This sucks, and that's about it

I love you SF but you're bringing me down

July 21, 2023

Remember back when the Pandemic was in full swing and everyone had a little project and all the out of work chefs were selling cakes and you would stop by a bar and pick up a big jug of some premixed cocktail and it was like summer break every day except without the fun part? During that time, I heard about this local chef who was running this thing called Bread Spread Pickle my wife & I briefly became addicted to. It was run by two incredibly cheerful chefs who were out of work from The Progress? I think? And the idea was Moni, one of the chefs, would bake you (not just you, hundreds of people) an idyllicly perfect loaf of bread and match that with a spread like lemon garlic hummus and a pickled vegetable of some kind. They put it all in a bag and you drove to a building in the Richmond and one of them - either Moni or Peterson - would bring it out to your car, like the most delicious and wholesome drug deal ever.

As happens with all good things, BSP came to an end and, because I was following them on Insta, I learned other chef Peterson was doing a muffuletta popup. If you’re not familiar, a muffuletta is a sandwich from New Orleans that might be the perfect sandwich, or close to it. Typically made on a sesame-seeded round, flat bread, it’s stuffed with a bunch of Italian meat like soppressata, mortadella, salami, coppa, prosciutto, basically anything a Sicilian can get his hands on and cure. Provolone cheese. So far, sounds great, right? But the killer twist is OLIVE SALAD, a savory, tangy kinda-spicy finely minced mix that sits on top and perfectly accentuates the flavors and pulls the whole thing together. Fuck, I’m hungry again and I just had lunch like an hour ago.

So for a while they ran their muffuletta stand out of a wine store in Pac Heights (that’s where I got my last one), and then time passed and I followed along as they opened a real life brick-and-mortar sandwich shop on Haight Street. Sadly, I haven’t been there yet but I will soon. So far, great story! Chefs pivot from home-based operation, fight the red tape nightmare that is opening a business in SF, and debut a new character on ever-evolving Haight Street. Smiles all around, right?

Yeah, until a couple of days ago. That’s when Peterson says he confronted a guy peeing on his trash cans and got punched in the face.

The owner of a popular San Francisco restaurant said Thursday that he was left with a black eye and a deepening sense of frustration after a violent encounter with a man he said was urinating near the outside of the eatery.  

Peterson Harter, the co-owner of Sandy’s on Haight Street, said he was closing up Wednesday when he saw the man urinating near his trash cans. He said he told the man to stop urinating and the man responded with threats. Seconds later the man rushed at Harter and punched him. 

Harter, 39, first shared the story on the restaurant’s official Instagram page and expressed his anger about the situation. He said the man appeared to be inebriated during the incident, which he said occurred around 5:15 p.m. outside Sandy’s.  

This totally sucks, and it’s the kind of thing you hear way too often, and because it’s becoming so much more usual to hear these stories, at first I was wondering why this one seemed so different to me. I mean, it’s obvious - I’ve been a customer of these guys since before this restaurant existed; I don’t know Peterson personally, but he’s handed me food in my car. He’s said hello to my kid and asked if it was foggy at the beach. OF COURSE it’s gonna hit harder.

As you can tell from reading my ‘stack (can we call it that? Can I call my Substack me ‘stack? I’m sorry) I’m generally an apologist for San Francisco and I firmly believe that things aren’t as dystopic as the national - and even local - press depicts. My physical office is Tenderloin-adjacent, so twice a week when I go into work I get a closeup of how things look on the street and my general impression is that it sucks and it’s not getting better. But I also think that isn’t the whole picture, that parts of San Francisco remain beautiful and mostly serene.

Haight Street was never one of those parts. I lived on Belvedere, just off Haight, in the 90s and there was a mixture of crust punks and hippies on the street then, but it seems worse now. Anyway, that doesn’t justify Peterson or any other business owner on Haight getting punched in the face.

I don’t want to go all Nextdoor but it really feels like we’re reaching a breaking point of some kind. I know what the crime stats say because I’ve researched them myself. San Francisco on paper is one of the safest big cities in the country (at least in terms of violent crime; for property crime it’s laughably bad). But enough stories like this start to shake the confidence of even a committed booster like me. I hope you’re okay, Peterson, and I hope you don’t give up on San Francisco, but I would understand if you do.

I try with you, San Francisco, I really do, but you’re making it hard.

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