I went for a walk around Lake Merritt the other day, and what I saw was disturbing. There were considerably more tents, and dirtier ones, than just a month ago. A few sites looked like Wood Street, with heaps of garbage and junk strewn all over the place. My simple question is this: If Lakeside Park is truly the “Jewel of Oakland,” then why won’t the authorities clean it up and keep it clean?
But even worse than the tents—if that’s possible—was the woman I saw on Lakeshore Avenue. I noticed her because she was acting very strangely. She had on these big, heavy combat boots, and was giving karate side-kicks to the air (and not very good kicks, at that). She was also screaming at something only she could see.
She walked over to a garbage container and started emptying it, one piece of trash at a time, which she aggressively tossed onto the grass. Then she went to another garbage container and did the same thing—and then another. In her wake, she left behind a nauseating trail of refuse, which somebody was going to have to clean up. I have to say it really pissed me off. Such disrespect for park workers. Keeping Oakland clean is something we should all do.
Then she took off all her clothes. Yes, she proceeded to cross Lakeshore (in the middle of traffic) with her boobs and privates exposed. And still she kicked the air and ranted. All I could think was: What are we, the good citizens of Oakland, supposed to do about this? We’re constantly told how great MACRO is, how wonderful the Department of Violence Prevention is, and how effective Gov. Newsom’s CARE Courts will be. But whom are we to call when we see a horror show like this? What’s the phone number? Who’s supposed to intervene?
The answer, I guess—as far as can be inferred from social activists like Carroll Fife—is that there’s nothing to be done. We just have to get used to it: the new normal of psychotics and flaming drug addicts doing anything they want in our streets. You don’t like the ranters, the naked zombies, the derelicts passed out on the sidewalk? Fine! Move to Piedmont, where such horrors don’t exist, and wouldn’t be tolerated if they did.
No wonder businesses don’t want to come to Oakland, despite the central location, transit hubs and good weather. Why would any sane CEO bring his company here? Who wants to go to lunch and step over vomit and feces and dodge wacked-out panhandlers? Who’s willing to work after dark and then take a chance of getting mugged or killed on the way to the car? Oh, and let’s not forget the occasional riots that erupt downtown. And then to have this City Council raise your business taxes precipitously in order to perpetuate this madness?
No thanks.
Clearly, this city is going to have to get serious at some point about cleaning up its act. We simply can’t go on this way and expect to endure. People are suffering—good, decent people, the taxpayers and workers who are Oakland’s backbone. That more of us haven’t moved is testimony to our love for this town. We refuse to give up. There has to be a better way.
There is: but I will warn everyone that if we continue to vote for politicians like Sheng Thao, Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan, everything will get worse. Oakland will spiral into a nightmare of anarchy and filth that makes the social collapse of Mad Max look like a summer picnic. More will die. More decent people and businesses will flee. And so the death spiral goes.
Steve Heimoff