SAN FRANCISCO — The hotel where Duke has stayed here for the NCAA Tournament is filled with marble and gold accents, a place of distinction. Its website tells tales of high society and perseverance, of rebuilding after the earthquake of 1906 and the Great Depression, when a prominent interior designer "redesigned the space to reflect the ambiance of a Venetian palace."
It carries the look of it, still. The Fairmont has been a place to see and be seen, where San Francisco's first bar opened after Prohibition, where Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett sang and Joe Montana and U.S. Presidents visited, and where earlier this week one of the bellmen out front warned of not venturing too far, given the perils now inherent throughout parts of San Francisco.
There are two diametrically contrasting versions of this city, and while one of them this week hosted Duke and three other teams in the tournament, the other staggers along in plain sight, home to thousands for whom daily survival is something of an accomplishment. The juxtaposition can be striking: Walk a block or two in one direction from the NCAA Tournament media hotel, a Hilton off O'Farrell, and the sidewalks quickly begin to fill with scenes from a different world.
There is the occasional tent, old sleeping bags, people passed out against walls or storefronts, a man urinating in a shallow corner, discarded needles on the ground. Some pass the minutes with vacant expressions in their eyes while others find comfort in each other. Some appear lost, unable to be comforted. This is the Tenderloin district, perhaps San Francisco's most notorious and one known for high crime and homelessness and, these days, a pervading sense of hopelessness.
"This has been our skid row," said John McCartney, who has lived in San Francisco for more than 45 years and worked in the heart of the Tenderloin, near the corner of Market and 6th, for more than 15. From his desk on Wednesday he pointed behind him, toward the skyscrapers in the distance. "You're just two, three blocks away from multi billions, trillions" of dollars.
"And then right up the street, you got all this poverty."
Not too far away, a little more than two miles to the southeast, millionaire coaches have gathered this week to lead their teams in a billion-dollar arena. The sparkling Chase Center provides a grand stage for the NCAA Tournament's West Regional, where the team that survives two games will advance to the Final Four. Throughout a lot of San Francisco, people are more focused on a more literal kind of survival.
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The Chase Center opened in 2019 at a cost of $1.4 billion, which the Golden State Warriors, the building's primary tenant, financed on their own. In a way, the structure represents the best of San Francisco, the part of the city that has long made it an attractive tourist destination. The arena is cosmopolitan, chic, modern.
It is filled with luxury suites, premium food and beverage offerings and even its guts, the tunnels and hallways in the depths of the building, near the locker rooms that Duke and others used this week, look refined. Eric Musselman, the head coach at Arkansas, walked in Wednesday and described the Chase Center as "probably the best arena in the world."
"Went in the weight room, I've looked at suites with our athletic director," said Musselman, whose team upset top-seeded Gonzaga on Thursday night. "This building, it plays incredible on TV when you're watching a game ...
"Everything about this place is insanely positive."
Like the Fairmont, the Chase Center is something of a status symbol for the city, a place to be seen; a place for Bay Area tech bros to gorge themselves on courtside seats while they take in the latest feat from Steph Curry. This is the House that Curry built, in a way, given that the Warriors' rise allowed the franchise to make this arena a reality, but in another way, the Chase Center speaks to the success of San Francisco and Silicon Valley and the innovation for which the region is known.
The tech industry has been built on the premise of disruption — from Apple disrupting everything about the way we once communicated, or consumed media, to Uber and Lyft disrupting the way we once called for a taxi — and that's part of what makes the juxtaposition so stunning between the San Francisco of the Chase Center and the San Francisco of the Tenderloin: In a city built on technology and progress, there's a large part of it that resembles a much less fortunate nation.
That San Francisco has a significant unhoused population is nothing new, nor is it a problem unique to this city. Yet the scenes around Market and 6th, snapshots of despair that stretch on in every direction, are enough to create a lasting impression. The last count of the city's unhoused population, in 2019, placed the number at a little more than 8,000, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, but that was before the pandemic.
The paper reported the actual number of the city's homeless is likely more than twice the official count, which has been delayed because of COVID-19. Anecdotally, said McCartney, the man who works near Market and 6th, there's a sense that things have become worse in recent years. Outside his window he could see the world passing by, citizens of the Tenderloin residing anywhere they could find space, or a little privacy.
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Among the Chase Center's most popular concession stand offerings is a concoction known as a burger dog, which is a hot dog-shaped burger that is all the rage, according to one of the bellmen outside the Fairmont who didn't want to be named. The burger dog originated at The Olympic Club, a posh private club that has hosted five U.S. Opens, and now it's available to the masses who go to Warriors games or those at the West Regional.
There were no burger dogs near the corner of Taylor and Ellis on Wednesday but there were just good old-fashioned hot dogs, packaged in styrofoam trays that volunteers handed out to people who lined up for a meal. James Sampaga said he and his colleagues had handed out about 400 of those meals, and it wasn't long past noon.
"We try to make it as best we can," said Sampaga, 54, who works with Glide Church, which does a lot of community outreach in the Tenderloin. Sampaga understands the struggle of the people in the meal line because he was once among them, living on the street without a place to go; without much hope or anything else.
He has a tattoo on his neck, a remnant of those days: A skull and crossbones adorned with checkered flags, the kind you might see at a NASCAR race. He got that tattoo, he said, "because I was using so much, people told me I was racing with death."
It has become worse out here, he said, and these days he sees a lot of new faces in the meal line or gathering outside of Glide; and he also sees the expressions of shocked tourists when they walk out of the hotels a block or two away and inadvertently stumble into the kind of scenes that have long become pervasive in the Tenderloin and other parts of San Francisco. It is not an uncommon sight to see people doing drugs in broad daylight, or using the bathroom on the sidewalk.
"You can walk across the street and go to Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany's," Sampaga said, "and then walk a block over and there's some horrendous (expletive) you can see. ... The city's got it bad, you know what I mean? It used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Now we've got a bad reputation.
"You just see the tourists' faces when they're walking around going like, 'Jesus, freaking holy hell.' "
Behind him, a couple of musicians played brass instruments while people made their way through the meal line to collect their hot dogs. It made for a contrast in a city of juxtapositions, with the music serving as a soothing backdrop to a scene of turmoil and sadness but also hope. Sampaga is a casual sports fan who knew the tournament was in town; he'd heard of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, and considered for a moment the millions Krzyzewski makes to coach basketball.
"It's amazing what we do with what little we have," Sampaga said, and he'd come to understand the true meaning of survival. A couple of miles away, meanwhile, the four college basketball teams in town for the regional were starting to make their way to the Chase Center for a day of practices and press conferences. There'd be talk of what it'd take to survive the ever-increasing pressure of March.
A shuttle carried reporters from the Hilton to the arena to take it all in. It departed down Taylor Street, leaving behind the San Francisco of the forgotten, the scenes of despair growing more distant on the way to somewhere else.
