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In this week’s column for the S.F. Examiner, I pick up a family who’s exposed to San Francisco’s ugly side on 6th Street, AKA, the Dirty Six. Instead of letting them think the worst, I try to help them understand the consequences of the city’s epic income disparity.

As I wait for the light to change at Mission, a bedraggled woman on the corner is flailing her arms and bitching out the sky.

“Oh my god.” The lady behind me gasps. “What’s wrong with her?”

As I continue down, she points out the motley cast of characters hanging out on the sidewalks and expresses shock at the various displays of mental illness.

“How close are we to your neighborhood?” she asks her son. “I’m really not comfortable with you living around all this squalor.”

“It’s not my neighborhood,” he replies with obvious annoyance.

“It doesn’t look safe here at all,” she intones.

“Mom, I never even come down here!”

As they go back and forth on how much danger she thinks he’s being exposed to, despite his protestations, I feel the need to interrupt. Not that I’m feeling like much of a booster for San Francisco these days, but … someone has to do it.

Read the entire column here.

[photo by Douglas O’Connor]

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“So … what kind of drugs did you take?” I ask the guy in my backseat. He’s older, bespectacled, dressed in jeans and a V-neck sweater. Has the air of a successful middle manager.

“No drugs. Just weed.”

“Just weed?” I ask, like a dubious parent.

“Strong weed!” He laughs and then goes quiet.

As I head down Mission Street, I think about the possibility of getting so high on marijuana I forgot where I lived …

It hardly seems probable, although there was that one time in college when I smoked a joint with a co-worker and ended up in bed, swaddled in my duvet, rocking back and forth and chanting, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me.”

Must be nice, though, to forget everything. Personal and financial problems, the constant tragedies in the world and the possibility of a future overrun with technology straight out of a dystopian movie.

But it seems impossible to escape, what with Facebook and Twitter. My phone is like a needle I use to mainline the distorted fire and brimstone of the 24-hour news cycle into my brain — a speedball of conflicting narratives — until I can’t turn away from the strobe light of information

I’d love to forget all that. Even for just 10 minutes …

Halfway up Kearney, the guy in back leans forward.

“OK, I know where I am now,” he says.

I realize I’ve been holding my breath and sigh with relief.