The primary time Kenshi Westover walked into AsiaSF, an iconic transgender cabaret on this metropolis’s gritty South of Market neighborhood, it was as a closeted homosexual Mormon visiting from Utah.
That was 20 years in the past, and Westover (who makes use of they/them pronouns) remembers being shocked by the performers strutting down an elevated runway behind the bar, heels impossibly excessive, attire dangerously low reduce, the temper ebullient.
“These are my spirit animals,” Westover thought. “And I’m going to be a part of that world.”
Kenshi Westover, who got here to San Francisco twenty years in the past as a closeted homosexual Mormon from Utah, says San Francisco “is a secure sandbox that permits an individual to play with out concern. I feel it saved my life.”
(Kenshi Westover)
I met Westover on Sunday evening as AsiaSF celebrated its 25-year anniversary, in a room packed sardine-tight with drag queens, politicos in fits and even a few Stanford college students. Westover, who identifies as gender nonconforming, was turned out in a beaded Artwork Deco robe, with dangling earrings and slicked-back hair, very a lot part of this vibrant neighborhood that reveals extra about San Francisco than the alarmist tales of city doom which have come to outline its repute nationwide.
For years, the hard-right outrage machine has zeroed in on San Francisco as a “hellhole” that epitomizes every little thing improper with Democratic management. They’ve been aided by a small however vocal cadre of native social media influencers who’ve made their model pummeling San Francisco’s public well being and public security insurance policies. They focus nearly totally on medication and crime, which dovetails completely into the right-wing propaganda that’s stoking paranoia and panic in numerous components of the nation.
When you’re questioning why I’m not together with the often compulsory pattern posts from these influencers, it’s as a result of I don’t really feel the necessity to give that false narrative extra oxygen. However their new king appears to be Elon Musk, who just lately tweeted out that “violent crime in SF is horrific,” regardless of the truth that, except robberies, charges for violent crimes like murder and rape are to date on par or declining from final yr.
Many of those proselytizers protest that they aren’t conservative, and most wouldn’t dare to the touch different points that animate the correct, such because the wars on transgender individuals and abortion. However they’ve a symbiotic relationship with hard-right media (suppose Fox Information) on crime and medicines.
In one other California city, possibly Sacramento and even Los Angeles, their vitriol could be the stuff of Nextdoor posts. However as a result of San Francisco is a goal of the correct wing, these native voices have amassed energy by offering the so-called proof that this metropolis, like different Democratic strongholds, is in perpetual chaos.
They submit numerous movies on-line of what I contemplate exploitative moral-outrage porn — clips of destitute individuals utilizing medication, splayed out on sidewalks, incoherent and misplaced. Few of those seem like filmed with the individual’s consent, however all are supposed to convey to the great of us in Iowa and Idaho simply how unhealthy life may be underneath “leftist” management.
In fact, that narrative shouldn’t be new.
In 2015, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to as out San Francisco and its sanctuary metropolis insurance policies after the horrific killing of resident Kathryn Steinle, who was shot by an undocumented immigrant with an intensive felony document and a historical past of deportations. The shooter, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was acquitted of homicide after a jury determined he had discovered the gun underneath a bench and by chance fired it. The weapon belonged to a Bureau of Land Administration ranger and had been stolen from his car every week earlier.
However with the success of Trump’s political assault on the hearts and minds of immigrant-averse Republicans, the pile-on of exploiting woe has continued, culminating just lately within the aftermath of the killing of tech entrepreneur Bob Lee.
Lee was stabbed within the early-morning hours of April 4 in an upscale space of downtown. By the following morning, right-wing social media have been drowning in condemnations of town that assumed Lee had been randomly attacked — the unstated implication that the assailant was doubtless a homeless drug consumer. Lee’s demise rapidly turned simply the newest proof of how violent San Francisco has change into regardless of its persevering with low murder price.
Police ultimately arrested an acquaintance of Lee’s for the killing, suggesting the assault might have been motivated by a dispute involving the suspect’s sister. Not a random killing in any respect, however that hasn’t stopped these distributors of grievance. After the arrest, one frequent social media poster recommended that it didn’t matter who did it, as a result of any kind of killing proves simply how harmful San Francisco is.
On Friday, when Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a multiagency effort, together with the California Nationwide Guard, to focus on giant drug distributors in San Francisco, one other a type of agitators declared “victory,” wrongly claiming that troopers could be on the streets as a result of the scenario was so dire. CalGuard will present backroom intelligence-gathering support. There can be no tanks.
San Francisco has issues, in fact. Not little ones. There’s a tech bust emptying costly workplace towers, very like the dot-com bubble did across the similar time AsiaSF first opened.
