Jeffrey Betcher — gardener redefined street in Bayview
Jeffrey Betcher, who helped turn his neglected and crime-ridden Bayview street into a showplace, will be remembered in a Nov. 18 memorial on Quesada Avenue, where he and others did their work.
Mr. Betcher, 57, died of cancer Oct. 21 at his home on Quesada.
Mr. Betcher was one of the key figures in a grassroots movement called “guerrilla gardening,” which involved neighbors working to take over a rundown and crime-ridden block and turn it into a community garden.
Born in Ohio in 1960, Mr. Betcher moved into an old Victorian house on the 1700 block of Quesada just off Third Street in the late 1990s. It was one of the few places he could afford to buy in San Francisco.
But the block had major problems — a median strip down the middle was used as a kind of neighborhood garbage dump. And the street was a hangout for criminals. “The street was really dangerous,” said Shane King, a neighbor. “There was open drug dealing and prostitution.”
At one time, the street was much different: It had a row of palm trees down the middle and was pleasant. But poverty and drugs transformed the area.
Mr. Betcher had a major role in the rebirth of his block. He and two neighbors, Karl Paige, a retired Muni mechanic, and Annette Smith, who lived on the block, planted a community garden.
Paige, who died in 2007, was famous as a man who could make anything grow. “The garden meant everything to him,” said Rene Paige, his son. Smith was a stalwart who helped pull the neighborhood together. But Jeffrey Betcher was the key.
“He was not a man who drew attention to himself. He was quiet, but he was a leader,” said Suzanne Richardson, a longtime friend. “He knew how to get things done.”
“He believed in the idea of building consensus,” King said. “When there was a meeting, he made sure that everybody in the whole room had a chance to speak.
“This meant it took a long time to get things done, but they were done,” King said.
The idea was to turn the median strip around the palm trees into a beautiful community garden and reclaim the street. The residents formed a neighborhood association in 2002 and later a nonprofit called the Quesada Gardens Initiative.
There were doubters — even the city of San Francisco at first opposed the neighbors taking control of cityowned property, however neglected.
But with Mr. Betcher’s leadership, the neighbors won out. The city agreed to connect the median to the water system, the garden grew and the street changed. “The crime sort of evaporated,” King said. “It was taking back the street.”
The guerrilla gardening model won awards, attracted attention from local colleges including Stanford and the University of San Francisco, and carried over to other parts of the Bayview. Now there are more than 20 small gardens in the neighborhood.
Mr. Betcher devoted much of his time to the Quesada garden movement, but he also had a clothing business with a line of street wear he called Payamas. He was organizing a support group for local textile makers when his health failed.
He is survived by a brother, Mark Betcher, who lives in Ohio. The Nov. 18 memorial will held from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 1747 Quesada Ave.
Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf