The Real Zombies
Two groups can both be thought of as zombies, fentanyl addicts and phone junkies, victims of separate phenomena accelerated in the Bay and pushed out in waves across the world
In recent years it has been common to hear talk of the "zombies" of San Francisco, particularly from recent domestic migrants attracted to the Bay by the high paying jobs that create another kind of zombie. There are two groups in San Francisco that can both be thought of as zombies, fentanyl addicts and phone junkies, victims of separate phenomena accelerated in this region and pushed out in waves across the world. Read on to meet them and discover some actions you can take to protect yourself against the onslaught.
But first...
Where the F have you been, Giotis? you may be thinking. Yes, a few issues ago I laid out a great slate of SUB_SCRIBE articles for 2025 that didn't materialize, leaving a 16 month gap in issues. I assure you much of that research did occur, but so did life out in the real world where being a freelance culture writer / journalist / poet requires additional actions for survival. I genuinely appreciate you sticking with me. I promise to make it worth your while, my dear SUB_s.
But seriously, what the fuck, don't writers just keep writing? Absolutely. Here are some things you can look forward to on the horizon. In the coming months I am releasing a live album of my headlining poetry performance at Mic Drop! in Santa Cruz, called, wait for it, Original Giotis: Live in Santa Cruz. It was one of several performances last year that moved me and I hope it moves you. Look for that announcement soon. I also wrote a novel over the winter and a few short stories, so yeah, dog will hunt.
Another performance last year that rocked me as much as the audience was a turn at the Petaluma Poetry Walk, playing the Phoenix Theater with some of my poetry family: Bernice Espinoza and Grayson Thompson. We slayed with a dynamic show in the round, the audience gathered around us as we passed poems and weaved themes together. It was a pinnacle poetry career moment for each of us. Now Found Poets (my poetry org) is at it again at the 2026 Petaluma Poetry Walk. mOody bLaCk, lorriechange, and Mahrs Shoppman are working hard as we speak, to bring the Found Poets performance swagger back to the Phoenix. Do not miss them and check out the rest of the 2026 Petaluma Poetry Walk line up, linked here. If you haven't gone, poetry takes over downtown Petaluma. It's rad.
Who are the zombies!?!
I have written about the different physical manifestation of various popular street drugs before. Distorted by the drug, fentanyl victims get the honor of being called "zombies" by techie transplants who find the waves of broken humans littering the streets of West Coast cities worthy of comment, if not of empathy.
In 2023, the DEA seized enough fentanyl to administer lethal doses to the entire population of the United States. No need to worry about our enemies destroying us, we're doing just fine on our own. Sonoma county, California, pop. 300k, reports 12 people die from overdose in the county every month. Almost all of those are assumed to involve fentanyl, even when the intended drug was something other than fentanyl.
There is help for the fentanyl crisis in the form of education and access to medicine, especially Narcan, the life-saving single use "opioid antagonist" that stops an overdose. Learn more about those resources here and here and screenshot this guide to Fentanyl Harm Reduction now.
Knowing that 1) fentanyl kills, and 2) the dead don't come back, consider that there are plenty living with no homes, isolated by addiction and poverty, who understand that a needle in the arm greatly increases one's chance to exit this ugly as it is beautiful world. Those rooted in the beautiful world, are still going to run up against the ugly. But that person with a mental illness heightened by the physical vulnerability of the street, who is addicted and has lost or not longer has access to a job, maybe smells because sleeping between cars, tents, street stoops rarely affords access to toilets or even water, such a person may go weeks without bumping into the beautiful side of things. One can imagine them needing a reset, the rare motel room splurge or jailhouse getaway.
Yes, people on the street know well that Country jail is a readily available way to get clean (off drugs), showered (clean), fed three meals a day (all with baloney), and rested (metal slab bed). These people may look lazy to some, but living on the street is a battle. It tires a body out. Add in unchecked fentanyl use, and the person folds over, right in middle above the waist; all across downtown San Fransisco, troll-like in shape, like some other animal, are the humans some people call zombies.
But there is another, more prominent addiction with a Bay Area epicenter, yielding its own kind of zombie, rumbling through the ground a little to the south, a deformation more prevalent, that strikes perhaps closer to home ... maybe right behind you!
People check their phones 205 times per day on average. These little screens and their native algorithms are why pedestrian's heads tend to bob up and down uselessly along the Bay Area's sidewalks, post-humans mediating themselves away from their surroundings while still trying to navigate a crosswalk, thoughtless about whether a driver (human or otherwise) is about to end them as they thumb-like a cosplay fan page at 2pm on a Wednesday. Zombie behavior, if you ask me, exhibiting the same wish to exit this world as the fentanyl junkies across the street.
Most readers will have seen that the recent legal judgement against Meta which established wrongdoing by designing the technology to harm young users. Note that both groups of zombies are defined by that same word, users. And both types of addiction are most entrenched in those that start young. It happens with gambling too.
The average reader may not wish to live trapped forever in cyberspace, yet in meatspace we swerve the car at the phone's bidding, miss our kid's trick on the swing, stand and twirl unawares at store entrances like self-promotional banners. Like a junkie waiting for the hit. Its us, we're the zombies. So what to do?
Pro tip for the living
Live music connects people, it shakes cobwebs out from bodies, opens the spirit, and, importantly in this market society, it pays art professionals who play and run venues. One such economic adventure is the not-for-profit Lost Church in Santa Rosa, newly-reopened. I got out there with my squeeze last weekend and as anyone in the small, community space on a Saturday night could tell you, we were united. Together. Free.
Click the Bohemian article below to read about the gig featuring local arts-mensch Josh Windmiller, as well as my review for Static & Blur of another recent coming together, this time with a moshpit, at San Francisco's Warfield Theater.
Ευχάριστω! I now accept tips.
Throw in a fiver when you laugh or go hmm.
"Wow, I never thought about that" earns $20.
Read the articles below for live music reviews that were also great gatherings.
Michael Giotis
Jon Bauer