"All this gray — it’s so dark, it’s so gloomy, so ugly. It’s like seeing creativity and art and the colors of my community disappear right in front of my eyes."

Said Richard Segovia, 71, a longtime resident of the Mission District of San Francisco, quoted in "The house color that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying/A Washington Post color analysis of D.C. found shades of gray permeate neighborhoods where the White population has increased and the Black population has decreased" (WaPo)(free-access link).

But what does gray mean?

A white woman who owns a home decor company asserts: "It all comes down to this perception of wealth and luxury, this idea that neutrals indicate status.... Black homeownership in D.C. has been shrinking for years, which means the very culture of these neighborhoods has been changing. When we see house flippers try to take color out of a house, or a neighborhood, they’re making it more palatable to mostly White people."

But what's behind all this gray?

"It’s so much safer, especially for a woman. You’re not getting in the car with some strange man."

Said a San Francisco woman, quoted in "Robot taxi riders in San Francisco targeted with a new form of harassment/As Alphabet’s Waymo scales up its self-driving service, some riders recount feeling like sitting ducks when strangers interfere with their robot chauffeur" (WaPo)(free-access link).

She experienced the downside of the lack of a man — however "strange" — in the driver's seat:

Stephanie recalled riding home with her sister in one of Waymo’s driverless Jaguar SUVs around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night when a car holding several young men began following them. They drove close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, “Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.”

If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn’t know how to change the robot’s path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn’t send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled.

I assume, with AI, the car can be made responsive to passengers who call out for some kind of help. It should be able to communicate with the police. And the police will be sending out robotic help too (if it's needed). In the end, and it won't be long, the young men yelling "Hey, ladies" and whatnot will cease to exist. It's not that you need the "strange man" back in the taxicab. You just need to quell the strange men out there on the street. It won't be that difficult. This is just a stage, a very brief stage.

"During his 27 years at Apple, he had conceived the minimalist aesthetic of Apple products...."

"Over the past four years, [Jony Ive] has quietly accumulated nearly $90 million worth of real estate on a single city block. The purchases began early in the pandemic, at a time when many tech luminaries were fleeing San Francisco. Mr. Ive found the exodus noxious.... A self-professed control freak, Mr. Ive decided that he had fretted enough over the snugness of each iPhone box, the layout of every Apple Watch component and the curve of every iPad corner. He wanted something new.... [H]e and his future wife, Heather, fell in love with Jackson Square. Many buildings in the neighborhood had survived the city’s 1906 earthquake and fire because there was a whiskey storehouse in the area. City officials had worried the alcohol would catch on fire, so they protected the neighborhood, even as the rest of the city burned.... At Apple, he had worked at Infinite Loop, a sterile office park near the interstate, and Apple Park, a futuristic circle of glass and blonde wood. Both campuses were so isolated that they could have existed anywhere. He wanted his new office to be part of the community."

From "After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own/Five years after leaving Apple, the iPhone designer is forging a new life in San Francisco, one imaginative building at a time" (NYT)(free-access link).

"Democrats need a dad?"

Says Meade, when I read this headline out loud "Is Tim Walz the Midwestern Dad Democrats Need?" (NYT).

It's an episode of "The Ezra Klein Show." From the transcript, here's the "dad" part:

KLEIN: Let me ask you about political geography. There’s a sense of, particularly, the Midwest as “That’s where people are normal. Then they get weirder on the coast.” You’re a former Army guy, right? You’re a former football coach. You’ve got real good Midwestern dad vibes. And so you can talk about the weirdness of Trump and Vance in a way that I think a lot of Democrats would not feel they could and also in a way that they’re like, “Oh, right, maybe we’re not the weird ones.” But I always think this is a very unhealthy dimension of our politics, a sense that there are sort of “real” Americans here, not “real” Americans there, beyond the coast. I’m curious how you think about this, both from the perspective of what it’s allowed you to say — maybe that would not have landed coming from others — and also just, like, what you do about it.

The emphasis there is on the geography, the "Midwestern" part of "Midwestern dad." I wanted the "dad" part, but I'll soldier on: 

"The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether an Oregon city can enforce its ban on public camping against homeless people...."

"San Francisco, which spent over $672 million during the last fiscal year to provide shelter and housing to people experiencing homelessness, told the justices in a 'friend of the court' brief that its inability to enforce its own laws 'has made it more difficult to provide services' to those people.... [In a 2018 case, the 9th Circuit] held that punishing homeless people for public camping would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment if they did not have access to shelter elsewhere. The court of appeals reasoned that, just as the city could not punish someone for their status – being homeless – it also could not punish them for conduct 'that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless.'"

Writes Amy Howe, at SCOTUSblog.

