[T]he city’s influence can also be measured by its long shadow in Democratic politics. San Francisco, it’s easy to forget, is a small city... Its social sphere is startlingly compressed.... From this tiny ecosystem the political careers of the nation’s Vice-President, the governor of its most populous state, the recent longtime Speaker of the House, and (until last month) the most senior Democratic member of the Senate emerged....
“You might have heard of a book called ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ ” Joel Engardio, a slender, balding, bearded man in his early fifties and a supervisor for San Francisco’s Sunset District, told a crowd a few weeks ago. He wore a blue blazer, with a Board of Supervisors pin on his lapel. “The story of San Francisco politics could have a similar title: ‘A Million Shades of Blue.’ You see, Democrats in San Francisco like to inflict sadistic pain on each other.... Now, a San Francisco moderate would be considered liberal anywhere else, and a San Francisco progressive would be considered super far left anywhere else. In San Francisco, they’re both Democrats. But they spar as if they were opposing political parties.”...
Much more at the link, including a discussion of the extreme reaction to the Covid 19 lockdown, the rise of "certain genres of" theft, and fentanyl.
“The pandemic and fentanyl collided,” Lydia Bransten, the executive director of the Gubbio Project, which offers coffee, health services, and a safe place to nap to a hundred homeless people a day, told me. Congregate shelters were at severely reduced capacity. “People in the throes of addiction were hanging out with other people in the throes of addiction without the rest of the community. Then the city reopened, and housed people coming out of their homes were confronted with this scene of absolute devastation. And they’re flabbergasted: ‘How could this happen? We’ve spent all this money!’... It was a feeling of "Look at these people. Clearly nothing’s working.'"
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Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States
"Fellow Americans"
(He’s been sick, I think his wife will bring us some chicken soup)
Plastic people
Oh baby, how you’re such a drag
I know it’s hard to defend an unpopular policy every once in awhile
Take a day and walk around
Watch the Nazis run your town
Then go home and check yourself
You think we're singing 'bout someone else
housed people coming out of their homes were confronted with this scene of absolute devastation. And they’re flabbergasted
In other words, the media kept the situation quiet as long as it could...
Tags: "I got mine. Screw you." "I hated my hometown so I moved here." "My farts smell great."
San Francisco and all of California's glamour cities attract wannabes and dreamers. They routinely hate where ever they came from. They hate farms, they hate country music, they hate NASCAR, they (de facto) hate children, and they hate the "American Dream" lifestyle.
Some of this is arguably "progressive" but it's mostly just detached from the functional foundations of life, and/or reveals unhappy people who see the grass as greener on the other side of the fence. When you put a bunch of like-minded souls together they turn into SF: a city full of hateful know-it-alls who all feel superior but who actually can't agree on anything.
"He wore a blue blazer . . ." The new Yorker loves sartorial detail, so lets look at atate senator Scott Weiner in leather bondage wear:
https://www.pride.com/politics/scott-wiener-folsom-leather-pictures#rebelltitem1
The last republican mayor of San Francisco left office in 1964.
There are only democrats on the current Board of Supervisors and they are all whackos.
As much as I love the City (my family goes way back there, and I spent much of my life there), this is a self-owned disaster.
Radical lefties vote for radical lefties and everyone wonders why things don't get better.
My only words of advice: support Swensen's Ice Cream on Russian Hill. Best in the world.
Even though "nothing is working" and SF wasted a lot of money on bullshit, they won't change course.
Hopefully they don't infect the parts of the country that are doing OK.
After living in San Francisco for almost 30 years, but before the pandemic, I think the book that best sums up the place is Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love. It's an SF history lesson that features the City's love affair with politics, and mysticism, in its mix. And, while it doesn't tell Harvey Milk's story accurately, it's still a good place to get a view of the NewAge movement's landscape.
Take out the mysticism, and Dave Chappelle described the place pretty well. As you listen to him, remember: that was 2004. It's gone downhill since then.
Is it really a mystery "What happed to SF"?
It's run by CRAZY liberals in a CRAZY liberal state. The downward trajectory was not hard to follow.
Problem for them is liberals are so entrenched in their stupid beliefs, they won't be able to fix anything. San Francisco happened to San Francisco. Same with all major cities in the US. CHI, MKE, Philly, NYC...
When I was growing up, San Francisco was "The City". If I were a weeper, I'd be crying now. It was always liberal, or radical if you lived on the Haight, or in the Castro, but there was a sense of pragmatism combined with civic virtue that got things done. The rudder might have been radical, but the keel of the ship was multi-generational old money made in 1849-1899. Hearsts, Crockers, Stanfords, Huningtons, Hopkins, Straus's. New Billionaires moved in without a stake in the community. Now the ship is without a keel, it's a catamaran, and they ae stable in only two positions. Straight up and straight down
It’s a shithole.
And it’s going to get worse when all the commercial buildings start going through foreclosure or deeds in lieu of foreclosure. The owners can’t refinance with no rental stream, and the banks don’t want the properties either. No one’s buying.
Tax revenues are going to drop through the floor (which has already started.
Ugh used to be a beautiful city.
We need more feel good stories like this from The New Yorker. Austin sucks. It is full of envy and surrounded by MAGA people. Stay in San Francisco. Matter of fact, cancel your plans for SXSW. Why do Franklins’s when you can do Scomas?
I know a couple that lived on the ocean in SF for twenty years. They were liberal, but RFK, liberal. Smart. Festival people. Artists. They fled in 2021. Bought a car and head EAST to find freedom after the crazy reaction to COVID, and the vaccine mandates.
SF's craziness is not just it's leadership. It's the people. If you didn't take the poison vaccine you we're excluded from everything on the interpersonal level. People to didn't take the mRNA were vilified and isolated. The stories they tell be about why the left are insane.
They ended up in a small town in Southern New Hampshire. And they are not the only refugees from liberal states. Went to visit them last year, and met friends of theirs that had recently left Massachusetts to escape the vaccine mandates for themselves and their children.
housed people coming out of their homes were confronted with this scene of absolute devastation. And they’re flabbergasted
But nobody in SF has the self-awareness to admit they were wrong about everything and that's why it deteriorated. But imagine if you had a forward political looking glass that showed they real results of policies if implemented.
I'm sure if the people of SF had a forward view, rather than a post pandemic rear view...they wouldn't have change course.
The model for San Francisco is Baltimore and the Pelosis had a hand in the destruction of that city, too.
San Francisco is a small city? It has 800,000+ people, making it #17 in size in the United States. Furthermore, the metro is 4.6 million. I suppose it is small as a geographic area, but we generally do not classify city size based on the square footage. The population is what matters; the land it covers is trivia.
Cities exist because there is a reason for the city to exist. The thing is urbanization has an inertia attached to it, so once the city is there it tends to stay there, even after the justification for its existence has reduced or disappeared. This inertia will not last forever. Babylon is ruins. Sparta is ruins. Memphis is just a place for tourists. And it is not just the great cities of antiquity. Detroit is physically shrinking with some of its land reduced to farming and anyone who can move out into the suburbs has already done so. There's no reason to think San Francisco is immune. The bay is valuable and justifies there being a settlement there, but does it justify 4.6 million people? Probably not. And once they start to leave, it is difficult to get them to come back.
The Left never admits defeat. That's part of the problem.
The Dems destroyed America's most beautiful city.
Coit Tower envy.
A small tower the height of a tall tower.
The Crack Emcee said...
Carousel Ballroom
Fillmore West
Cow Palace
Some great venues
San Francisco has gone to hell and the ones who are in charge took it there. And in their blindness, all they can cry is "What happened to our city", with never a thought that their insane policies are exactly what happened to their city. In the final analysis, the people of San Francisco are getting exactly what they voted for....good and hard. And I hate it because my brother and his partner live there, and they are smart enough to see it....but not yet desperate enough to move to a saner clime. I hope they stay safe.
Blogger AlbertAnonymous said...
It’s a shithole. And it’s going to get worse when all the commercial buildings start going through foreclosure or deeds in lieu of foreclosure. The owners can’t refinance with no rental stream, and the banks don’t want the properties either. No one’s buying. Tax revenues are going to drop through the floor (which has already started.
Question is what happens to the rest of the country economically when all these empty downtown business high rises become worthless? At some point the reality has to hit. I'd imagine it's the same in Chicago. It certainly is in Milwaukee.
On the flip side, when you are in sane red markets like Waukesha County, WI, there is no housing inventory because nobody is moving, and refinanced at a historically low rate in 2021. Also, commercial construction is booming.
Currently in Brookfield, WI they are developing 120 acres into the "Poplar Creek Town Center". Construction is moving fast. Apartments, Retail, Restaurants, Hotels, and Office Space. I'm sure it's not going to be cheap to live there. Of course Brookfield is a red community.
Perhaps when the Poplar Creek Town Center is completed they will finally build a wall at 124th Street.
