I've had this thing happen twice now while visiting SF, where I'm following google maps, end up walking through the Tenderloin, and have a bunch of people try to sell me drugs.
The second time I asked one of the guys trying to sell me coke why that was happening, he said it was really the only reason white people walk there.
The whole thing was very different from the super-liberal picture of SF I had in my head.
And the stench. Nothing like the glorious smell of ocean breezes and human excrement in the morning!
And to think the Embarcadero is relatively clean by SF standards. The Tenderloin is where it gets real fun.