Although locally the “San Francisco is back” narrative has overwhelmed the doom loop naysaying, there’s still a large national contingent quick to demean the conditions in the city. This week, popular podcaster Joe Rogan criticized San Francisco’s public policies in a conversation with his guest filmmaker, Taylor Sheridan.
Sheridan is best known as the co-creator of “Yellowstone,” a neo-Western drama that chronicles the lives of a cattle ranching family in Montana. He joined Rogan for his June 23 episode, and about 80 minutes into the show, the conversation turned toward San Francisco. After speaking about fraud in the government and criticizing Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rogan began with a bit of praise for SF, calling it “an incredible tech hub of geniuses” creating some of the best tech in the world. He said that 10 years ago, he filmed his stand-up special “Triggered” at the Fillmore in San Francisco and that the city wasn’t overwhelmed by homelessness.
“I lived there from the time I was seven to 11 … I loved San Francisco, it’s unrecognizable now,” Rogan said. “Ten years, that’s it. 10 years of f-king asinine government.”
Rogan’s description doesn’t match the city’s historical reality; San Francisco has struggled with visible homelessness for generations, and even in the idyllic world of 2016 that Rogan describes, the city was still dealing with a historically large encampment crisis. But he went on to call homelessness “an industry,” saying unhoused people are valuable to cities like San Francisco because they can get more money to deal with the problem and use it disingenuously. A recent civil grand jury report on homelessness services does show a lack of oversight and poor outcomes for getting people into housing, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
“There’s no intention to fix it,” Sheridan said. “They’re giving out free needles. ‘Here, get high, here.'”
Sheridan described unhoused people who use fentanyl as zombies and suggested the way to help them was to “pick them up off the street, and you take them somewhere and go, ‘Look, there’s a curfew here, and you ain’t doing no drugs.'” He went on to share his own experience being prescribed fentanyl after a neck injury and described how powerful the drug is, with Rogan suggesting alternative forms of surgery. Later in the episode, Rogan preached the power of the psychedelic drug ibogaine as treatment for drug addiction faced by unhoused people.
“All these homeless people that you see strung out,” Rogan said, “if instead of just giving them needles and an iPhone and, like, profiting off of it, if somehow or another these assholes can figure out a way to profit off of these centers, where you could bring people in and give them ibogaine retreats, maybe that would be a nice little f-king exit strategy for all these grifters that have been profiting off of the homeless industrial complex for so long.”
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This article originally published at Joe Rogan trashes San Francisco on episode with ‘Yellowstone’ director.