Drug users coming to the show

[Martin McCaffery]

Worse yet: Patchoolli. I don't have much sense of smell left, but that stuff is still the worst.

[Jim Cassedy]

Our big, old theater building occupies the entire width of a city block. The big public entrance
fronts on Mission St, in San Francisco, but the back of the building is in a dark alley, where we
have an employee/delivery entrance, and it's also where a couple of the main fire exits from
the building are. Almost every night, a group of 'street people' hang out and drink and do drugs
in one of emergency exit stairwells. Sometimes they have a boom-box or make so much noise
fighting among themselves that it can be heard in the main auditorium. There's not much we can
do. We have a security guard, but 'street people' here have no fear of the police, so they're not
going to be scared off by some rent-a-cop, even though he's a pretty big ex-military type of guy.
The police are little help, although to be fair, it's not entirely their fault, given the general tolerance
for bad behavior by the politicians here. Occasionally the alley guys can be reasoned with, but
fortunately they're often unconscious by the last show, and then things are quiet. Some poor
theater employee gets stuck every morning cleaning up the mess these slobs leave behind.

Most mornings, it's an assortment of empty beer cans, cigarette buts, junk food wrappers
and assorted discarded drug paraphernalia - - and the area usually reeks of urine and vomit
BackStairs_2.jpg

This was one morning last month. Somebody had literally moved into the stairway, with
a cot blocking one of the main emergency exits! One of those bags contained assorted
garbage, and I'm pretty sure the other was full of feces. I could smell this from across the
street. The PD wasn't much help moving this guy- - but the Fire Dept took it more seriously!
BackStairs_1.jpg

I recently saw what looks like a new steam cleaning device being delivered to the theater, but I'm not
sure if it's something that was for use in the kitchen, or to sanitize the back stairs after a morning like this.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Our alley suffers similar sometimes... nothing on our block but two theatres, two hotels and their associated restaurants, parking garage behind us. Often they can be reasoned with, but you still have to have good street smarts and judgement about which ones to engage versus which ones just to lock the back door and wait for them to go away.

We are fortunate that the city has a fairly proactive cleanup and safety team that is all over downtown. Cops are generally useless for these things in the alleys unless they are assaulting someone, the security crews at the hotels are pretty proactive and team players with our folks too thankfully. Unfortunately there is no easy answer. If not imported directly to sanctuary cities by smaller areas trying to get rid of their problem, it is just the trash cycle of an urban environment that centralizes the problem, big city trash often equals food or resources for the afflicted or destitute.

It's a bit unfortunate, as a functioning live venue the alley is literally an extension of our everyday work area, the load in and load out crew is subjected to whatever mess is out there... none of production folks have suitable hazmat PPE to really clean up such things (nor are we eager for it to come within our job descriptions).

Sometimes the restaurant cooking oil deposit receptacles are plum full, and rather than wait till after a pickup they'll just pour more in and watch it overflow and run all the way down the alley. We have had to purchase and spread cat litter or other oil spill absorbers twice in an emergency to keep the loading area safe enough to utilize without the truck ramp becoming a slip and slide.

[Ed Gordon]

Our big, old theater building occupies the entire width of a city block. The big public entrance fronts on Mission St, in San Francisco, but the back of the building is in a dark alley, where we have an employee/delivery entrance, and it's also where a couple of the main fire exits from the building are. Almost every night, a group of 'street people' hang out and drink and do drugs in one of emergency exit stairwells. Sometimes they have a boom-box or make so much noise fighting among themselves that it can be heard in the main auditorium. .... [/B]

You could try putting a loudspeaker in the stairwell to play annoying sounds to make the area less appealing to linger in.

Another option would be to install a "Noise Stinger"

Noise stingers also known as reciprocal devices come in manual and automatic variations. They are compact ultrasonic devices that emit high frequency intrusive sounds.

You can use such a device to get rid of noisy people around you either in a room, restaurant or other places. The sounds that this device emits makes it impossible to trace the source.

The device produces two types of sound waves:

High frequency sound waves that are only audible to people under the age of 21 years.
A low frequency sound audibles to all people

This simple device is easy to use, compact and operated using a 3-volt battery. However, it’s important to note that this device can cause nausea, sweating, intense irritation, imbalance or vomiting.

There might be legal issues when using such devices. See: High-Intensity Acoustic Devices as Weapons: A look at the Legalities

[Lyle Romer]

You could try putting a loudspeaker in the stairwell to play annoying sounds to make the area less appealing to linger in.

Another option would be to install a "Noise Stinger"



There might be legal issues when using such devices. See: High-Intensity Acoustic Devices as Weapons: A look at the Legalities

Maybe REALLY bright lighting would help also.