The previous midnight, Nate Sanders, standing across the street from the Metreon, remained unseduced. Mr. Sanders, 53, one of several homeless San Franciscans hanging out in the neighborhood, said that people waiting in line to buy a video game “have their priorities distorted.”

“It’d be something to be first at voter registration, or to push civil rights,” Mr. Sanders said as a light rain began to fall, noting that he was trying to raise $30 to stay at a hotel. “They have a head-in-the-sand syndrome.”