San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

by Michael Shellenberger

Around 2013, Adam Mesnick, a chef and restaurant owner in San Francisco, got to know some of the homeless people who hung around his restaurant, the Deli Board. “I was in there because I wasn’t trying to violate their trust or piss them off . . .” he told me. “I was pretty much just hanging out smoking pot with them.” “So when Deli Board closes, you go out, smoke a couple [of pipe] bowls [of marijuana], and they were shooting up and you just chitchat with them and hang out?” I asked. “I had to understand what the heck was going on,” he said. “I didn’t really understand. I didn’t understand it. Now I get it.” “What did you get?” “They just come here to die,” said Adam. “That’s it. They come here to shoot up, nod, and die. That’s it. This is not any other place but to come to die. They’ll all tell you that. They’ve all told me that—” “They say ‘die’?” I asked. “Of course, they do,” Adam said. “You can see it in some of my interviews. [Homeless fentanyl user] Jessica tells me on the camera exactly how it is. She smokes fentanyl. She tells you, ‘Everyone’s here to die.’ She tells you, ‘Everyone ODs.’ She tells you, ‘Everyone boosts.’ She’ll tell you everything.” “But is ‘die’ slang or literal?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said. “But they say that explicitly?” I pressed. “‘I come here to die’?” “They explicitly say that,” he said. “Look at Jessica’s interviews. Jessica’s telling me about how she died seventeen times from doing fentanyl and then they Narcaned.”