I'm reading "In San Francisco, a Troubled Year at a Whole Foods Market Reflects a City’s Woes" (WNYUZ).
On a recent chilly night across from the shuttered store, Joseph Peterson, a former construction worker who lost both of his legs to diabetes and is homeless, rolled down the sidewalk in his wheelchair. Mr. Peterson could see the 2,000-unit Trinity apartments, the high-end complex that Whole Foods had hoped would be its customer base....
Mr. Peterson said he understood why Whole Foods had closed the store. “People kept stealing from it,” he said. He, too, had taken macaroni and cheese and chicken from the hot food bar a number of times, he said. But he made a distinction. Other people stole from the store because they wanted to resell what they took. “I just stole to eat,” he said.
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78 comments:
People respond to incentives…
This summarized the problem succinctly:
"Male w/machete is back"
Forget it, Jim, it is a clown state.
Has SF become a real-life version of "Escape from New York," or will there be a sharp, sudden snap-back to reality?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/
Can Arnold Schwarzenegger drive his Hummer over to save the city a la Snake Plissken?
it IS horrible! that all these terrible things happened.. BUT; there IS GOOD NEWS!!
The Good News IS: NONE of the people who did these assaults and thefts, were EVER Charged.. With Anything
So, there IS that bit of good news.
it IS kinda weird though, how crime continues to be rampant; Even though we do NOTHING to stop it
"In San Francisco, a Troubled Year at a Whole Foods Market Reflects a City’s Woes"
Progs want it. Now they want to Californicate America--spread the woes, for years to come.
"“I just stole to eat,” he said."
Hey, that's OK then. But what does a person have to do to lose two legs to diabetes?
Maybe SF can sue Whole Foods to make them reopen the store? Surely it is a civil rights violation for Whole Foods not feed the shoplifters.
SF brought this on itself. That much is obvious.
But the odd thing is that the voters and people in charge won't even acknowledge that their policies created this chaos.
This will only get worse and worse.
"some of the city’s most intractable problems: property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins, an entrenched network of dealers selling fentanyl and other illicit drugs and people suffering from untreated mental illness wandering the streets."
Rudy Giuliani demonstrated that crime is not an intractable problem. San Francisco lefties just don't want to do what it takes; enforce the law.
"They flung food, screamed, fought and tried to defecate on the floor..."
Wow. The trifecta. And some even tried to pull an "Amber Heard" on the floor for extra credit.
The floor shitter is a real overachiever. I want to party with that guy.
This summarized the problem succinctly:
"Male w/machete is back"
Forget it, Jim, it is a clown state.
This is the same problem that led to the mass abortion field in Texas. The abortionist was an illegal alien, several times deported, and a known risk to the community.
One wonders at what point voters realize that if they want a healthy city, they need a healthy civic life, which means some system of controlling destructive behaviors that actually works. For some people, there is no limit to their ability to blame Republicans for all that is wrong with the world. For those people, there is no point at which they will wise up.
At a city level, say Portland or San Francisco or Seattle (basically any city in the Pacific Northwest), does there ever come a point where a plurality will become willing to face reality and save their city?
With the election of Giuliani, New York showed it can be done and done quickly; he only needed about 5 years to totally turn that city around. But people have to be willing. Will they ever be or are these cities lost?
Nothing to see here. It's just white privilege playing out in SF. Why go to Walmart when Whole foods is available?
Occupation, Antifa, SS BLM, Jane's Revenge, prosecutorial discretion, and other acts of organized insurrection.
The Good News IS: NONE of the people who did these assaults and thefts, were EVER Charged.
California is a sanctuary state with bag limits.
San Francisco deserves EVERYTHING they get BECAUSE of the way they vote. No sympathy AT ALL for them and I have relatives there. They tell me how great Progressivism is. I hope they enjoy it!!
I have it on good authority that there is no crime in San Francisco. I think it was governor french laundry who told me.
Sebastian said...
Hey, that's OK then. But what does a person have to do to lose two legs to diabetes?
Well, they have to eat SO MUCH macaroni and cheese; that they have to steal it (along with their wine)
How does President Newsom sound?
This is how dire things have become in San Francisco, an extreme form of a challenge nationwide. Nearly every large U.S. city is struggling, to some degree, with reduced office-worker turnout since the pandemic spurred remote work. No market was hit harder than San Francisco, for reasons including its high costs, reliance on a tech industry quick to embrace hybrid work, and quality-of-life issues such as crime and homelessness.
Fire Sale: $300 Million San Francisco Office Tower, Mostly Empty. Open to Offers.
I live in SF. There is plenty of free food available for the homeless. They don't need to steal to eat.
In addition to the drug addicts and mentally ill, there is a new type of crime entrepreneur who gets a few similarly inclined people together to rob people, businesses, and houses. If only we had laws on the books...
Civil society is more precarious than we generally think.
I live in SF. There is plenty of free food available for the homeless. They don't need to steal to eat.
Male w/machete is back,' the report on one 911 call states.
Who among us hasn't wanted to cut into a melon or two before purchasing?
I'm sorry for the law-abiding San Franciscans who live near that WF who are now required to drive to WF.
"I just stole to eat,” he said.
Nobody today needs to steal to eat, especially in a city like San Francisco. Either he's taking money given to him for food to buy drugs, and/or he refuses to live in a shelter because they won't let him use drugs.
A friend in SF who is able to work from home thinks this is all Fox News hype. Just avoid those areas and all is wonderful. She has had two bicycles stolen from her locked garage (in two burglaries) and multiple window smashes on her car, though. In Russian Hill.
And most likely most of the crimes committed there were never registered as crimes, as to keep the statistics low.
You get what you measure.
Why did they close? They could have just upped their wages so it was worth it for people to work through the feces! They could have hired more people, too, to guard the inventory. You know who they could have hired? The homeless people who already were in the area. Hire them and give them something to do besides steal. Then have them unionize, and some of their money could have gone to Dem politicians who made the policies that put all this employment and high wages into action. It all could have worked out so perfectly.
It’s probably easier and safer to operate a Whole Foods store in Sudan than it is in San Francisco.
I propose we wall in San Francisco, and maybe Chicago and a few other democrat-controlled cities as well. Then every Friday around 5:00 p.m. deliver guns, meth, and fentanyl by drone. A cemetery can be established outside the gate and bodies could be picked up on Monday mornings for burial (we couldn't depend on them to bury their own dead).
After a year or so, we tear down the wall, bull-doze the buildings, and a new city can be constructed that's city charter states it can be governed only by conservatives. "New San Franciso" or "New Chicago" would then not only survive but thrive for a couple of decades until the conservatives in charge slowly abandoned their principles and the cycle starts over again.
>> activity in San Francisco’s downtown remains at roughly a third of prepandemic levels <<
>> 26 percent vacancy rate of downtown offices <<
Yikes.
It is going to take a very long time for this to work itself out. In the meantime, it could easily become a self-reinforcing downward spiral.
>> according to records of 568 emergency calls over 13 months <<
That's more than one per day on average, which doesn't sound right.
The article invites you to read carelessly and come away with the impression that there were 568 "incidents" in 13 months, which sounds horrific. But the article doesn't say "incidents", it says "calls". I suspect there were far fewer "incidents" while most of the "incidents" generated multiple "calls".
So how many "incidents" were there? Who knows? The article doesn't bother to tell us, so we don't really know how bad things actually are.
This sounds like the kind of misdirection journalists routinely engage in.
Crime is just informal reparations, you know. No one is charged with a crime unless they are caught in the act of being a white male.
Did you read about the ex SF city commissioner who got his skull bashed in a couple of months ago? Well, the SF DA decided not to prosecute his attacker, citing 'self defense'.
Apparently you can't use pepper spray to remove repeat vagrants from your property.
And this DA is a replacement for the other guy who got ousted because he didn't enforce laws. So yeah, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Did someone steal Mr. Peterson's food stamps? California has ample facilities for wheelchair-bound homeless people. The mac and cheese may not be so good in them, but he is, for some unstated reason, purposefully homeless.
Then again, it is California, so if someone stole less than $995 worth of Mr. Peterson's food stamps, that's not a crime anymore. And if he traded them for drink or drugs, that's not a crime either. And it's also not a crime to stroll into any store and steal less than $995 worth of anything, so unless he's picking up some very expensive wine and caviar with than mac and cheese, he's not committing a crime either.
But if an employee is even suspected of stealing a banana, he or she can be canned for it. So why work, let alone risk your life defending the Burt's Bees counter from the violent bag ladies?
Turns out culture IS downstream from the politics of law, Breitbart notwithstanding.
Gerda, you demonstrate that trolls still live under bridges. Other reports listed many more than this number of daily incidents at that one store, but employees generally may not confront shoplifters, and managers often must call corporate to do so, so only the most severe or serial shoplifting, defecating, and assaults on customers and staff were likely even recorded.
The loss of law and order in San Francisco occurred “gradually and then suddenly.”
This reminds me of the broken window theory of policing. Fix them quickly or chaos will arrive rapidly.
At some point returning to order may seem impossible.
El Salvador’s new massive prisons for MI-13 members is a frightening solution. Eventually the public will demand order. You have been forewarned.
"In San Francisco, a Troubled Year at a Whole Foods Market Reflects a City’s Woes (WNYUZ)."
From the article:
"City leaders face some limitations. A federal judge in April determined that San Francisco cannot clear homeless people from public spaces because it has not done enough to provide shelter."
It's liberal judges. In time the newly constituted SCOTUS may change this.
“tried to defecate on the floor..."
There is only doo doo or not do, there is no try.
a “troubled year”? F.F.S.
Can’t address/resolve a problem unless we are honest about it. Stop this wringing of hands bullshit! It doesn’t do anyone any good.
Male w/machete is back
And the gun grabbers try to tell us there is no need for anyone to own an AR-15!
Oh, I see. Sort of like Title 1 schools.
At some point, citizens realize the government is hopeless, and take matters into their own hands.
It will be brutal and bloody, but democrats want it that way I suppose. they have encouraged anarchy, and are surprised when they get it.
Perhaps in the faculty lounges of America, all this seems interesting. Out in the real world, those of us who are still men have started to take action. case in point. At a local shopping center, little girl came out of bathroom freaking out. turns out, a trans person had exposed himself to her.
Three males realized immediately that reporting to police was a waste of time- we invited 'her' back into the mens room, and afterwards shoved her off the property. It is barbaric, but necessary to do things like this now.
the legal system, the courts, and the government offer no protection to women at all. NONE.
Citizen justice is taking over for the vacuum left by feminists, courts, and police, who no longer protect our daughters.And the retribution will escalate, of that I am sure.
But thank God we don't have orange man and his mean tweets.
There is a point where "compassion" stops being compassionate.
I left my life, liberty, and property in San Francisco.
Crook Biden is OK. So... what's the big deal?
Crime is OK now.
-----------------------------
btw- OT: Note how the media (in unison) call Putin's 2014 take-over of Crimea - an "annexation".
Illegal theft of land is not an "annexation." Because Obama was king at the time -- er I mean president, the collective left have settled on "annexation."
Nobody today needs to steal to eat
Technically Gahrie is correct as usual. BUT and this is a very big butt, it is all about incentives. See the SNAP cards like old-fashioned food stamps are really black market currency quickly even instantly converted to cash for drugs, so if a homeless person after doing this extremely normal everyday transaction still wants to eat, yes they "have to" steal to get it or pay some other way such as presenting upright at a food kitchen or as "clean" at a needle and hot dog exchange. It's all about incentives. What YOU do with your Biden crack pipe and and smoking kit is YOUR business.
Thanks USDA! Government is so much more than free cheese!
*Tried* to defecate ... but failed?
Can't believe people are blaming the businesses for not trying hard enough or paying enough. Maybe it is subtle satire. In reality it costs a LOT to employ someone in California now, almost $50K in wages taxes, workers comp and mandatory bennies.
If you can even find willing workers. Which is admittedly difficult in a dystopia like Frisco.
"*Tried* to defecate ... but failed?"
Heroin plays hell with the human enteric nervous system. It's all the Enfamil they use to cut the drug with. Basically it gives adult humans "baby shits"...you go when you don't want to, and when you want to you can't go, hence the sidewalks paved with poo in San Franshitzgo.
'*Tried* to defecate ... but failed?'
Here I sit, broken-hearted...
Male w/machete is back,' the report on one 911 call state
Mail w/spaghetti is black? h/t NAACP
"
People respond to incentives…"
Liberals refuse to acknowledge that.
Hey, that's OK then. But what does a person have to do to lose two legs to diabetes?
Nothing. That's the answer. Refuse to treat diabetes, and adjust your lifestyle, you start losing your parts. As all chronic medical conditions, individual responses lie on a scale of response to treatment. But being a street person would severly limit proper diet and exercise
Used to be that people put up signs: “you loot, we shoot.” Can’t do that now.
You get the behavior you reward.
Sometimes you need to stop and get a professional machete sharpening.
"People threatened employees with guns, knives and sticks. They flung food, screamed, fought and tried to defecate on the floor..."
Cripes! That's as bad as an abortion post comment section at Althouse.
Whole Foods prohibits carrying and wielding weapons in their stores as part of their ESG initiative.
"Poverty" tag? Where's the "Madness" tag?
Something very bad is going on and it's a relatively recent phenomenon. In the past few years, the rate of mental illness among my tenants has gone through the roof. I'd estimate about a quarter of my tenants are suffering from unmanaged mental health issues that cause them to behave in very problematic ways. Suicides and hoarding and lack of cleanliness and lack of respect for their neighbors are now common. One of my tenants would pound a broomstick into her washroom floor for hours and hours on end -- the entire building was vibrating with noise. Another woman drank herself blind, a man in the same building drank himself to death. It has been a very sudden, unexpected change. It really was much, much better just three or four years ago.
I also think that psychiatrists and their drugs are making things worse. Not too long ago, these losers would find Jesus and become barely tolerable people. Now they go to sh*tty psychiatrists, are prescribed dangerous drugs and end up even crazier than before.
Shoplifting under $950 is a misdemeanor in SF.
The DA and SFPD spend their efforts elsewhere.
Ah... woke San Francisco. Laws and laws and laws but no enforcement.
Hence the inmates run the prison and country!
Go woke, go F*ck yourself.
Flat Tire said...
How does President Newsom sound?
5/1/23, 11:19 AM
Like Fraudulent Joe Biden. If you want YOUR city or state to look like San Francisco, have at it.
What Jim said at 1:08 PM
To me the only interesting thing is why don't SF Voters change their Government and put a stop to this? WHy do they support it?
Let someone give us the reasons.
Its sorta like Oregon democrats starting the process to pass a bill decriminalizing homelessness, and allowing them to sue anyone who tries to get them to move. Why would you want such a bill? What is the REAL motive behind it?
The liberal/left obviously loves all the crime/violence/drug use/homelessness in Big Cities. They seem to get off on it. Why? I know they're most "Insulated" from it, but what's their REAL Motivation.
Rwanda revisited. Pass the scalpel, a machete when you can afford it.
Gerda: there are none so blind as those who will not see.
"Tried to deficate" I'll just bet there plenty of Milk of Magnesia on the shelves. These people are so drugged up they don't even know what they need!
Shit doesn’t happen?
Blogger Larry, San Francisco said...
"I live in SF. There is plenty of free food available for the homeless. They don't need to steal to eat."
Agreed. They don't. On any given day you can find endless resources available. But I think Big Mike's theory at 2:25pm above is the correct one. The Mid-Market/Civic Center section of downtown has been awful for a long time, but the fentanyl epidemic has made it even worse. I had reason to be on the street last week at 7:45am and the area was like a carnival of the damned.
They need more gun control. Control those guns!
Plus we need about $seven trillion in reparations on aisle 5.
Shooting people solves a lot of these problems.
Meth and Fentanyl are both so prevalent and so very inexpensive that people who use them (and most use both) are quite literally going insane. Closing our southern border won't fix it. They are coming by post from China in vast quantities for prices so cheap it is shocking. Go have a look around on alibaba.com sometime. Search for drug analogs and pure pharmaceutical chemicals. You will not believe what you find available. I am a former very heavy user, and what I see happening today shocks the hell out of me. Where it ends up I don't know. Hopefully with extremely severe penalties and honest enforcement. It simply MUST come to that eventually, because this is not a tenable situation. You may say "let them all die", and I understand that sentiment, but that group will end up being very large, and it will include many people who did not need to end up destroyed by drugs. These are very powerful and insidious chemicals.
I propose we wall in San Francisco, and maybe Chicago and a few other democrat-controlled cities as well.
Reality is not far off from the setup of the two-part DS9 episode, Past Tense.
At some point, citizens realize the government is hopeless, and take matters into their own hands.
It will be brutal and bloody, but democrats want it that way I suppose. they have encouraged anarchy, and are surprised when they get it.
@Jim, in the mid-19th century San Francisco was famous for using a Committee of Vigilance (vigilantes). It took only a small number of lynchings before crooked politicians and crooks in general decided to ply their crookedness elsewhere. The ones who survived, anyway. Not the best of precedents, but stare decisis, you know.
@KellyM, thanks for the shoutout, but it is unearned. The comment at 2:25 was by Mike (MJB Wolf).
The only appropriate word in the below definition is Wretchedness. And they good citizens of San Fran voted for it. So screw them if they now have regrets and misery.
woes
Plural form of woe
wō
noun
Sorrow or grief; misery. synonym: regret.
Misfortune or wretchedness.
A cause of sorrow or misery; a misfortune.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
When the tech boom was booming, that part of Market St got a lot of City-arranged financial breaks. Officials envisioned all those new young workers would spend money in the area. Perhaps even tart it up. Restaurants and stores moved in. Unfortunately, the tech companies also built kitchens, hired cooks and served free food to employees. Why go outside - except to go home to the Mission? Then the pandemic hit and everyone got used to remote working. That's when Whole Foods opened in that ghost town, incomprehensibly.
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