I work/party/hang out in San Francisco, I'm there almost everyday, I don't remember ever seeing a human sized turd on a sidewalk. In fact, SF streets are some of the cleanest of any big city I've ever seen.
False. SF is a cesspit in any part of downtown, tenderloin, SOMA, the Mission, and pretty bad in many of the other parts. Every day for the past week I've watched a mountain sized pile of shit slowly grind down (by being kicked, stepped on, and rained on) into nothingness outside of our office. It's quite frankly repellent.
Now that I think of it, one time a (presumably) homeless man took a shit on the wall of our office building. It was there for weeks.
*Further SF horror stories: I've also witnessed a homeless man take a dump on the fence down the street from us in broad daylight. Also a coworker has seen a pile of dump propped up against a neighbor's door, and witnessed the shock of said neighbor as they came home to discover it.
What is it about American homeless that they lack even the basic human dignity to find a toilet to take a dump in? Or hell, at least a drain or somewhere their shit will wash away? Are they that disconnected from society? Or is it a calculated thing, like vandalism, revenge against a society they hate? It's nuts.
Sure, I've seen people shit in public. Once a friend had severe stomach cramps while walking through a park in central Sydney; she rushed into the bushes to relieve the pain. And while I was living around there I regularly saw women (it always seems to be women) crouching over drains in the street outside my apartment. Hey, I understand, when you gotta go, you gotta go, and severe diarrhoea makes people desperate. That's fine. But never with this total lack of dignity and respect that SF residents seem to experience.
Why not? And anyway, they could at least try to do it in semi-privacy - maybe behind a building, or in the bushes, or something. No, it seems almost deliberate to me, or alternatively so zonked out on drugs/malice that they just couldn't give a damn. Either way it's not just a lack of facilities. We've all been in a strange part of the city we don't know well, no toilets anywhere and busting to go. We all somehow found some kind of semi-acceptable solution that didn't involve shitting on someone's fence.
I have no idea why it's different in SF but these things just don't happen elsewhere, so there must be some reason for it.
Frankly, I'd rather walk by the occasional fence than risk going into a public restroom after a homeless person has used it.
Evidently in the past there was a move to provide lots of public restroom facilities in the city, but they were soon condemned and removed. It would take significant resources to offer such facilities and keep them clean and safe.
I am concerned about which cities you visit if you find SF streets to be some of the cleanest! Baghdad and Kabul are on par (more actual dirt, blood, and random limbs; less shit and used condoms)