How ‘shiesty’ masks got so popular

“It ain’t the older cats wearing it. It’s the 25-and-under crowd that rock with the shiesties,” said Reggie, a 37-year-old Tenderloin resident who declined to give his last name, while buying cigarettes and vodka at the Starlight Market. “It went from 10 years ago, if you had $10, you could get a $5 white tee. Now these kids might use that money for a mask instead of a shirt.”

Del Seymour, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Code Tenderloin, credits the pandemic for normalizing an accessory that previously would have drawn unwanted scrutiny, defeating its purpose of conveying anonymity.

“It was one of those things where if someone was masked up, they were probably going to be stopped by the police,” he said. “Once Covid hit, they couldn’t stop it anymore.”

Not that they aren’t trying. As organized retail theft, car break-ins and other street crimes have drawn increasing public attention, politicians in some cities have zeroed in on the role of masks as an accessory to the crime.

In December 2023, Philadelphia’s City Council passed legislation that banned wearing ski masks on public transportation, in schools, day cares, parks and city-owned buildings. Atlanta also flirted with the idea of a similar ban, but the ordinance was ultimately tabled after community leaders said it would increase racial profiling. Last year, New York Mayor Eric Adams advised shopkeepers to bar customers who refused to lower their masks, lest they try to rob the place.

In San Francisco, city officials haven’t made an issue of it. The Mayor’s Office, police department and Supervisors Dean Preston and Matt Dorsey, who represent the areas where shiesty masks are most often seen, did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

The Tenderloin Community Benefit District said its network of surveillance cameras has recorded an uptick in the use of masks by both young people and adults. But the prevalence of the masks makes it more difficult to get quality footage to submit to law enforcement as evidence and means operators have to follow mask-wearing suspects from camera to camera.