One of the few positives of pandemic times was that parking in San Francisco was much easier. My…read moredentist was closed for a while, but when she finally opened back up, I still wasn't taking Muni regularly again, and many of the lines were still suspended, including the one I usually took to the dentist.
So I started driving.
It was still more difficult than it needed to be to find parking, which means that in normal times, it must be nigh impossible. In any case, I think I drove to the dentist three or four times before braving the bus back, and sometimes I had to park all the way in Japantown. (My dentist's office is off of Van Ness.)
Walking from my car to my appointment, I was very aware of this place's hidden (protected?) little parking lot, so I made sure to stop by after having my teeth cleaned. It did, indeed, have a little parking lot, but it was designed very poorly and could require lots of backing up and turning and backing up again.
This poor Walgreens. I don't care about the corporation itself, but its workers had to deal with a lot. On the three occasions I came (one of them totally unrelated to my dentist visit), they were always either shooing shoplifters out or trying to explain why the photo counter was closed or calling the police to deal with unruly and/or insane people loitering in the aisles.
They really tried to make a go of it; they did. The employees, not the corporation. Again, I don't care about the corporation, but these people either valued their jobs or believed in putting in a hard day's work or both, because they just tried so hard to do things the right way. They didn't allow line-cutters to intimidate or sweet-talk them, and they didn't suffer fools--or at least they tried their darndest not to suffer fools.
The cooler always seemed to be running out of diet soda, which is my main complaint.
And yes, you can bet I seriously considered parking in the lot, buying something from the store, and then going to the dentist, but I'm pretty sure they would have towed me.
Now that it's gone, I guess we'll never know.