Search: "Soros": Not found
Search: "Chesa Boudin": one mention
Search: "shoplifting": one mention
Search "Social Justice": Not found
Envy? Why would any other city envy the Titanic of the cities?
San Fran manufactured their own iceburg and then struck it... And dies from a thousand leaks.
And a third generation of Levi S money, who is now worth billions is in the house of representatives spouting foolishness for the whole nation.
But he is now from New York, no for San Fran Dan Goldman?
And they’re flabbergasted: ‘How could this happen? We’ve spent all this money!’... It was a feeling of "Look at these people. Clearly nothing’s working.'"
So... they'll spend even more money on what's already not working and end up wondering what went wrong.
Or, shorter: I'll take "Democrats" for $1000, Alex.
A lot of commercial real estate in SF has been sold recently at fire-sale prices, because the "owners" were leveraged to the hilt and couldn't make their interest payments. But someone was willing to buy those distressed properties. I wonder if that someone might be connected to the someones who made the properties distressed in the first place. What if you could just "turn off" everything that made property in a city valuable, buy that property, and then turn the city back on? You'd get rich! Or, I should say, you'd get richer.
I think SF will be OK. In a few years, when its new owners turn it back on.
Somehow I've managed to avoid it- flew out of SFO but only once, drove through on a trip to Napa, or for golf in Hayward and Monterey, lots of business in Palo Alto and Menlo. Not sure I'll ever make it for a visit...
I was in SF for a few weeks last month. While in town I canvased nearly every neighborhood at various hours of the day. The TL is still the TL, the same squalid place that Kerouac wrote about in the 1950s. There is rampant drug use in plain sight and I may have even seen a few dead bodies between the tents and piles of garbage that littered the gutters and sidewalks.
The rest of the city is cleaner and more lively than I can remember it being in nearly 20 years. The swathes of tents from only a year ago have nearly all been cleared out and replaced with jagged boulders. I saw a strong police presence cracking down on vagrancy pretty much everywhere except for the TL.
I was told while visiting a dive bar I used to haunt in my 20s that vigilantes are quite active in the city these days and there have been brutal beatings and even murders of criminals. I wasn't able to verify this in any news sources but I have no reason to believe it's not true.
I've always been a bit of a contrarian and it seems I'm spending time in SF as many are allegedly fleeing. The population has apparently declined by roughly 10% since the start of Covid-19 which puts it back to the level of… 2010. While the GDP has continued to grow.
In 2022 the city itself had a GDP of $236bn(+1.2%) which is comparable to Greece and a GDP/capita of $290,000 which puts it in line with basically nowhere else on earth (Monaco was $230k in 2022).
Tales of the demise of San Francisco seem to be greatly exaggerated…
Joe Smith said...
"The last republican mayor of San Francisco left office in 1964.
There are only democrats on the current Board of Supervisors and they are all whackos."
WIKIPEDIA: John Barbagelata (March 29, 1919 – March 19, 1994) ,...was the last Republican to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in 1973.
Barbagelata ran for mayor in 1975 against progressive candidate George Moscone, promising low taxes, a crackdown on crime, and a fight against corruption and "irresponsible City spending". He lost by fewer than 5,000 votes. For the rest of his life, Barbagelata maintained that the Peoples Temple far-left religious cult, led by Jim Jones, committed election fraud in the 1975 election by busing in out-of-town church members to double- and triple-vote for Moscone under the names of dead voters.
He retired from politics in 1978, returning briefly in the late 1980s to promote a successful referendum creating term limits for City Supervisors."
I keep saying the story of Harvey Milk has not been told, and this is more evidence that I've not been alone in saying so. This was the stolen election he also rose to power under (Barbagelata was right) because, we now know, Milk was definitely a cult member.
'And, while it doesn't tell Harvey Milk's story accurately...'
So you say they leave out the part about him raping underage teen boys?
That part?
But hey, he got his own postage stamp and a fucking navy ship named after him.
The gay mafia runs this country...
Static Ping said...
San Francisco is a small city? It has 800,000+ people, making it #17 in size in the United States. Furthermore, the metro is 4.6 million. I suppose it is small as a geographic area, but we generally do not classify city size based on the square footage. The population is what matters; the land it covers is trivia.
7 square miles.
Far from universally progressive, San Francisco is the embodiment of the capitalist wing of the Democratic party. Like all good capitalists they believe they have every right to make money hand over fist while their fellow citizens have every right to overdose on their drug of choice and rot to death living on city streets.
