The Dirty Truth About San Francisco's Sidewalks

The Great San Francisco Poop Crisis officially entered a new stage on July 13, when, in one of her first interviews following her swearing in, Mayor London Breed observed, “I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.”

That memorable line was swiftly seized upon by right-leaning outlets like Breitbart and The Daily Caller, ostensibly to demonstrate the decadence and decay that was drowning the nation’s most progressive big city in its own filth. The idea that America’s urban spaces are literal shitholes has long been a theme in some conservative media—witness other tales of fecal woe that went viral lately, like that of a 20-pound plastic bag full of human waste found on a San Francisco street corner. (It was later discovered that the bag was improperly disposed port-o-potty refuse.)