What breaks our heart isn’t just the policy failures. It’s the way real people have been dismissed, week after week, through the Hayes Street closure.
Take Viktor. For years, he’s poured everything into his Hayes Valley shop, Cotton Sheep, one of those rare places that gives a neighborhood its soul. When he spoke up in the early days about how the closure was hurting his business, it wasn’t about politics. It was about survival. And the backlash was real.
Fast forward to just two months ago. Jim Warshell, a long-term HVNA member and past president, often described by residents and community organizers as a behind-the-scenes string-puller in Hayes Valley politics (a man with ample parking at his Hayes Valley mansion) sneered that Viktor simply “prefers parking over open space”. That’s not community spirit. That’s hypocrisy. It’s comfort and privilege mocking a small business owner who has helped keep Hayes Valley vibrant for decades.
And this is the pattern we’ve seen again and again. Robinson ignoring neighbors when their voices don’t match the script. LLoyd working the back channels to stack the deck. Parcel K transformed from public space into a political tool. And now Jim, once again, reducing one of Hayes Valley’s longest-standing merchants to a caricature simply because Viktor dared to speak the truth.
On Hayes Street, the hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer. For as long as the closure has been in place, merchants have been told that access doesn’t matter — that clients don’t need to park, that businesses should simply “adapt.” Meanwhile, on closure days, outside vendors are allowed to drive in, park their cars on the block, and set up shop — without leases, without the overhead, without the accountability. It’s not just a double standard. It’s indefensible. Small businesses who’ve invested in Hayes Valley are left struggling, while pop-up vendors roll right past the barricades. This isn’t neighborhood planning. It’s arbitrary, unregulated favoritism and it underscores why this closure needs to end.
We saw it again today. The block closed for a vendor market, cars coming and going. When we asked the person waving cars through, they snapped, “Talk to the organizer.” When we explained we had tried, but never got a response, they chuckled and said: “I wonder why.” That’s the level of contempt we’re dealing with.
This is the toll of the divisiveness manufactured by the permit holder/HVNA: neighbors turned against each other, small businesses pitted against bars, the “country club” deciding who gets to belong. If you fall outside their circle, you’re forgotten — or worse, mistreated and targeted. That’s unacceptable and the responsibility lies squarely with HVNA.
It’s exhausting. It makes you want to give up. But we can’t. Because this isn’t about parking or open space or permits. It’s about dignity. It’s about who gets to be heard in their own neighborhood. Viktor — and so many others — aren’t “against open space.” They’re against being written out of the future of Hayes Valley. And if we allow HVNA’s gatekeeping to define this community, then we’ve lost more than a street. We’ve lost the very fabric of neighborhood itself. We don’t need more puppetmasters. We need inclusive representation…leadership that sees every merchant and every neighbor as part of this community and its decisions. Until that happens, we’ll keep fighting to remind this city: the Hayes Street experiment needs to end.