Last month, a virtual alphabet soup of city agencies capped a months-long planning process and rolled out a warning for the general public: Eating bacon-wrapped hot dogs is bad for you.
This is not a likely entry into the annals of better government. There is clearly illegal and undesirable activity going on on San Francisco’s streets, be it rotten meat or rotten conditions for vulnerable, undocumented workers or overt selling of stolen goods. And yet, the city’s response last month was to put the onus on the public.
This is unfortunate. But, more to the point, it’s also likely ineffective. Nancy Reagan appearing on “Diff’rent Strokes” in 1983 to urge young people to “Just say no” to drugs did little to stem the crack epidemic, and instructing San Franciscans that bacon-wrapped hot dogs may make them sick is unlikely to hamstring the burgeoning bacon-wrapped hot-dog business. The lucrative nature of this venture is demonstrated by the ever expanding and nigh-infinite number of unpermitted sellers flooding onto San Francisco’s finite waterfront street space.
Multiple sources told Mission Local that, during the many, many meetings between city agencies regarding a proliferation of unlicensed vendors along the Embarcadero, police talked up examples of sausages months past expiration being stored in direct sunlight. Images of rancid green meat, the reasoning went, would scare the bejeezus out of San Francisco residents and visitors in much the same way that tales of atrocities in meatpacking plants did for the early 20th century readers of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”
Well, perhaps. Today’s consumers are inured to an awful lot. But, in the end, we’ll probably never know, because we didn’t get photos of rancid green meat. The innocuous image fed to the press showed a stack of bacon-wrapped hot dogs being stored in a tinfoil-lined cardboard box.
“I thought those photos were enough!” says Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s health officer. “It seems pretty extreme to me, how that meat is just sitting out. Also, there are no hand-washing stations.”
The Department of Public Health provided us with 125 reported cases of food-borne illnesses thus far in 2023. There are some doozies in here:
- “Burrito seemed 4 days old.”
- After cooking meat in a crock pot for six hours, “caller discovered a bug in the middle of the meat. The bug was still alive and it ran across the counter.”
- Lime-cucumber Gatorade “aftertaste was bad and kind of tasted like urine. It caused me to vomit.”
And yet, there has been only one food-borne illness report this year regarding a street vendor. And that vendor hawked not hot dogs, but fruit.
Last week, a series of Public Works street inspectors lined up to give public comment during a Board of Supervisors meeting regarding violence and harassment they’ve experienced when confronting vendors.
This is clearly an untenable situation and, last month, one of these inspectors went viral in a manner even less pleasant than a food-borne illness. On Oct. 2, a Public Works employee was filmed flipping over a hot dog vendor’s cart on the Embarcadero. This highly public misstep invariably delayed the long-planned vendor campaign, and potentially poisoned the effort in the public’s mind before it was even out of the starting gate.
“That guy,” sums up one city official, “fucked up everything.”
But, truth be told, things were already pretty effed up. And a growing chorus of city officials — Mayor London Breed, police officers, Public Works, Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Aaron Peskin and more — are pointing the finger back at Sacramento. The state, they claim, flipped over San Francisco’s hot-dog cart and has left the city to deal with the mess.
Specifically: SB 946, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 essentially decriminalizes street vending (and makes the process of enforcing peddler permits or targeting sellers of suspected stolen goods far, far more onerous) and SB 972, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, essentially decriminalized food vending.
In theory, these laws do things San Franciscans would want: They keep police from busting vulnerable immigrants over hot dog-caliber infractions, which could lead to a vendor’s deportation. In practice, however, they have led to a situation in which honest peddlers have been made to compete with thieves, and in which some vendors are working in a system that appears to resemble indentured servitude. There is little the city can do to enforce its rules, other than sending non-law-enforcement workers out to play cat-and-mouse games with sellers. These city workers are incurring both physical and psychological damage while being staked to a Sisyphean task; they don’t tend to work swing or night shifts, and illicit action tends to pick up the moment they’re gone.
