I couldn't make out any signs or identifying marks, and they marched in silence, leaving me to wonder what they were up to; solidarity for Trayvon, early May Day Occupy march, or just on their way to some concert? Valencia street seemed like a strange spot to gather in any case. I looked at the paint on the glass and gave them a middle finger as they went by. I thought what a damn shame it was that one idiot should give whatever their cause was a bad name by acting like that.
Some poor prep cook had to come out and clean the window, and then the woman working the register poked her head out and reported, "They're fucking up the whole street!" Hmm. More than one idiot then. With the door open I could hear shouting and car alarms. I was almost done with dinner, and the march was between me and BART. I could have turned the opposite way and walked the extra few blocks to 24th street, but instead I decided to follow them. This is not indicative of sound decision making skills on my part, but I figured, why start being smart about shit now?
The marchers traveled along the southern side of the street (correction: eastern side; Valencia runs north-south), apparently stopping to tag walls and break windows on roughly every third storefront. I took pictures of the damage but they were getting further ahead of me, so I ran to catch up, hoping to get a quote from a straggler (though also admittedly concerned about getting an exclusive punch in the face if I tried to buttonhole the wrong person). About that time a column of cop cars and what can only be described as police golf carts (yeah, they have those, apparently) appeared.
I took stock of the situation: The protestors were all 20-somethings dressed in black, with hoodies; I'm a 20-something dressed in black, with a hoodie. I was right on the perimeter of the damage, and of course I don't have any press credentials of any kind. I've heard that tear gas is unpleasant. It probably says a lot about me that my instinct upon seeing a crowd of violent hooligans breaking things is to follow, but my instinct on seeing rescuing police arrive is to run away. We're learning all sorts of things about me tonight.
After standing around heroically twiddling my thumbs and checking my watch for half an hour like the ace newshound I am, I went back to catch the tail end of the carnage. Valencia was trashed from 18th down to 14th, with a single shop at the corner of 14th and Mission (where the marchers were dispersed) vandalized as well, broken glass filling the street. To my amazement, the very first building the marchers hit was the police station on the corner of 17th.
The station's windows were broken and the building front had been paint bombed, one particularly well-aimed yellow splotch covering the sign over the door. Four cops stood at watch at corner of the building, two of them twirling riot helmets in their hands, a third shouldering a rifle as news vans assembled nearby. Two more officers, helmets in hand as well, stood at the entrance of the parking lot. Police indicated that arrests had been made, but could not comment on what had happened at the station itself.
Down the street at the restaurant Locanda, Nirsi Najad, a parking valet who attends San Francisco State University, described his efforts to rescue a customer's car: "I was pulling up a car and I saw this huge mob of people. They were chanting, 'Occupy will never stop, we want to kill a fucking cop.' Then I realized, oh shit, we have a $150,000 Aston Martin parked right out front." Najad showed off the paint stains on his uniform, received when he attempted to intervene. The Aston Martin's windshield and windows were smashed, and paint covered the hood.
Asked why the protestors would target the quiet storefronts on Valencia, Najad speculated that they wanted to make an example out of the neighborhood because of its changing face. "This is the very heart and center of gentrification in the Mission," he said. Najad said he was sympathetic to the marcher's message but was saddened by their tactics. "I used to support the cause," he said, "but it's the 99% who have to clean this up."
Witnesses described protestors seizing the valet parking sign and using it as a club against the eatery's windows. "People thought they were shooting," when they heard the banging on the windows said a diner, who asked that his name not be used. "Everyone was diving on the floor." The windows were dented, but didn't crack under the assault. Most of Valencia's proprietors were not so lucky.
Down the street at the Artzone 461 art gallery, owner Steve Lopez struggled to pull the pane of broken, collapsing glass from his door. He wondered why anyone would target his establishment. "All we do is feature local artists, that's all we do," Lopez said. Asked if he had a message for the protestors, he replied, "Yeah, get out your wallet. Unless you'd prefer I come over to your place and we do a swap, I could break your windows."
"You'd think they'd go downtown," said Marc, the owner of nearby Tradesmen antique shop. "I don't get that at all. I don't mind the graffiti so much," he said, pointing to where an employee was scrubbing a large Anarchy symbol off the storefront, "but these windows, this will cost thousands to replace."
"These are all start-up businesses," said Robert, an employee at the nearby Voyager Shop clothing store (both men asked that their last names not be used because, in Robert's words, "I don't want to talk shit about the people who just tried to break my windows,"). "These aren't Starbucks, they're not some big corporate entity." Robert describes getting off work and then returning when he saw the group moving down the street, circling the protest and ducking down an alley between Mission and Valencia to get ahead of the mob and protect the store. "The gates were locked, so they couldn't break our windows, but I had to stand here to make sure they didn't graffiti the place."
Clifford Bradford, a recent transplant from the East Coast, bemoaned his luck as he surveyed the damage to his car: a broken windshield, broken side windows, and Anarchy symbols spray painted on the hood. "I lived in New York for five years," said Bradford, "and without exaggeration I've seen five times more broken glass here than I ever did living in New York city. Maybe ten times, without exaggeration, I don't ever remember seeing broken glass in New York. I lived in Harlem and I never saw broken glass."
Greg Manning, a 36-year resident who stopped to commiserate with Bradford over their mutual vehicular damage, described witnessing the attack on his car, and even pursuing the vandal. "We were down here at Little Star Pizza and my friend tells me look over there." Manning saw a masked man smash his car windows with a board and start to run. "We chased him and he told us, 'Oh yeah, it was this other guy, I saw the whole thing,' and then he took off and ran again."
Manning says he lost the vandal in the crowd as police converged on the group near Duboce Avenue. "They're just Anarchists," he said, "they're pissed off and they're just venting. They're mad, but they don't have a plan, so they fuck over themselves, which is me."
"I have a friend who moved and says he's going to join Occupy Chicago. First thing I'm going to do is go home and call him and scream at him," added Bradford, though he hastened to mention that he did not think that actions of a few undid what he viewed as the positive message of the Occupy movement.
Some signs of violence seemed particularly petty; an overturned planter in front of Venga Empanadas spilled dirt into the streets while a trio of passersby tried to rescue the plants from being trampled. A flimsy chain link fence surrounding an abandoned building at 99 Valencia, near the tail end of the damage, had been pulled down, the windows behind it broken. The words "Fuck this Shit" were sprayed onto a support column. It wasn't clear whether the graffiti was old or from the marchers, but the sentiment seemed to encapsulate everyone's feelings as the sound of brooms sweeping broken glass resounded for block after block.
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