by Randy Shaw on August 25, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
Drug users at 7th and Market, August 20 6:45 am
San Francisco’s historic Mid-Market neighborhood has not come back. While there are signs of progress, sidewalk drug activities, vacant retail, and inadequate positive foot traffic still beset the street. While allowing ride-share vehicles in Mid-Market will help, a real comeback requires that open air drug activities finally be stopped
Stop Sales of Tobacco Paraphernalia
“The conditions surrounding our property at Market and McAllister have reached a critical point. In the past week alone, there has been both a stabbing and a shooting on our block. Drug use is happening openly. Guests paying $300 plus per night are stepping over individuals clearly under the influence as they attempt to exit onto Market Street. See pictures attached from both this morning at 6.30am and yesterday. In addition to the Hotel’s Market Street entrance you can also see 25 plus people congregating outside the convenience store that sells drug paraphernalia.” Adam Sydenham, General Manager, Proper Hotel, August 20, 2025 letter to Mayor and Police Chief
Mayor Lurie stated in last week’s press release about allowing ride-share on Market, “With this new phase, we are identifying the tools to get people back to our theaters, hotels, and restaurants, and drive San Francisco’s comeback.”
Yet the source of Mid-Market’s problems is no mystery: ongoing sidewalk drug activities that have worsened in recent months.
Mid-Market’s decline was primarily worsened by two city actions: housing thousands of drug tourists at Shelter in Place (SIP) hotels on 7th Street and opening a $22 million safe injection site known as the Linkage Center in UN Plaza.
Mid-Market has never recovered from the city’s combined assault on its progress. City Hall turned the area into a safe haven for drug activities. Phil Ginsburg’s skateboard park has since made UN Plaza much safer, but 7th and Market, Jones and Market, and the portion of Mid-Market bordering Sixth Street remain plagued by sidewalk drug users.
Enabling people to take cars rather than walk through these drug activities will help. But people are not going to regularly patronize stores, open retail spaces or rent offices in Mid-Market so long as customers have to walk through a gauntlet of illegal drug users.
Here’s an essential strategy: Mid-Market and Sixth Street must adopt the measure passed for the Tenderloin that prevents the sale of tobacco paraphernalia between 12am-5am. That will reduce illegal sidewalk drug use during those hours. Mayor Lurie should work with D6 Supervisor Dorsey to pass this vital legislation. San Francisco should not allow stores in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market or Sixth Street to create a thriving market for the sidewalk drug trade.
Clear Mid-Market Sidewalks of Illegal Drug Users
Preventing users from obtaining drug paraphernalia 24/7 must be part of the larger goal: clearing Mid-Market sidewalks from illegal drug activities.
It doesn’t matter what else City Hall does for Mid-Market. If the city cannot permanently clear sidewalk drug activities the area is not going to return to its pre-COVID revival.
I’ve constantly written stories about the devastating impact of drug activities on Mid-Market and the Tenderloin. The long-awaited supermarket for the area? City Hall allowed drug users and dealers to kill the Whole Foods at 8th and Market.
The former Westfield Center shopping mall that brought thousands to Mid-Market each day? Killed by sidewalk drug activities.
Fewer shows at the Warfield Theater? It’s been reported that crews for some bands don’t feel safe in the area.
Why have retail spaces under major new housing developments at 1028 Market and 50 Jones either never been built or never opened? Sidewalk drug activities have deterred businesses from even considering these sites. Businesses open and close in Mid-Market because drug activities deter customers.
Mayor Lurie campaigned on making tough decisions about the city’s future. That requires no longer playing make believe about what is really holding Mid-Market back.
It’s the sidewalk drug use. And City Hall needs to take the same approach to Mid-Market as it did for Jefferson Square Park—clear the area and do not let users return.
Mid-Market vs Jefferson Square Park
Sebastian Luke’s May 5, 2025 Beyond Chron story about the rescue of Jefferson Square Park—“It’s A New Dawn, New Day, New Life For SF’s Jefferson Square Park”—accurately describes the drug-free scene there today. Unlike Mid-Market, police crackdowns one day were not replaced by business as usual drug activities the next.
The common explanation for why sustained police presence occurred in Jefferson Square Park but has never happened at 7th and Market is that drug activities at the former impacted a more affluent neighborhood. That’s how people see it despite Mid-Market hosting major tourist hotels like the Proper and Timbri. The area also hosts IKEA, IKEA’s Saluhall Food Hall, the historic Hibernia Bank (now an event center), the Warfield, Orpheum, and ACT-Strand Theaters and other major commercial buildings.
But there may be another factor. Supervisor Steven Sherrill was far more hands on in battling drug use at Jefferson Square Park than D6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey has been for closing the drug scene on the south side of Mid-Market. Dorsey is the Board’s leading recovery advocate. He routinely bemoans open air drug markets. But has he done a single press event calling on the mayor or Police Chief to better protect Mid-Market from drug activities?
In a story for The Voice, Sherrill explained why he got so involved in Jefferson Park:
“This is a direct response to constituent concerns about those instances. We’ve seen what can happen when we stand up and we say what our priorities are, like in Jefferson Square Park,” he said, referencing high-profile police actions taken in March of this year to quell illegal drug activity there. “We decided we wanted to prioritize having a clean and safe park with a law enforcement operation, and boom, it happened. And that park is pretty darn clean today.”
If Supervisor Dorsey has in fact made clearing open air drug markets on the south side of Market Street a top priority, he has failed. Mid-Market drug use has become normalized in a way that was not allowed to recur at Jefferson Square Park.
Other City Hall Actions
Of the many actions I urged Mayor Lurie to undertake to revive Mid-Market in my November 2024 story—-“How Mayor Lurie Can Revive Mid-Market”—-only ending the rideshare ban has moved forward (the ban ends August 26). My biggest strategy then and now was closing drug markets. That hasn’t happened. The mayor remains far more laser focused on filling downtown office buildings and Union Square retail spaces than on Mid-Market or the Tenderloin.
Mid-Market is the heart of San Francisco. Like the adjacent Tenderloin, it deserves more from City Hall.
Want to learn about the Tenderloin’s rich history? Pick up Randy Shaw’s updated new book, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