In the end, half of the city’s departments met for months and ended up asking you to solve this problem by forgoing hot dogs.
“We need to change the law,” says mayoral spokesman Jeff Cretan. “The mayor has raised this with other mayors across the state, and they are saying the same thing. The mayors of San Diego, Los Angeles and Fresno are all interested.”
Adds Peskin, “When Gavin Newsom runs around talking about San Francisco being in a doom loop, it’s because of a law he signed.”
The city has found itself pinned between well-meaning but infeasible laws and honoring their noble intentions. That may explain the rather milquetoast photo of hot dogs in a box. City officials worry that an inflammatory campaign might stoke anti-Latinx bigotry of the sort seen in other cities experiencing a proliferation of undocumented vendors.
“No one wants to touch this law,” says an exasperated city official. “And so we have lawlessness.”
First, Stan Roth was assailed by rogue hot dog sellers. Then he was assailed by the city of San Francisco. And now he’s out of business.
“I had to close my business after 48 years,” says the former proprietor of the familiar Stanley’s Steamers hot dog cart at Union Square and San Francisco’s first permitted food vendor. “It’s devastating: We lost our business, lost our retirement, lost everything.”
SB 946, he continues, “basically put me out of business. I don’t have any animus toward the vendors. They’re just trying to make a living. But I have strong feelings about the city.”
The end came abruptly for Roth. It was at the Chinese New Year’s Parade in 2020, when unlicensed hot dog vendors commandeered the spot his permit entitled him to. When he asked them to move a few yards off, they did not. A call was made, and a boss figure emerged. Roth will never forget what he was told next. “He put his finger into my chest and said, ‘Be very careful, my friend. We know who you are. We know where you store your carts. We are not leaving. If anyone is leaving, it will be you.’”
So, that’s what happened. Roth says he was told by the city that, following SB 946, it did not have the authority to protect the locations his permits granted him to use. But Roth is a creative man; he believes in Abraham Lincoln’s adage that it is better to build a house of one’s own than tear down the house of another. So, if the city couldn’t enforce his mobile cart permits, maybe he could get permits for a more permanent, affixed structure.
Thus began a futile, maddening and expensive wild-goose chase. In short: Roth says that the city told him it would cost $170,000 to run water and power out to an affixed, permanent cart on a Union Square corner. But that’s not all: It would cost him $30,000 to apply for the permits and initiate a years-long process with no guarantee of success. But that’s not all: The city, he says, insisted that his permits could be revoked at any time, arbitrarily — and, if that were to happen, he’d be on the hook for the cost of removing the water and power lines and retrenching and repaving the streets … and that could run to more than $300,000. But that’s not all: In the event of this costly occurrence, Roth says he would have been mandated to provide a surety bond, the cost of which would run $18,000 a year for the premium.
These costs were unfathomable: “I sell hot dogs for a living.” And now he doesn’t. He gave up the Union Square commissary he built. It will next be operated by celebrity chef Tyler Florence, who was, bizarrely, gifted $440,000 in city funds to move in.
“Ironically, Mayor Breed is now offering tax breaks to get businesses to come to, or stay in, the downtown area, while my Legacy Pushcart Business is being forced to close because the City can’t find me a solution,” Roth noted in a March 17 letter to Peskin.
“Meanwhile, the street vendors that replaced us are physically assaulting City inspectors. You just can’t write this stuff.”
But, while Roth has sold his last dog, new sellers flood the city every day. Mission Local’s Kelly Waldron spoke to a dozen of them along the Embarcadero over the course of two weeks. And, to a person, they are all recent immigrants — from Mexico, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala. None speaks English, and none are documented. This is their first job here, and they all say it’s the only job they can get.
And, while a couple of the sellers are independent, most work for a bigger boss who takes most of their money. City officials openly use the term “cartel” to describe the outfits dropping off vendors hawking hot dogs, fruit or clandestine liquor near Pier 39 or Chase Center and picking them up — with bosses allegedly making threats and running off competition like Roth.
Several of the vendors said they didn’t even know who their boss was. Most handed over the majority of the money they made to those bosses — keeping only 30 to 45 percent of a day’s earnings. And those earnings are often meager: On a good day, some of the vendors cleared upwards of $200, but then forked over half or more of that. On a bad day, they might only sell one or two dogs, for 10 or 20 bucks.
During “the week with the planes,” however, a vendor named Ronald, said he made a fortune: $2,000 in a day. He sends money back to family in Nicaragua, and pays down the cost of being smuggled into the country.
But Fleet Week comes but once a year. More typically, a vendor like “Santos” will gross around $800 in a week, and pocket $400. Rent is $500 for a room shared with three other people in Civic Center. He’s also paying back the $22,000 he borrowed to cross the border — with $1,000 a month solely on interest. “Uno se preocupa,” he admits (“one worries”).
The city hopes that driving customers away from sellers like Ronald and Santos will lead them to abandon the profession, and spare the put-upon brick-and-mortar establishments who’ve watched their bottom line be undercut by people earning starvation-level pay while living in poverty. And that it may. But no city official I spoke with had considered what the Ronalds and Santoses of the world might start selling if they were driven away from vending hot dogs.
There are, it turns out, substances that are worse for you than rotting sausage. And people will do what people need to do.
“Tenemos que ver cómo sobrevivir,” says a vendor named Prosper. “We have to see how to survive.”
While it’s different from the waterfront situation, I feel bad for brick-and-mortar restaurants – esp. taquerias – on Mission Street. There are not only hot dog vendors, but essentially full-service restaurants popping up on various street corners. By way of example, there’s a recently-opened taqueria in the old Myriad/Santana space on Mission at 21st. On both the southeast corner and northwest corner, there are two taco sellers who have set up shop on the sidewalk, with tables, lights, etc.
While the brick and mortar taqueria has to endure health inspections, has to pay god knows how much in rent ($10k? More?), and whatever other expenses are a part of being a business, the “pop-up” taquerias shoulder none of that, and siphon business away. This has blown up in the past year – where there used to be a couple of these on Mission, they’re now up and down the street.
Exactly. On top of fees and taxes, the City’s found a myriad of ways to burden restaurants (Healthy SF, Lactation in the Workplace, …) and they can’t shut the sidewalk pirates down?
I don’t see the issue, since taquerias and hotdog carts fill a different niche. First of all, I’ll choose what I want to eat. Second hotdog carts tend to operate way after the taqueria closes.
Basically if I want real food I’ll go to a taqueria. If I want junk food after going to some party later at night, hotdog will sometimes fill that niche. And those that are worried about the safety, can make an intelligent decision of what’s right for them.
This appears to have more to do with the local small businesses along the Embarc that pay fees, taxes and rent for the pleasure of selling food to tourists, and the upstart hot dog carts that pay nothing. Don’t make this another anti – immigrant story. Its a story about people trying to follow byzantine city rules to make a living vs those that do not.
Buried in the story is this, “He’s also paying back the $22,000 he borrowed to cross the border — with $1,000 a month solely on interest.” I’ve spent a bit of time in tiny pueblos in Oaxaca where almost half of the adults have worked in the US. Most send back money to build a house, then return home. I was told the coyotes WANTED Trump to build a wall so they could charge people more for transport. NEWS FLASH: Workers are coming here. We can either make it formal with legislated work visas–that the workers will pay thousands for–or continue this ridiculous dance of scapegoating the very workers we depend on every day. (Also, I love Mission dogs)
Given the epic criminality exposed in the Department of Public Works, I’m more concerned that the inspection regime is in the paid employ of the “nitrate cartel” that deploys these carts onto San Francisco’s tourist thoroughfares. Clearly, once that marketplace and revenue stream is established, it doesn’t take much to ensure that our regulatory agencies ignore them.
California has dealt with unintended consequences of several well-meaning laws. This is just one, and the consequences aren’t as severe as those of the ballot measure where we decriminalized shoplifting items under $950.
But this tradition of well-meaning law/unintended consequences goes back decades. You can look at Prop 13 and what happened to our schools. Or energy deregulation, and the resulting profiteering.
If you want to look at a larger cause, it’s possible to blame term limits. Legislators don’t have time to become experts on legislation.
But without laying blame, this state is just a big complicated ecosystem and sometimes when we adjust it, we screw up. The key is to admit that and try to fix it.
Nobody ever admits to or fixes these things, though. And part of that is the term limits you mentioned – by the time the unintended consequences of a law are known, its authors and proponents are out of office and doing damage somewhere else. They never face direct consequences of their actions.
“term limits”
David Campus would still be cranking out illegal ordinances regardless. More of an issue are ballot measures in principle – they dilute/negate the weight that public office holds and with that, enables attention seekers, power trippers, all sorts of types basically who do not have public service top of mind.
Daniel,
“ballot measures in principle” ?
Sometimes it’s necessary for the Public to go over the heads of our electeds and make them do things they don’t like to do.
Like listen to us.
Recently Board President Peskin led a campaign to cut out Public Comment by phone as much as possible and today, even with only 2 people in the audience, in-person comment at Rules Committe was set at one minute.
Safai agrees with that and said:
“We spend too much time listening here when we should be doing the Peoples Business.”
Jeez, I thought listening to us WAS their primary business.
Let’s see 6 supes put a measure on the ballot to return both Phone Comment and a minimum 3 Minute Public Comment ?
Go Niners !
h.
@ h.brown. It may be hard to get one’s head wrapped around this – without a barrage of measures, you’d get way better candidates, and with that, no need for a barrage of measures. No Peskins or Safais to be seen.
Daniel,
The Measures generally come with the candidates as window dressing to highlight how serious they are such as when Newsom’s ‘Sit/Lie’ and ‘Care not Cash’ propositions were designed to skirt a BOS that wasn’t as mean as the Electorate.
At present a majority of our elected Board wants to spend a lot of time not just listening to you but more importantly, they don’t want others to hear what you have to say.
Giving the SF Bar’s rep a single minute to present the group’s 16 page report is evidence.
Anyone on the committee could have asked her to elaborate for fairness but none of the non-lawyers on the Committee saw fit to do so.
And, why do you insult my intelligence ?
Go Niners !
h.
It’s important not to underestimate the dangers of food poisoning, especially when you’re dealing with pork, which carries trichinosis. And unlike real businesses, when one of these vendors inadvertently poisons one of their customers, there’s no way for the city to go back, find the source of the illness, and recommend preventative measures.
Nobody, no matter how poor they are, has the right to make other people sick. Tourists often assume that these vendors are just as safe and well-regulated as established businesses, which is basically fraud.
Why do we care about that people who clearly don’t care about us? I’ve gotten sick BOTH Times I’ve tried their shit hot dogs. If these people don’t care if they’re getting people sick then I don’t care that their country sucks and don’t want them here. Why is everyone so interested in being compassionate to people who cut each other’s heads off over drugs? You think they worry about you at night from the fentanyl they’ve flooded the street with? All they are here to do is pay back cartels, it’s literally just fueling the problem and created an ACTUAL doom loop. Every one of these people who comes across is 25k$ for the cartels. Think about how backwards these policies are!
I wish we had good street food like NYC. We need the Halal Guys
I’ve been very drunk, very often on the streets of The Mission. I’ve done a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. I’ve gone home with people I shouldn’t have gone home with. But I have never felt the need to get a bacon-wrapped hot dog from a street vendor. My question is with so many pedestrians on our sidewalks, why does the city allow anyone to set up shop on said side walks? Why does the city let the scooter companies litter the sidewalks? When I’m mayor, the sidewalks will be for walking — and that’s all! Well, harumph!
