Hose down public sidewalks like they do in Paris. It doesn't rain for 6 months at a time here, and there has been human poo on my neighbors building for months. Plus, bird poo and car brake dust builds up. I see private buildings with sidewalk cleaners working for literally 4 hours on a 50 strip of walk - this is a huge waste. There is no public life that goes on in those areas anyhow (financial skyscrapers). In Paris they have special trucks with extender hoses that go over the parked cars to hose down the streets - everything Read This Posty »

San Francisco isn't greening as much as you appear to believe. Take a walk down San Jose around 23rd, or Bartlett St between 21st and... There have been what could well be toxic and/or flammable liquids sitting in containers for weeks at a time. I see city workers "cleaning up" quite often, but each day when I take my dog out, the trash is still there. Nothing is done about littering. Nothing is done about public urination. I doubt this takes place only in the Mission. I see people throw garbage on our Read This Posty »

Dear Gavin, I'm new to San Francisco and love living in this wonderful city. Thank you for all you do to keep SF unique. My pet peeve is why a lovely neighborhood like the Marina puts up with its dirty sidewalk conditions e.g. Chestnut Street. I just visited San Diego and was impressed with how clean their city is. Could shop keepers and property owners do more to maintain their section of the sidewalks or is this a city maintenance issue? I realize my pet peeve is small compared to the recent increase in Marina crime which of course Read This Posty »

I recently moved to the Mission and until recently I had been utterly confused as to how entire bags of clothing would end up on the street. The bags usually look as if they exploded, sending socks, sweaters, shoes and old jeans helter-skelter about the sidewalk. At first I thought people were dropping items on the way to the laundromat or a clothing line had been robbed. The items that don't get picked up (95% of them) remain on the street for weeks. The items get rained on, used as toilets by dogs, and blown into the street. I uncovered Read This Posty »

As a third-generation native, it is sad to see how filthy the city has become. My pet peeve is that we are now living in Urinetown! The gagging stench of urine reeks on any given section of Market. I work between 1st and 2nd and the slightest sends this stomach-turning oder all over. And it's not only the homeless; a friend of mine was walking past a muni bus late at night and the driver was urinating out the back door! When she called muni to complain she was basically told to shove Read This Posty »

One of my pet peeves is that my neighborhood, Bernal Heights is like an unincorporated part of some third world country. There are blocks with no sidewalks or curbs, and the streets are like dirt roads. Potholes abound and I will see abandoned cars, washing machines and other garbage accumulating and staying for very long periods of time. It feels like my neighborhood is a forgotten wasteland completely ignored by the city of San Francisco. I am a property owner and I pay my taxes but they certainly don't come back into this neighborhood. Read This Posty »

Filthy, trashy, grimey residential sidewalks (in neighborhoods other than Pacific Heights or St. Francis Wood). Name Withheld Read This Posty »

No street cleaning on Leavenworth between Washington and Jackson. The street is so dirty and trash everywhere. Sad. Why is there no cleaning? Name Withheld Read This Posty »

One thing I have been noticing in S.F are the constant dirty streets. Every where I see people throwing garbage on the floor and not onto the garbage cans. During saturdays, my volunteer organization would clean up Chinatown alleyways so the elderly and children would feel safe crossing the streets. I dislike how people would constantly throw garbage on the streets and ignore the environment. Name Withheld Read This Posty »

The drive by bus into the city shows how lovely a city can be... then you step off the bus, and it's bad.  Real bad.  How bad?  Besides reeking of urine, and echoing with the sound of people off their medication yelling loudly - it's just depressing.  Why can't the underpasses in the city be as lovely as the passage under a bridge in Paris?  Why don't we want better amenities?  How did it ever get this bad? Ruth Knapp Read This Posty »

 I live in the Inner Sunset, and I feel it's somewhat dirty.  I've lived here for about a year (Richmond and Presidio Heights prior to moving to the 9th and Irving area), but have had friends in the neighborhood for years.  I don't feel it was as dirty in the past.  I've also noticed this in other areas ... trash on sidewalks, sides of streets, Golden Gate Parkm etc.  I find it unpleasant as a resident of San Francisco and embarrasing when I'm showing visitors around. Sara Harris Read This Posty »

