San Francisco OK with boulders on small street to keep...

England has Stonehenge, Easter Island has its giant carved heads and now San Francisco has the homeless boulders of Clinton Park. A line of 24 giant rocks has mysteriously landed along the sidewalk of the small, tree-lined street, effectively blocking the tent camps and open drug dealing that had been an ongoing problem.

“It’s very creative. Somebody spent some money doing this,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district includes the street, located just off the busy Dolores-Market streets commercial corridor.

And they may well become a permanent fixture.

The rocks stand 2 to 3 feet high and 3 to 4 feet wide, so transporting and unloading them would have been quite a job.

“We don’t know who put them in, but it wasn’t the city,” Mandelman said.

Now Playing:

Residents along the quiet street are being mum about who brought in the boulders.

“The neighbors got together. I wasn’t involved,” said a man named Marius, who declined to give his last name.

Marius’ apartment overlooks the boulders, which sit on the north sidewalk where the street meets Dolores and Market.

Residents were more vocal about the frustrations that led up to the rock blockade.

“This isn’t about one or two tents coming in, this is about open drug dealing,” said one resident as she was leaving her apartment building.

The woman, who declined to give her name, said it was one thing to have people sleeping on the street, but quite another thing to have drug dealing late into the night.

“This is about people yelling and screaming at 3 in the morning and openly flashing weapons,” she said. “I’m not rich. I’m having a hard enough time making it myself. They even set up a shelf and were openly dealing drugs and nobody was doing anything.”

Marius, who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, agreed that the problem was bad and that he shared his neighbor’s frustration with the city.

“I’ve called the police several times, but this is not a real solution,” he said. “The city needs to get these people the help they need.”

San Francisco’s 311 call center said it has received 224 requests concerning homeless camps, sidewalk cleanup and other public works service requests on the 200 block of Clinton Park since the beginning of the year.

According to the community news site Hoodline, the boulders appeared almost two weeks ago. Hauling, unloading and lining up the rocks took some work — possibly even the use of a crane.

Whoever brought in the boulders knew what they were doing. They also knew city codes concerning sidewalks.

For starters, the boulders are all within what the city calls the “furniture” zone, the part of the sidewalk closest to the curb, where electrical boxes, streetlights and utility poles are installed.

And “they left a 4-foot walkway, so the boulders are not obstructing the passage on the sidewalk,” Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon said.

The boulders were also set up along the “no parking” side of the narrow street, so they don’t block people from getting in and out of their cars.

Gordon said at this point the boulders “do not appear to be posing any tripping hazards.”

Nor has anyone asked for the boulders to be removed.

“At this point, we have no plans to remove them,” she said.

In fact, Gordon said Public Works is “looking at options to sanction the boulders,” to allow them to be a permanent fixture.

“It’s a common story in San Francisco these days,” Mandelman said. “I’m hoping that these boulders will provide the folks with some relief.”

Legal eagles: Gov. Gavin Newsom has tapped a couple of former teammates, José Cisneros and Chris Iglesias, to the nonlawyer seats on the 13-member California State Bar Board of Trustees.

Iglesias, who has been chief executive officer at the Unity Council in Oakland since 2013, was a senior adviser on jobs and contracting programs when Newsom was mayor of San Francisco. He was also the executive director at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission from 2007 to 2009.

Newsom appointed Cisneros San Francisco treasurer in 2004, he was elected to the office in 2005 and has since won re-election.

Neither Iglesias nor Cisneros are lawyers.

But, as Cisneros said, “I have worked with a lot of lawyers,” and “I can do meetings.”

So far, Inglesias said the reaction he’s heard from friends has been, “Congratulations ... I think.”

Trustees, whose job is to set State Bar policies, meet about six times a year, either in San Francisco or Los Angeles. The job pays $50 per diem.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier