On My Block

I had an extremely early morning today. I had an interview with Keith Bilous on cultural physics and rap at 6:30 AM. It was a fantastic conversation, but it meant I had to be on and ready to go much earlier than usual. As a morning person, I'm typically up at 6, but I don't usually start talking until 9, maybe 8 at the earliest. I need my time to contemplate the world before I engage with it directly. This morning, I went straight into the world without that buffer, so I ended up wanting some coffee.

I walked over to Blue Bottle, and as I always do, I tried to take in the space. Really take it in. I make it a point to do this as much as possible without my AirPods in, especially in the morning, to really enjoy the world, to understand how things are sounding today, how things are feeling today. What's the tension in the air? What does it feel like? What does it sound like?

This morning, as I walked through my little park on my way to my coffee shop, I saw maintenance workers. I saw some homeless folks drying and laying out clothes they had recently washed in the sun while taking care of their belongings. I saw a National Park Service SUV. I saw city workers working on the irrigation system for the green. I saw people with their dogs doing their early morning walk. A couple of city electricians grabbing coffee before going to work.

The scene stood out to me immediately. I can say I've lived in this neighborhood for two years, but being in a consistent place, you get to understand the ebbs and flows, the rhythms of what happens. You know when something's off about your block because you've been there long enough for it to be your block. You understand the rhythms of the area. The residents walking their dogs. Normal. The tech folk going to work, getting coffee in their Cotopaxi jackets. Normal. The homeless folk—not daily, but normal. An SUV parked? Normal. It being a federal vehicle with the lights flashing? Not normal.

And those flashing lights created an itch in my brain.

When I got my coffee and went back over to the park to chill out for a bit, I couldn't let it go. You see, he wasn't just parked. The SUV was positioned looking out onto the park, and the ranger inside was actively watching the area. He wasn't looking down at his phone or laptop, he was looking out. His lights were flashing, but his siren wasn't on. If there was something serious happening, why not have the siren on? If it's not an emergency, why are the lights on at all? And what kind of emergency requires National Park Service response at a city park anyway?

The thing that clicked in my mind is the same thing we used to see when we were kids: cops pull up and turn on their lights to say "We're here. Don't try anything." That's what makes it a show of force tactic. It's visible disruption that only people in the immediate area can see. Everyone sleeping or in their apartments has no idea unless you're actually walking through the space. So who is this show for? And why?

My first thought was the city workers doing maintenance. Sure, I could justify protection of city workers as one possible explanation, but city workers fall under one state of jurisdiction, while federal National Park Service is a completely different one. So why are they there together?

Maybe it was coordinated security for some reason I wasn't aware of. Maybe it was just coincidental timing—a federal employee stopping by on their way to work who happened to know someone in the neighborhood. Maybe someone with connections had made a call asking for a visible presence to address the recent uptick in homeless folks using the area.

I had a few theories, but that was enough to make me want to explore further. Time to start gathering information.

So I start making calls. There's always an information line in most cities. 311 is the non-emergency municipal information service that exists in multiple areas across the United States, and usually there's an informal system for getting basic information about city services and activities. You can call and say, "Hey, have you gotten any reports about X in this area?"

I called them first. Didn't expect much, but thought I'd see if anyone had reported federal activity in the area. They didn't have anything.

But here's the thing—they ask why you're calling, so you have to have an answer ready. You don't want to give off “paranoid resident” vibes or get added to the local watch list, so you also don't want to say exactly what you're thinking. You want to position yourself as “appropriately” curious. So I said that I'd noticed more law enforcement activity in the area, found it interesting, and wanted to call as a constituent to see if there was anything I should know about.

Then I called my district supervisor's office (District 5). They didn't have anything either. Same dance of them asking why I wanted to know, same careful positioning on my part.

Finally, I tried the SFPD non-emergency line. They didn't answer—I was on hold for several minutes and gave up. I'm still curious, but it's not worth unlimited time.

So I'm left with this: 311 didn't have anything, didn't hear back from the police, and the district supervisor's office doesn't know anything either. These are my city's closest aspects of power who are supposed to be watching my area. The fact that none of them knew about federal law enforcement activity in their jurisdiction tells me something important.

What that leaves me with is to hypothesize by myself.

I understand my block. I understand my environment. I've written about Hayes Valley before as existing in the ruins of an old Black neighborhood, but what that really means on a typical day is that it's highly gentrified. What gentrification leads to is proximity to capital and power, expensive housing, and residents who have the connections to get things done. People who can afford to live here.

But Hayes Valley sits right next to Civic Center, Mission, and the Fillmore—more affordable neighborhoods where people get pushed when they can't afford the core of Hayes Valley anymore. And Hayes itself still has a few spots of "affordable" housing and a few places that are a "steal" in SF rent terms, like mine. So you get this mix of people with serious money and connections living alongside folks who are just hanging on or found one of the few remaining affordable spots.

At the same time, San Francisco has seen a spike in drug activity over the last few months. Whatever is on the streets currently in our city is leading to more severe reactions. You see that plus battles with law enforcement, and usually you see displacement of homeless folks. When they come over to our neighborhood, because of the culture of our neighborhood, that causes a problem for some residents. This morning I saw some folks washing their clothes in the water fountain, taking care of themselves and their belongings.

I can see a resident being like, "Yeah, no. I don't like this in my neighborhood."

So maybe there was something happening in my neighborhood. Maybe there was just somebody asking for a show of force to intimidate. And honestly, how improbable is that? Someone in an upscale, well-connected neighborhood having a connection with someone who works for the National Park Service? Not very. How improbable is it to make that call—"Hey, could you swing by my neighborhood on your way to work? We've been having some issues"? Pretty easy, actually. How hard is it for a federal employee to stop by for 15-20 minutes during their commute? Not hard at all.

It's just a theory, but one way or another, something led to a very deliberate positioning of a federal law enforcement vehicle in my neighborhood during morning maintenance work. That doesn't happen by accident.

And that’s the important part: understanding power starts in your environment. You have to be tapped in enough to notice disruption, whether it's real, manufactured, or otherwise. Whether you can pursue it or not, noticing tells you something about how power operates in your space.

When you've been somewhere long enough to understand its rhythms, when you practice active observation, when you know your block well enough for it to be your block, that's when you can see how influence gets exercised.

The federal SUV with lights flashing at a small city park during routine maintenance isn't normal. The fact that no official channels knew about it makes it more interesting, not less. It suggests informal networks operating outside official coordination, which is exactly how a lot of real power actually works.

This is about more than just staying alert. This is about understanding that power operates through relationships, through informal requests, through people who know people. It's about recognizing that the most significant interventions in your daily life often happen quietly, without announcements or official channels. They happen through phone calls between people who have each other's numbers.

When you understand your environment well enough to spot the anomalies, you start to see the invisible infrastructure of influence. You see how neighborhoods get shaped not just by policy, but by individual actors making individual calls. You see how federal resources can end up serving very local interests when the right person asks the right favor.

Pay attention to your environment. Know who to call when something seems off. Understand the difference between official channels and informal influence. Most importantly, recognize that if you can't see power operating, it doesn't mean it isn't there. It just means you haven't learned how to look yet.

The work starts with knowing your block well enough to notice when something doesn't belong. Everything else builds from there.