His name is Peterson Harter and he owns a sandwich shop on Haight street which sells New Orleans-style muffuletta sandwiches. Yesterday evening, Harter posted a video shortly after he was assaulted by a drunk person outside his shop.
Peterson Harter, the co-owner of Sandy’s on Haight Street, said he was closing up Wednesday when he saw the man urinating near his trash cans. He said he told the man to stop urinating and the man responded with threats. Seconds later the man rushed at Harter and punched him.
Harter, 39, first shared the story on the restaurant’s official Instagram page and expressed his anger about the situation. He said the man appeared to be inebriated during the incident, which he said occurred around 5:15 p.m. outside Sandy’s.
Here’s the clip he posted on Instagram. You can see a pretty large goose-egg forming on his forehead and he seems to have the start of a black eye as well. “I can’t believe I live in a city where people piss in the street and then just come punch you in the f***ing face and get away with it,” he said. He added, “I’m f***ing fed up with this goddamn city…This is f***ing bulls**t. It shouldn’t be this way at all.”
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He posted a follow up message with a photo of the guy who hit him.
Harter followed the guy down the street while calling the police but they told him not to pursue the suspect so he stopped. He obviously doesn’t expect anyone will be arrested. And unfortunately, he’s also softening his tone quite a bit.
If police find the man who attacked him, Harter said he wants him to do community service cleaning up the street outside, rather than going to jail.
This is pretty standard prog-speak in San Francisco. No one is ever supposed to go to jail, especially not homeless people. I’m pretty sure Harter doesn’t actually believe this but if you have a business in San Francisco, you can’t afford to become the next target of activists who will attempt to ruin your livelihood if you say the wrong thing. Even in the responses to his Instagram post there are people demanding to know why he’s trying to sic a mob on a person of color. This is exactly the mindset that made San Francisco into the mess it is now. It’s sad to see Harter cowed into going along with it even before his bruises have healed. But again, he knows businesses who step out of line can become targets. In SF, the progressive mob is scarier than the street people.
As for what he’ll do now, Harter seems conflicted. He said lots of people warned him not to open his shop on Haight street. While he’s come to like it where he is, he admits he wouldn’t advise anyone to follow his example.
“There’s so many people that told me not to open up a shop here in the first place. A lot of people told me not to do it. But I love the city, and I love what it could be. I mean, I wouldn’t tell somebody to open up a shop here,” he said.
“I’m going to stay here and operate, but at the same time, there are other places I can go open up the shop and know that I’m not going to have these issues. Yeah, that’s the hard part, just kind of torn about what to do,” he said.
It’s a good thing to like what the city “could be” but at some point people have to look at what it is and demand better. Right now they’re just not getting it from a city that is more interested in coddling drug addicts and drug dealers than making the city liveable for everyone else.
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