I have to add my voice to all the people who are disgusted with the dirty street and sidewalks, graffiti, continued homeless problems and an ineffective and dirty MUNI. I'm embarrassed to have friends and family come to visit, as I am unable to give them a good answer as to why we can't seem to manage to have clean streets and a clean, efficient public transportation system, when other cities do so effortlessly. Our homeless situation will never improve as long as we don't have a stringent residency requirement. Not having a strong residency requirement in place will only mean Read This Posty »

Dear Mayor Newsom: You need to ditch the suit and wing-tips for a week or two and put on your running shoes and go walk the city.  We live in such a wonderful city, but the filth, trash, and general condition of the place is terrible.  There's garbage everywhere, the sidewalks are a mess, etc. I travel a lot for work and when I'm in NYC and Chicago, I'm always shocked by how clean those cities are.  I think we forget in our little bubble by the bay that living in a city doesn't have to mean dirt and filth of a Read This Posty »

All of these issues can be helped by just making the streets a lot cleaner.  Hire the homless to pick up trash if you will, get more police on foot on the street (this creates quite a presence, much more than driving by in cars).  We also need to tell everyone, especially tourists, not to give money to the homeless (they can give money to a charity instead).  We really need to look to other cities on how they have solved these problems.  With a clean city there is proven to be less crime.  It is as easy as picking Read This Posty »

I think each home/business owner should be responsible for a clean sidewalk in front of his building and be subject to a fine if it is not clean.  The city should hose down the sidewalkd in commercial and especially bad areas twice a month. Name Withheld Read This Posty »

Though I am not a member of the Graffiti Advisory Board, I have been very involved with the GAB for well over a year. I live in district 6 (SOMA) where the worst graffiti problem in SF resides. I have been extremely active in providing photographic evidence and have e-mails for every piece of graffiti tht I have reported. I have been very constructive in providing my time and by providing proof to help DPW improve its efforts at enforcing graffiti abatement (I am focused on provate property). We have recently gotten the City Attorney's office to dedicate resources to Read This Posty »

Thanks for allowing  us a voice to  some of the problems we face in SF.  First I want to say, in my opinion you are doing a great job.  If there weren't so many people trying to put you down, just let you get on with what you are trying to do, which is not an easy task.  One of the concerns I have is the lack of cooperation of business owners, keeping their areas clean. Business owners should be required to keep their areas clean.  They don't seem to do that on Irving st. starting on 5th Ave all Read This Posty »

Mayor Newsom, I called the streets dept in early February about a large dump of trash that buried the fire hydrant outside my business, it covered the sidewalk and half of the street.  I was told it would be cleaned up.  Two weeks later is was not cleaned up and I called again, this time I was given a number, (I can't locate it at the moment but I'm sure you can look it up unless my calls are just thrown out) I called again two weeks later to no avail.  It has now been almost two months and my street Read This Posty »

I've lived at California at Hyde street since 1993 and what was once a great neighborhood it is now a toilet (literally and figuratively). The street is always covered with garbage, My husband and I find junkies passed out in front of our door on a regular basis (we had to get a gate as it was getting dangerous), they leave all their garbage, paraphernalia and human waste for us to clean up . Street prostitution is now a regular thing across from my house and we've been calling the police at least 2-3 times a month for seeing illegal Read This Posty »

1.  Unreliable Muni Metro service on weekday rush hour times.  Why is it that when there are the most people waiting for a train, the system runs only one-car (as opposed to two-car) trains?  It's also frustrating to me that the "No food or drink" rule on Muni is pretty much universally ignored.  I've never seen it enforced, nor have I ever seen a bus driver confront a fare evader who boards from the back door.  I'm sure that the drivers see a lot and endure a lot, but if the public is given the idea that the rules don't Read This Posty »