@ Crack
Non-Bay Area folks have no idea about how mixed up the Dem politicians were with Jones.
From left-wing Wikipedia, no less:
Jones became active in San Francisco politics and was able to gain contact with prominent local and state politicians. Thanks to their growing numbers, Jones and Peoples Temple played an instrumental role in George Moscone's election as mayor in 1975. Moscone subsequently appointed Jones as the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.[21][142][143]
Jones hosted local political figures at his San Francisco apartment for discussions.[144] In September 1976, Assemblyman Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies at a large testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally.[145] At that dinner, Willie Brown touted Jones as "what you should see every day when you look in the mirror" and said he was a combination of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Mao.[146] Harvey Milk spoke to audiences during political rallies held at the Temple,[147] and he wrote to Jones after one such visit:
"Rev Jim, It may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave.[144]"
Through his connections with California politicians, Jones was able to establish contacts with key national political figures. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on his campaign plane days before the 1976 election, leading Mondale to publicly praise the Temple.[142][143] First Lady Rosalynn Carter met with Jones on multiple occasions, corresponded with him about Cuba, and spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco headquarters—where he received louder applause than she did.[142][148][149] Jones forged alliances with key columnists and others at the San Francisco Chronicle and other press outlets that gave Jones favorable press during his early years in California.[150]
a GDP/capita of $290,000 which puts it in line with basically nowhere else on earth
It’s not just the richest place on earth, it’s the greatest mass concentration of wealth in human history.
Wow, Rich. Did you by any chance stroll along Market St.? How about 16th St. Mission BART? It's been a long time (over 20 years) since I last worked around there, so pre-fentanyl, but I can still remember dodging the discarded "sharps" and the little puddles of vomit around that station. The Chron once featured a full-color front-page photo of it, calling the heroin capital of the city. TL was more crack.
As for Market, even in my time it was just long blocks of nothing but boarded-up (or roller-doored) buildings, and the smell of urine was pervasive, despite the then-new nifty French public toilets.
From this tiny ecosystem the political careers of the nation’s Vice-President, the governor of its most populous state, the recent longtime Speaker of the House, and (until last month) the most senior Democratic member of the Senate emerged
Tinier than a tiny boulder I guess.
Rich said...
There is rampant drug use in plain sight and I may have even seen a few dead bodies between the tents and piles of garbage that littered the gutters and sidewalks.
I was told while visiting a dive bar I used to haunt in my 20s that vigilantes are quite active in the city these days and there have been brutal beatings and even murders of criminals. I wasn't able to verify this in any news sources but I have no reason to believe it's not true....
...Tales of the demise of San Francisco seem to be greatly exaggerated…
I guess active vigilantes in the absence of law enforcement, dead bodies, and open drug use doesn't count as a demise, even though the Tenderloin District is in the heart of the city. It's surprising the SF Vegan population hasn't insisted on changing the name.
This is why although I've lived here 60 years now, I'm selling the beautiful house and land I love and moving to a free state.
Joe Smith said... "My only words of advice: support Swensen's Ice Cream on Russian Hill. Best in the world."
When I was a grad student at UNC-CH in the late seventies, Swensen's opened an ice cream store in Carolina Square on W. Franklin Street. Absolutely fantastic ice cream, especially their black raspberry, and wonderful concoctions like the Coit Tower, etc. I cannot fathom how such a wonderful business manages to expand to many locations so quickly back at that time, and then basically collapse so that the original SF store is all that is left now in the US (there are still franchise locations in 9 countries of SE Asia).
Regarding SF in general, it is the epitome of so many locations where in decades past, hard work went into establishing a beautiful and thriving economy and living situation, but then followed more recently by a large influx of those with no ambition whatsoever except to live in and soak up the benefits of those whose hard work and ethics made the place worth living in to begin with. Rich talks about how reports of SF's demise are premature, but it's really on its way down - it just takes time to destroy a once-thriving place; see: Detroit.
@ Michelle: It’s a crisis of mental health and addiction. Also doesn’t help that other cities and states have been shipping busses of their homeless with 1-way tickets to SF for decades and the overly generous handouts given to homeless by previous mayors (Gavin Newsom) served as a magnet for these types.
People talk a lot about affordable housing and the fact that it doesn’t exist in San Francisco as a cause for the mess. Go spend a few minutes walking through the TL (as I recently did) and you’ll see it’s not housing or jobs that these people need it’s serious mental health treatment.
What they need is to be institutionalized but that will never happen because it’s been ruled unconstitutional in the US.
