Regeneration: I'll drink to that

摘要

Around the corner from San Francisco's rnayoral trophy collection of city-booster accomplishments -including the Sony Metreon, a mega-experiential retailing centre, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a $44 million art and entertainment complex, and the Moscone Convention Center, the city's newly expanded exhibition facility-lies Sixth Street, San Francisco's notorious 'skid row'. Habitat to the picturesque city's disenfranchised populations and concentrated social problems, Sixth Street hastens the stride of passing pedestrians and induces those vehicle-clad to slyly secure the armour of their car doors. Unlike the nearby high-couture shopping mecca and tourist pocket of Union Square, Sixth Street is nowhere near ready for window shopping. Crack cocaine dealers shamelessly service their frenzied addicts along the main thoroughfare leading on to the recent highway extension. Dirty needles and human defecation line the street's gutters. Spray paint graffiti climbs building walls just as brazenly as men urinate against them. And while one-third of the storefronts sit vacant and boarded up, their doorways provide shelter for the drug dealers who prefer privacy above sidewalk dealings and for the homeless men and women unable to afford a room in one of the street's 30 single room occupancy (SRO) residential hotels, which together account for about 2,500 individual rooms rented by the hour, day, week, or month.