and are not as well known, but just as dangerous from a personal safety perpective. I am glad that I experienced what I would call 'the heart' of the 'Loin" when I lived there, those laughing kids, the wonderful people I met who were trying to make the most of a terrible situation. Do I ever feel the need to return? Abosolutely not; but my heart goes out to the people I met who were not as lucky as I was, and do not have the means to leave.

[MrTnylam]

SF use to be a tourist destination...not anymore when people take dumps in front of your million dollar condo, routine car break in but primarily because you just don't feel safe anywhere in SF anymore.

[nickk]

I used to be a truck driver for Budweiser in San Francisco and the Tenderloin was my route, everyday was like being surrounded by the walking dead🧟‍♂️🧟‍♂️ Was a total freak show, but I LOVED that job. If you want an in depth interview about the tenderloin, you should interview me I spent 8 to 12 hours a day there almost every day, I've got some stories...

[petezee]

I can see why Nick arrived in Portland and was like ‘Yeah, this is OK. What’s the fuss about?’ Oakland and SF is next, next, next level!

[johnanthonyp]

From the UK here. I made the mistake of walking through there a decade ago and I was on tenderhooks the whole way to my hotel. I quickly learned not to light up a cigarette in clear view anywhere in that city. That was a cue for opportunistic predators to surface quicker than anything witnessed in the Serengeti National Park. LOL. It's a shame because there's some gorgeous buildings and architecture there that would be all the more striking if they were given a little care and attention. Keep safe and take care, everybody.

[SFer]

He got beat up and got robbed twice cause he looked like prey. You can’t look scared walking through. That’s how they know your an outsider

[michaelanavarro-je]

My mother died last year in December, she was in the Tenderloin, and she was one of the "drug addicts" your talking about. But she was so much more than that, she was a good person she just wasn't strong enough to overcome the hold her addiction had on her. It took her from me, from raising me, from being with me. I saw her once every few years sometimes longer. This is not something she wanted, drug addiction is a monster and can take anyone to a place of desperation just like it did to my mom. I love and miss her so much

[joecasella]

The lefty mayor of SF should name this the Tent-erloin instead so that it makes more sense.

[lahlipap]

I accidentally walked into the Tenderloin area one night while trying to find my hotel. There were no street lights and people were sitting on the sidewalks doing drugs. I was all by myself and had never been to SF before. That was 2004. I’m not an easily scared person but it terrified me.

[Teddy]

Could you imagine spending 1.5 million dollars on a place and have to live in that filth?

[Makarov_]

As a Mexican, my first time that I saw somebody using neddles was in Downtown San Francisco when I was 12, visiting an aunt of mine, and I was shocked how the police just walked by the two homeless people getting high right in their feet. Such a shame for a city that is also so beautiful, and fkn expensive.

[covercalls]

The only way I would walk in the Tenderloin area is to move fast and with a purpose. And that is to get out of there as fast as possible.