Dreamforce is back in full swing, and the drug markets of downtown San Francisco have been pushed south, away from the conference action, photos show.
The annual tech conference kicked off Tuesday, drawing around 45,000 visitors to San Francisco.
While a multi-agency drug market crackdown has torn through downtown since spring 2023, swaths of users, dealers, and vendors have been regularly spotted around the infamous intersections of Sixth, Seventh, and Market streets — until this week.
Cops and city officials hail the effort as a success, pointing to the number of arrests and kilos of drugs seized. But neighbors’ perspectives and The Standard’s own visits to the nighttime scene in late August point to a different reality: Very little has changed.
Hours after Day One of Dreamforce wrapped, The Standard observed an increased police presence in Market Street’s usual problem zones. This appeared to have worked, as drug users had toddled off to SoMa, where they went about their business away from conference-goers’ eyes.
‘It’s there every night’
Juan Novella, who has lived near the plagued corners since 2006, said the drug markets occur nightly, but police patrols often scatter the crowds.
“It hasn’t gone away. It’s there every night,” said Novella. “They just leave when the police are here.”
Novella said he’s seen more cops outside his condo lately, with patrol vehicles parked outside Monday until midnight. But the crowd trickled back 15 minutes after police left, he said.
Most days, the 55-year-old doesn’t see any cops; the last time there was a presence was when Vice President Kamala Harris was in town in mid-August.
“When I see more police, I think, ‘Oh, do I need to check the news?’ Like, is there some politician here or something?” he said.
Sarai Judge, who has lived near Sixth and Market streets for 18 months, said she hasn’t noticed a change in the police presence or the night market lately. She said nighttime crowds started appearing at Sixth and Market about three months ago, and they’re biggest between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m.
“It’s, like, 50 to 100 people,” Judge said.
She was unaware that Dreamforce had begun but criticized the city for shooing away people during the tech conference last year. She said people were moved from Market between Fifth and Sixth as they began to gather between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., but the crowds would reappear by 10 p.m.
“They try to pretend the community is safe, but it doesn’t change anything,” she said.
Dreamforce attendee Jimmy Anderson said he didn’t feel unsafe on Sixth Street, just outside the Mint, around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“It’s like any city; it’s got its dangerous aspects, but it doesn’t particularly bother me,” said Anderson, who declined to share his age and city of residence.
There was a noticeably higher police presence Tuesday after 10 p.m. than what The Standard observed last month, with 13 patrol cars spotted in the area. Few people were loitering on Market Street, and instead of one large group, smaller groups were spread around the area. At United Nations Plaza, there were two groups of four people; one man was selling small bottles of orange juice from a plastic shopping bag.
The heavy police presence seemed to have moved the night market just south of Market Street, with roughly 40 people lining both sides of Sixth between Market and Jesse. There were around 50 people on each block of Stevenson and Jesse streets east of Sixth Street.
“There used to be 200, 300 people at the corner there, but lately I hear the police are moving them away, so that’s why you see more groups scattered,” said Adel Awadalla, owner of Supremo Pizza near Sixth and Stevenson.
A mayor’s office spokesperson said the drug market’s diminishment is a result of the multi-agency crackdown dubbed the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, and no special effort had been made for Dreamforce.
Still, Salesforce boss Marc Benioff seemed pleased with how the city looks.
“Look outside. It’s amazing,” he said Tuesday. “Everybody loves San Francisco. This is the heart of AI. This is the future of the world. We’re a lot more fun than Las Vegas.”