How will the cops enforce S.F.s new club loitering law?
Much ballyhooing and nay-saying accompanied the Board of Supervisors’ passage last week of a law designed to cut down on that bane of city existence: the dreaded loiterers, those hangers-out in front of clubs, bars, and other dens of iniquity. Boosters of the law predictably declared it a victory for Western civilization; a mayoral press release heralded the oncoming glory days of “preventing confrontations and forestalling violence.” Skeptics, meanwhile, predictably clucked that this was yet more evidence of the decline of Western civilization. The Guardian trilled about poor people and First Amendment rights, asserting that politickers toting campaign signs and homeless folk panhandling could both be whisked away to county lockup under the new law (never mind that “aggressive” panhandling is already prohibited in San Francisco, and that the loitering law is in effect only between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., when even Frank Chu is generally off the streets). Somehow lost in the hoopla was an i