There’s additionally a disaster of dependancy, which has led to unacceptable ranges of property crime in addition to areas of town the place medication are brazenly bought and used, and stolen items hawked at sidewalk markets. As with so many different locations — city, suburban and rural — fentanyl has change into the drug of alternative, resulting in skyrocketing numbers of overdoses. To this point this yr, 200 individuals have died of fentanyl overdoses within the metropolis in contrast with 142 deaths in the identical interval final yr.
And anti-Asian hate crimes, largely unrelated to the dependancy disaster, have rightfully galvanized anger — having elevated 167% nationwide between 2020 and 2021, in line with FBI knowledge, far outpacing rises for another group. In San Francisco that has included, amongst different brazen assaults, an Asian man dying after being shoved into the road, a person throwing a brick at aged Asian individuals in a park, and an aged lady being robbed and crushed by 4 juveniles in her senior dwelling middle.
Anti-Asian hate crimes appear to be declining this yr, however Asian communities have change into extra vocal and political of their calls for to raised police town — appeals that at instances have been conflated with the far-right speaking factors however which stem from very totally different views.
A latest metropolis survey discovered all residents, no matter ethnicity, really feel much less secure than earlier than the pandemic.
Solely 36% of respondents stated they felt secure or very secure strolling alone of their neighborhood at evening. In 2019, 53% stated they felt secure at evening.
Regardless of that decline, the general grade for residents’ emotions about security got here in at a C+, which isn’t nice however isn’t a hellhole failure, both.
Which is to say, don’t consider the hype you examine San Francisco on the web.
“The actual San Francisco is AsiaSF. It’s the cherry blossom parade. It’s Easter with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in Dolores Park,” state Sen. Scott Wiener informed me, once we stepped exterior the membership to speak. For many who don’t know, the sisters are a collective of activist queer and transgender nuns who’ve been round since Jimmy Carter was within the Oval Workplace. They prefer to curler skate.
“It is a place with a soul that may’t be stifled,” stated Bette McKenzie, a former public relations govt who helped conceive one of many largest AIDS fundraisers on the West Coast, as we screamed over the pounding beat again contained in the membership.
“Despite all of the BS you hear from the right-wing media, San Francisco is a beacon of hope for therefore many individuals,” Larry Hashbarger informed me. He’s one of many homeowners of AsiaSF.
He got here to San Francisco from Boulder, Colo., in 1977, a “younger homosexual man who was not fairly prepared for the scene.” At 71, he is the scene, working the room in a black bedazzled swimsuit long-established after a Keith Haring portray.
When AsiaSF opened, “the phrase transgender was not even in our vocabulary but,” Hashbarger informed me.
However nonetheless, everybody needed to return. “Pacific Heights matrons would deliver their Dom Perignon.”
Since then, he estimates one million individuals have come by means of the doorways. On Friday, Mayor London Breed stopped by, he stated. Former U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco resident, despatched a proclamation “in recognition of excellent and invaluable service to the neighborhood.” Even state Treasurer Fiona Ma was there together with her brother on Sunday.
“All people involves be who they’re and have fun who they’re. Irrespective of who you’re, it’s a must to discover your fact and stay your fact,” Hashbarger stated.
And that’s the enduring power of San Francisco. Folks go to New York and Los Angeles in search of fame and wealth. Folks come to San Francisco in search of themselves — trying to find freedom and authenticity.
Those that discover their very own identification and their very own tribes are the true powers on this metropolis, constructing communities with clout and endurance. Simply take a look at who will get elected, from Harvey Milk, the primary brazenly homosexual man to carry workplace in California, to Wiener, who has championed a progressive agenda that has made him reviled by the correct.
For a small minority, their fact is at all times going to be born of spite and privilege. And that minority could have its energy, as democracy calls for, particularly on this perverse American timeline through which the push towards authoritarianism requires hate and concern to justify itself. That, stated Wiener, is a “problem,” however one San Francisco at all times has and at all times will overcome.
For almost all of San Francisco, the outrage peddlers are a sideshow, a pale whisper in opposition to the drive of the true present in locations like AsiaSF.
Many years in the past, Westover, the closeted Mormon, discovered themselves standing on a 20-foot ladder, considering suicide — leaping to see if that might quiet the noise and the ache. They have been 23. Their mother and father had rejected them, and being homosexual or transgender or one thing else totally appeared terrifying. Seeing the performers of AsiaSF gave Westover the braveness to outline themselves on their very own phrases.
On Sunday evening, I noticed Westover as a lovely human wholly proudly owning who they’re, surrounded by discovered household.
“This metropolis is a secure sandbox that permits an individual to play with out concern,” Westover informed me. “I feel it saved my life.”
They aren’t the one one San Francisco has saved, and so they gained’t be the final.
That’s the fantastic thing about this metropolis, and no quantity of fear-mongering will change it.
