Spending a day and night on Mid-Market

San Francisco mayors have talked for decades about cleaning up Mid-Market Street. Elmer Boone actually does it.

The 59-year-old with a country singer's name and a mischievous twinkle in his eye spends his days pushing a cart with a garbage can, broom and heavy duty cleaning supplies. After 3 1/2 years, he says the street hasn't changed much.

"It's just the same things waiting for me every day," he says, his trash can brimming. "Needles, throw-up, feces, trash - all kinds of stuff. Some things I don't even want to talk about."

But the fact that Boone, who moved from Arkansas as a teen and lives in a Civic Center single-room occupancy hotel, is even there signals that the notorious street may slowly be improving.

Sixth and Market has gone from one of the worst corners in the area to one of the best, sporting Showdogs, a Pilates studio and shops in the Warfield building. It will soon be home to Pearl's Burgers. But Gov. Jerry Brown's plans to eliminate redevelopment agencies could cast a shadow on how effective San Francisco can be in rejuvenating what used to be a vibrant stretch filled with pedestrians and theater patrons, but one in decline since at least the early 1960s, when it was studded with penny arcades, risque movie houses and stands selling "girlie magazines."

The Chronicle recently spent a day and night exploring the beleaguered stretch and found some glimmers among the grime, though as the sun sets, so do some of the signs of hope.

Boone works for the Central Market Community Benefit District, formed in 2006 and funded by extra taxes on 200 property owners in the area. Also working for it are two walking information desks: Derrick Joyner and Nick Hitchko, both 33-year-old Sunset District residents who serve as community guides.

They tell homeless people where they can get a free meal, point lost pedestrians in the right direction and rescue frantic tourists who thought they were headed to Macy's.

"You can spot those 2 miles away," Hitchko says.

He will never forget helping a mother and daughter from Los Angeles who were in San Francisco looking at college campuses. Their car was towed in the Tenderloin, and they were hysterical. Their poodle, Princess, was inside. Hitchko flagged a cab for them and told them how to get their car back. They returned to tell him Princess was safe, if shaking.

Joyner and Hitchko have become neighborhood institutions, dubbed Fat Albert and Dumbo by Wesley, who didn't want to give his last name. The gaunt 44-year-old with missing teeth and dirty fingernails has lived on the street or in nearby SRO hotels for 20 years.

Asked what it's like to call Mid-Market home, Wesley strains to be heard among screeching sirens. "Living here is like doing life in prison," he says.

Street characters

Down the block from Wesley's hangout is a new drop-in art studio run by Hospitality House. At one long wooden table, Oscar Nieves, 42, carves a pink bar of soap into a heart. He says he was released from prison recently and is staying at a shelter. He's determined to turn his life around, and believes his soap creations will get him there. He talks about soap the way Bubba talked about shrimp in "Forrest Gump."

"I just love soap," he explains. "I think about a woman and how she wants her decorations - butterflies, teddy bears, a carriage with potpourri and hearts. Anything that you can think of, I can make out of soap. It's got to be something that attracts women."

Happy souls at an art studio are certainly the exception. Mostly, the street is lined with liquor stores, check-cashing spots and a few strip clubs with their lights flashing before noon.

But U.N. Plaza, long a hangout for homeless people, comes alive at lunchtime with a weekly arts market. Food trucks offer everything from fried macaroni with bacon to Vietnamese tacos. A flash mob appears, dancing to Michael Jackson tunes. And the clickity-clack of an old-fashioned typewriter can be heard all the while, as Pam Benjamin bangs out poems on the spot for $1.