The “scare” is real – unlicensed vendors are not inspected and are not required to be trained in food handling, and I’d hate to think what their storage and commissaries look like, because those don’t get inspected either and are out of public view. On the other hand, if people are dumb enough to eat from these stands, they probably deserve the food poisoning they’ll eventually get…
Sausage and hot dogs should be flowing after prop 12 gets implemented. They’re exempt. Bacon will go up, along with all “whole cuts.” The pork industry is panicking, trying to get a legislative fix incorporated into a delayed Farm Bill.
“And people will do what people need to do. ”
So is it finally total anarchy? If exposing people to trichinosis is fair game now, then I guess we get to throw vendors who sell toxic pig meat into the conveniently located bay.
“And people will do what people need to do. “
Marcos —
The way I expected a rational human being to read that was that it would be a mistake to not think about what vendors would do if you cracked down on vending before you crack down on vending.
Yours,
JE
You’re saying that because of unknown possible downsides, that health and safety laws should be abrogated and brick and mortar biz should be undercut. Does everyone get such extraordinary consideration or just vendors?
Chill out, dude. The words are written on the page.
What I thought was resplendently clear was that there can be unintended consequences to any crackdown or display of political theater — and the next situation may be worse than this one. Again, I thought this was pretty clear.
JE
You’re clear, Joe,
Marcos understood too.
He just needs the eggs.
h.
Yes, and those consequences do not occur in a vacuum. There are other legitimate interests in play.
Health and safety regulations were won during the late progressive era. Carving out libertarian exceptions to those progressive era gains for designated victim groups under threat that “it could get worse” is suspect.
Does this mean Breed is on the level? Of course not. But Breed’s maliciousness has no bearing on the fundamental soundness of the underlying regulatory regime.
Most immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, get real jobs. Low paying, perhaps, but not criminal – janitorial, warehouse, construction, etc…
The assumption that they’d go from hot dog vending to drug dealing is not a given.
Dennis,
If the coyote who got you across the Border says sell hot dogs or I’ll harm your family, you sell hot dogs. If they say now you gotta sell crack or I’ll harm your family …
In an unrelated but important matter the Niners were trying to get that games with a TD streak alive for CMC but when their fullback tried to down it on the one a tackler knocked him into the end zone.
Don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone score a touchdown by accident.
You ?
h.
The issue is multifaceted. The current laws in CA were perhaps well intentioned. I don’t believe so myself, but clearly the people who brought these laws to the legislature were thinking about their constituents right? all those constituents that vote for them and pay taxes right?
At any rate, you cannot please everyone, if you try, you’ll fail miserably and make everyone unhappy. Either clean up the streets from vendors and their possibly delicious and possibly highly sickening food from the streets, or let the street vendors be because they’re being targeted, and then have your brick and mortar shops, who employ many more people pay significantly higher taxes in both property and labor, let those brick and mortar shops collapse, then complain why businesses are closing.
You cannot have it both ways, one side has to give if you would like order to the situation.
Campers,
The World’s biggest problem is that there are just too many Poor people to exploit.
Beginning in SF our Species should offer $10,000 out the door to anyone who will get a vasectomy or tubal ligation.
After your procedure as long as you’re a citizen of the City you get a UBI of 1k a month.
First in line would be the worst crackheads and assorted tweakers whom I would not want as a parent and I doubt you would either.
Face it, you can only get immigrants legal or otherwise to put up with this because they are poor and desparate.
Let’s see, Jacksonville and their #1 Pick QB from my alma mater win 5 in a row.
Only to be stomped by the Niners coming off a 3 game dive.
What’s that expression ?
Oh yeah,
“On any given Sunday.”
h.
These vendors do no real harm to existing vendors. They serve a target market of typically inebriated people who will likely get sick from excessive consumption by the time they’ve finished the last bite of their dog. Don’t want to eat them? Then don’t; but don’t demonize them or flip over their food carts. We’re all smart enough to quickly inspect how meat is stored/cooked/etc. so police yourselves. Our inane leadership needs to do their actual job and get back to figuring out what the city needs to get back on track. Permitting food carts that provide some form of income to people who are hurting is NOT one of them.
