Safaí returns to house base within the Excelsior

Ahsha Safaí needed no guides on Friday afternoon — as he did in the Mission and Tenderloin earlier this week — to introduce himself to business owners at Geneva Avenue and London Street, one block from one of the busiest commercial corridors in his district.
“I have to do really well in my district,” the District 11 supervisor and mayoral hopeful said. “Because it’s my base of support.”
Indeed, when he greeted business owners and residents on Friday, most seemed familiar with him and were glad to hear he was running for mayor. Some asked for signs to put in their windows. One of the “Chinese uncles” at Claddagh Cafe recognized him: “I know you on TV!”

His first stop was Cobbler’s Number Two, a shop since 1928, where he brought his beat-up leather shoes in for a shoe shine for his back-to-back events Friday night.
Outside the cobbler’s, Safaí stopped to talk with an unhoused man. “Tony,” he called his name. “We gotta get you inside, man. How come you didn’t want to go inside a shelter?”
“I just don’t feel it in my heart,” Tony said.
Safaí said his team had talked with Tony earlier about a shelter, but without success.
“I’ll have to come out here and talk to you one more time,” Safaí told him before moving on.
Next Safaí visited the Amazon Barber one block away, where he gets a haircut twice a month. With or without Safaí present, Chad Ayesh, his barber, spoke highly of Safaí as a supervisor and “a friend.”
“I’ve never heard a bad complaint about him, and he does listen to what everyone has to say,” Ayesh said.
Ayesh pointed to the Bay Wheels bike rack across the street, located on the sidewalk instead of on the road. “When they put these bikes in the street, taking up parking, I told Ahsha, ‘Hey, my customers don’t want to come here anymore,’” Ayesh said. “And literally the next day they were on the sidewalk.”

In District 11, residents said they hope the new mayor is someone who can keep the neighborhood in mind when making decisions.
“We are at the edge of the city,” said Marwan, who works at Phillies, a cheesesteak shop on Geneva Avenue. “He [Safaí] would know to pass on what he learned coming up the ladder.
“It’s that time of the year,” Marwan said, referring to the other mayoral candidates who have also dropped by his store, with “their campaign and cameras and people.”
There were no signs from other mayoral candidates on his window. Safaí put his sign up, just under the “open” sign.

Around 4:30 p.m., while Safaí took a brief break before his evening events, Simon Huang was trimming a client’s hair at Art Hair Salon. When hearing Safaí’s Chinese name, the Excelsior resident recognized it and said Safaí had visited his store about one or two years ago.
Huang, an immigrant from China who has lived in the district for over 10 years, said he saw elected officials as a political figure with authority, not someone who genuinely cared about concerns from constituents.
“You better be careful when talking with elected officials,” he joked in Mandarin. He seemed pessimistic about what government officials can do. “They can solve some problems, but most of the problems, they can’t.”
Huang did praise some work that has been done in the Excelsior in the past few years, although he was unsure if those can be accredited to the supervisor.
Huang’s friend, who had his business glass broken into, received a $500 grant to offset the costs. Along Geneva Avenue and Mission Street, Huang said he noticed fewer unhoused people and saw workers cleaning and patrolling the streets.
“No matter who was in charge of it, he deserves some praise,” Huang said, gesturing to the stretch of Mission Street outside of the window. “This street is really clean.”
Still, like many, public safety is Huang’s top concern and he will factor that in when deciding who to vote for in the November election. He hopes for more surveillance cameras and more police officers.
For now, Huang has not made up his mind about his vote.
At present, every mayoral contender is talking about public safety and their strategies sound very similar.
Mark Farrell said he will increase police staffing, clear homeless encampments, and replace the police chief. Daniel Lurie, too, promised to expand police staffing and foot patrols across neighborhoods. Aaron Peskin advocated filling the 300 vacant positions in the Police Department and fixing the city’s civil service hiring system, while embracing “real community policing.”
London Breed, while dropping the doom loop narrative and touting a reduced crime rate, pledged to get to a fully-staffed Police Department and “make San Francisco the safest big city in the country.”
Like his opponents, on Friday, Safaí continues to reassure business owners and residents that he will bring “proactive community policing” with more officers on foot and bikes.
Safaí introduced legislation last year to require the Police Department to adopt more foot and bike patrols and implement a community policing plan for each police station. The legislation was unanimously passed by the Board of Supervisors, but was returned unsigned by Mayor London Breed, citing a lack of active-duty police officers and concerns around having a public map detailing the whereabouts of police officers. She said the latter could result in “unintended negative consequences.”
In terms of the practicality, Safaí said, every police station has the budget to pay for overtime. “So it’s a matter of getting the captains to encourage officers to sign up to do the foot patrols,” he said. “As the personnel goes back up, you don’t have to use overtime.”
But how much can “encouraging” do? Taking up patrolling shifts is voluntary for police officers, and “you still need strong leadership to implement it,” Safaí said.