US News

San Francisco man crowdfunding to escape ‘zombie apocalypse’ neighborhood

A fed-up San Francisco resident has decided to leave his crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhood that he says reminds him of a “zombie apocalypse” — and has launched a fund-raising campaign to pay for his move.

Darren Mark Stallcup, 26, an activist living in the Golden City’s Tenderloin neighborhood, is seeking to raise $6,000 to relocate, telling Fox News Digital that he was “witnessing a fentanyl genocide.”

“It is with heavy heart that I’m saying goodbye to my apartment in the Tenderloin. I can no longer live in a neighborhood where I’m constantly tripping over bodies, fecal (matter),” and needles,” he said on a GoFundMe page, which he launched in April.

“Our community has become uninhabitable. This is a humanitarian crisis. My apartment has been broken into multiple times. All of the stores have been ransacked. Living in the Tenderloin has been a traumatizing experience and it is time to move,” he continued.

Stallcup lamented that his community “has been plagued with the use of fentanyl,” adding that the dire situation is “taking a serious toll on my mental, physical, and spiritual health.

The activist said he “can no longer live in a neighborhood where I’m constantly tripping over bodies, fecal (matter),” and needles,” Twitter/@darren_stallcup
He also claimed that fentanyl use in the neighborhood has skyrocketed. Twitter/@darren_stallcup

“Tents block the sidewalk. I go to sleep to the sounds of emergency sirens and awake to the sounds of people screaming. It’s not just the constant reminders of drug use and violence, but also the fear and anxiety of being in this environment,” Stallcup wrote.

“My life is in immediate danger living in The Tenderloin,” he added.

As of Friday morning, he received 41 donations totaling a little over $1,500.

Stallcup, who compared his neighborhood to a “zombie apocalypse” in an interview with Fox News Digital, told the outlet he has “had to fight off burglars with my own two bare hands.”

Stallcup is crowdfunding his move from the Tenderloin neighborhood. GoFundMe

The activist, who founded “The World Peace Movement,” has shared videos on social media of rampant drug use, violence and shoplifting.

In 2021, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared an emergency in the Tenderloin, which has been called the epicenter of the region’s fentanyl crisis, according to the news outlet.

The city saw 647 drug overdose deaths in 2022, a slight increase from the year before, and is on track to surpass that figure again this year, Fox News reported.

Stallcup said he recently lost a cousin to fentanyl. Twitter/@darren_stallcup

A fifth of the deaths occurred in Stallcup’s neighborhood, according to the outlet, which cited the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Stallcup, who saic he recently stopped a fentanyl addict trying to ransack a local Walgreens, told Fox News in January that he had also lost a cousin to fentanyl.

“Fentanyl is manufactured in China, and it’s making its way into our country through the southern border, specifically through Honduras,” he told the outlet at the time.

“And unfortunately, thousands of people of all colors, creeds and religions have overdosed and died from fentanyl in San Francisco between the years 2019 and 2023,” he said.