Yep the cities biggest issues has been housing and income inequality. And it’s not even unique to the Bay Area. The stagnating minimum wage that does match living wage puts many working class in a tough position, and the out of control housing prices have put some people on the street, if they didn’t have mental issues before, they will once they’ve lived a destitute life long enough. It’s a vicious cycle that profiteers aren’t willing to deal with.
i think those BWHDs are evil ..
evilly delicious!!!
sadly, the prices have gone up drastically ..
both of the writers of this article need to drink a lime cucumber Gatorade both hungover and sober and realize that there is a difference on taste due to a specific ingredient in the drink itself. It’s in the science of the drink. Do your research, “journalists”
Joe, Kelly. You should try to drink and taste the difference in Gatorade in all flavors both hungover and perfectly sober before they quote the health department. Don’t delete my comment this time
Dear sir —
As I’ve told so many others, real people approve these comments in real time; nobody is hovering over the keyboard waiting for you to opine. So nobody deleted your comment about Gatorade.
If this is a serious comment regarding the Gatorade, I suggest you drink more Gatorade as you’re clearly dehydrated. If it’s meant in jest, you’ve eluded me, but that’s fine.
Best,
JE
Neither Senate bills 946 nor 972 prohibit enforcing health regulations, including food handling, food storage, food temperature and, presumably, using expired food. Once again, we have city officials pointing fingers, blaming Brown and Newsom instead of finding ways to enforce the laws as they exist.
And sure, while they are all “street vendors,” combining the hot-dog cart workers with those selling stolen goods on Mission Street seems just seems wrong.
So just like the Honduran drug dealers, the Godfather of bacon wrapped hot dogs, is bringing his criminal enterprise to San Francisco. These are bad people bringing crime, corruption and even death, to San Francisco. But no one dare point out these immigrants metaphorically,”have no clothes”. Yet they can complain about tourists traveling to Maui, even though they are citizens who have every legal right to go to Maui, and are engaging in no illegal behavior while in Maui.What a huge bloated double standard.
In idle moments I’ve pleasantly mused of starting the ideal low-budget, high-profit cart business selling one of our simplest, healthiest, and most beloved meals.
I even have a name for it: Handel’s Gourmet Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches.
My cart and its menu would be accompanied by classical music wherever it would go and sell only the very best quality peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
One would get a choice of the finest wheat or white bread, the finest grape or strawberry jelly, and the finest peanut butter: either smooth or chunky.
I considered adding a decadent “Elvis Special” for the free spenders, but rejected that in favor of elegant simplicity.
With a drink added (possibly limited to Yeo’s Chrysanthemum tea), the meal could be had for less than five dollars.
Should anyone crab about the city’s best meal deal by telling me they could have made and packed their own sandwiches, I would simply smile and say, “But you didn’t did you?”
The business would have an unforgettable slogan too: “We LOVE HANDEL’S Gourmet Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches!”
Yes. I could be filthy rich, buy some politicians, and live in Pacific Heights (if that neighborhood is not quite yet outré).
Maybe I would branch out and serve gourmet Rice-A-Roni at the Powell Street turnaround. (Funny how the only places to find it in the city is at a grocery or in a charity bag!)
I will let my idle dreams sleep. The world is crying out for more than a revolution in fast food.
Great job untangling a complicated story, Kelly, Joe and Mission Local!
JFC… were London Greed’s parents killed by hot dog vendors and now she’s sworn revenge? That’s the only explanation I can ponder for her mouth-foaming vendetta against them.
This is insane. We know they are being used by the “cartel”, but it’s permissible? Unfortunately California has lost the plot, dignity, and problem solving it once commanded to emotionally coping with catastrophic consequences for businesses, Citizens, and economic migrants.
It makes no sense🤷🏾🤣
Breed is a politician. Everything they say has to include a smattering of mouth foam.