San Francisco will always have the benefit of location. One can spend time at the beach, wonderful national parks, skiing in Lake Tahoe in the winter, short drive to Napa Valley, the list goes on. I think that alone can help sustain a city like SF.
@GW: I would argue that San Francisco’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: extreme tolerance.
I also have my suspicions that it’s wealthy San Franciscans (and Californians) who are in part pushing the nasty narratives about the city and state’s demise.
The politicians have made many bad decisions and the radical tolerance and rampant taxation have gone too far. Talented people and companies are leaving and the place is/was a dystopian mess during Covid-19.
The bad press coverage has finally got the politicians to wake up at take action.
If Uncle Gavin wants to be president he’s not going to be able to do it against the backdrop of a dystopian SF and California.
I don’t think he’s electable at the national level but if he’s going to seriously turn California around, I’ll take it.
Perhaps he’s had a ‘road to Damascus moment’, we’ll see.
In the meantime I’m always excited to be in SF. Warts and all…
There’s a lot of ruin in a city.
Joe Smith said...
"You say they leave out the part about him raping underage teen boys?"
Yeah, that, too.
"You see, Democrats in San Francisco like to inflict sadistic pain on each other"
Brings to mind....
"The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends."
--Ludwig von Mises
"One can spend time at the beach, wonderful national parks, skiing in Lake Tahoe in the winter, short drive to Napa Valley, the list goes on."
Leaving out for the time being that the left insists that travelling is bad for the planet and makes Greta cry, the best selling point for any specific location is what's there, not what you have to leave to find someplace else. But then again, if you choose to live in a sewer, it's nice to have options for temporary escape, I suppose.
Trans Francisco
7 square miles
That's about 4,500 acres. My home state of Kansas has over 1,100 farms larger that 5,000 acres. So, not so big.
"San Francisco and all of California's glamour cities attract wannabes and dreamers. They routinely hate where ever they came from. "
My brother in a nutshell. Moved to Ess Eff back in the 70's. When he comes back to Minneapolis, he puts the city down. He's one of those folks who complains how the Nicollet Mall has no street-level shops or restaurants -- it does. But of course it's not the same as it was back in the 70's, but that's because nearly all of the original buildings were torn down and replaced with skyscrapers.
Today, it's known as the Central Business District, about a 10-block area from fourth to 14th Street, with headquarters for Target, Xcel Energy, US Bank and other such companies that generate nearly a half-trillion in revenue every year.
If he understood the city -- he doesn't -- he'd realize that Nicollet, from 14th street all that to Lake Street is what the Central Business District used to be like. A walkable street, known as Eat Street, crammed full of street-level shops and restaurants that's nearly three miles long. And Lake Street is like that too. As is Central Ave in NE Minneapolis and it's more like six miles long.
But he's gay and as Enigma said, they hate where they came from. Funny thing about San Francisco, their Central Business District is exactly like Minneapolis's, or Denver's or Atlanta's or any other large city in America, except we have skyways (eight miles of walkable restaurants and shops). But it's easier to stroke one's internalized homophobia than to face reality. There are few -- if any -- people on Earth more closed-minded than Progressives. For the record, I love my brother dearly and wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for him.
No one envies San Francisco. No one.
"I cannot fathom how such a wonderful business manages to expand to many locations so quickly back at that time, and then basically collapse so that the original SF store is all that is left now in the US (there are still franchise locations in 9 countries of SE Asia)."
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/how-swensens-ice-cream-survived-17317342.php
Btw, I've met the new owners and they are very nice...
It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask.
Or you can ask The Crack Emcee, who got there in the 70s and left in the 2010s, what went wrong - and know you're going to get the right answer:
"Crucially, the Crack Emcee's work (he also put out the underground tape Newt Hates Me a few years ago) is a product of its geography — pretentious San Francisco — yet speaks to issues far beyond the local. San Francisco has long pimped the lie of its being highly cultured, tolerant, progressive, livable, yet its class and racial lines, its poverty and desperation, are sharply evident. The influx of Silicon Valley wealth has stripped away the city's cool façade, laying bare the San Francisco that lives beyond the city's streetcars, sourdough and shopworn hippie myths. This is the San Francisco you hear in the Crack Emcee's music — the city of shadowy and blatant racism; the city of overcrowded, dirty streets where the have-nots of every hue, accent and sexuality struggle endlessly just to get close enough to the surface of the water to maintain the fantasy of someday raising their heads above it. S.F. = America"
JK Brown said...
"The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends."
That's GOOD.
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