Insert Foot spends a night out in San Francisco. Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

I went to San Francisco on a weeknight last week. It was awful.

And when I say it was awful, I mean people are stupid.

My mom and 15-year-old daughter were going to see “Les Misérables.” I went along for some nice pre-show seafood on the water, which wasn’t boiling. Nor was there a seven-headed reptile coming from the sea with various things scrawled on its foreheads.

I don’t really know what the Bible says is supposed to happen when the world ends. Right-wingers seem to believe it will have something to do with San Francisco. Almost everything I know about the Bible’s thrill-a-minute Revelations section came from Iron Maiden.

I do know that San Francisco looked like San Francisco. Just like the last time I was there. And the time before … and the time before. I dropped the ladies off at the theater and drove out to Land’s End. Because my mother has already forced me to see “Les Misérables” multiple times, and I’m too old to take her abuse anymore. Now it’s my kid’s turn.
There were homeless people around the Civic Center, and … oh the horror.

Well, no. They were mostly minding their own business. No salivating zombies eating people. But to be fair, I probably don’t hang out at the same places as the fear mongers.
I’ve been assuming the past couple years when San Francisco has been taking a beating on Fox News, no one with these opinions have actually been to San Francisco.

It’s one of the most expensive cities on the planet for a few reasons and, I hate to break it to you, but when we keep giving all the money to the people who already have most of the money to begin with, math simply dictates there’s less for the people at the bottom.

By the way, I started looking for a new place in the East Bay to live this week. That was way scarier than someone pooping outdoors. I think it’s a lot easier to be homeless in the Bay Area than most people think.

There are more homeless people in 2023; it’s undeniable. But assuming they mean you harm is as shortsighted as assuming people of another race means you harm, which is the same as assuming the authorities are fair, which is the same as assuming things never change. The problem has always been there. At least in my lifetime. Maybe the aggressiveness has changed. Addiction is bad, the weather gets worse, a pandemic unhinged society … they have multiple library branches with deadly books and many scary museums. There’s plenty of reasons.

Then again, if you spent a lot of time in S.F. three decades ago – and I did – it sure seemed bad then. I saw fights, a bloody stabbing, harassment … I once had to stop my car on Market to wait for three guys whose fight rolled into the street. I mean, they’d made a commitment. Who was I to stop them?

But I guess the trans people weren’t so scary and the strip clubs weren’t sending so many people to hell. But the Internet also hadn’t been weaponized and there was also no national far right media telling tales to get someone elected, other than the Wall Street Journal. And its readers were already voting white and right.

It’s low-grade dangerous in San Francisco. It’s also our country’s most tolerant city to LGBTQ people, which the right now somehow equates to being dangerous because they can’t get over their fear of the different.

It’s dangerous everywhere, whether it’s thieves out for money or authorities out for power. Have the nerve to be non-white and head to the suburbs, where there’s practically two police forces in every town: One for the well-off white taxpayers, and another for everyone else.

We’ve all allowed homelessness to happen and we all think it’s someone else’s problem. We won’t vote for people who will actually do something other than telling the well-off they’ll cut their taxes. But enough of my pinko tree-hugging: I drove out the avenues last week to Land’s End and watched the fog roll in and, when it cleared just enough, the sun go down. It was incredible.

I breathed the coastal air, which was cold, but I couldn’t inhale enough. It was glorious, as was the city itself, It always is, for the most part. I drove back through the avenues as darkness fell. It was a beautifully quiet night, even as I hit downtown with all its scary homeless people.

San Francisco is still a magnificent city. But see for yourself and, if you don’t like it, do something. San Francisco has survived earthquakes, fires, assassinations, serial killers, political scandals, AIDS, drug epidemics, social unrest and Metallica cutting their hair. It will survive Fox News. It’s humans who need help. They’re not trash to be taken out.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.