Here's the 9th Circuit opinion: Johnson v. City of Grants Pass.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board quickly responded with "Is There a Constitutional Right to Vagrancy?":

"[T]he one class I hated was hula. It was mostly because the instructor was a flamboyant gay man and it scared me. That was my own internalized homophobia."

Said Patrick Makuakān, describing the "cultural exploration camp" he attended when he was 10.

He's quoted in "'Hula is my church': how Patrick Makuakāne is reinvigorating Hawaii’s traditional dance/Winner of the MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2023 has forged his own style in San Francisco while often subverting stereotypes of hula itself" (The Guardian).

"How Did San Francisco Become the City in a ‘Doom Loop’?"

A NYT article by Soumya Karlamangla. Subheadline: "A conversation with Jesse Barron, who wrote about a high-profile attack in San Francisco and about worries over the city’s future." 

Karlamangla asks Barron:

You write about the “doom loop” idea — that San Francisco will spiral downward because all its problems are interwoven. But downtowns across the country have struggled after pandemic lockdowns. Why do you think that narrative has persisted so strongly in San Francisco?

The narrative? Barron answers:

The most obvious answer is that things are actually going wrong.

"There’s a lot of pent-up envy of San Francisco from a lot of other cities that think of themselves as more important."

Said an unnamed friend of Nathan Heller, quoted in "What Happened to San Francisco, Really? It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask" (The New Yorker).

[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.... 

"Is California headed for a right-wing backlash? This question has hovered over the state’s politics for years now..."

"... as the public’s frustration with homelessness and property crime has escalated.... Last week in San Francisco, London Breed, the city’s mayor, announced a bill to deny welfare benefits to anyone 'suffering from substance-use disorder' who was not enrolled in a drug rehabilitation or treatment program. 'No more handouts without accountability,' Breed said. 'In order to receive resources from our city, you will need to be in a substance-use-disorder program and consistently seeking treatment.'..."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "London Breed’s Cynical Swing to the Right/The mayor of San Francisco, who is up for reëlection next year, is channelling the public’s anger over crime and homelessness" (The New Yorker).

"Donald Trump... is $300 million shy of the cutoff for The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people..."

"... the annual measurement that Trump has obsessed over for decades, relentlessly lying to reporters to try to vault himself higher on the list. His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business.... Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million. Also in trouble: his office buildings, which are down by an estimated $170 million. The majority of that decline comes from 555 California Street, a 1.8 million square-foot complex in the heart of San Francisco, where Trump holds a 30% stake.... The problem is not the property’s performance to date... but... its outlook for the future.... The neighborhood around the building is also struggling.... There is a bright spot in Trump’s portfolio. As fewer people spend time in the office, more are goofing off on the golf course...."

From "Donald Trump Drops Off The Forbes 400 For Second Time In 3 Years" (Forbes).

Here's the Forbes 400. Nice illustration at the top of the page.

How does Forbes know so much? Trump's on trial — a trial that needs to go on for months — over what he's worth.

If you're going to San Francisco...

Link to SF Gate.

Reminds me of a sleeper car on an old train...

The ex-X.

I'm reading "After Investigation and Complaints, Twitter Removes ‘X’ on Headquarters" (NYT).

One complaint described “extremely intense white stroboscopic light” that was “causing distress and nausea.”

Another wrote that the sign looked “really unstable,” adding that “a decent earthquake is going to send that thing down on the street!”

"It’s the leaning tower of San Francisco. The Bay Area’s Millennium Tower has only continued to tilt further..."

"... and sink deeper west in spite of architects’ best efforts to steady the ritzy building. The multimillion-dollar-per-unit tower is now leaning more than 29 inches at the corner of Fremont and Mission streets — a slant over half an inch deeper than previously revealed.... The half-inch tilt was reportedly gained while engineers dug beneath the sinking condominium earlier this year to support the weight of the tower — which was built atop a former landfill — along its two sides...."

The NY Post reports.

"Is this a bad time to point out that 'moving to San Francisco in the 1940s' almost certainly means being part of the wave of black arrivals who took cheap houses from the Japanese people..."

"... who had been deported to quickly convert Japantown into the Western Addition and Fillmore? Are those black families going to pass those reparations on to the Japanese families they dispossessed?"

That's the top-rated comment on the NYT article "Can Reparations Bring Black Residents Back to San Francisco? San Francisco has proposed the nation’s most ambitious reparations plan, including $5 million cash payments and housing aid that aims to bring people back."

"What the f—k happened to this place?"

Said Dave Chappelle, as quoted in "'What the f—k happened to this place?': Dave Chappelle rails on San Francisco at surprise show SFGATE culture editor Dan Gentile saw the controversial comedian's last-minute San Francisco set" (SFGate).

He told a story about eating at an Indian restaurant in the Tenderloin a few nights earlier, only to have someone defecate in front of the restaurant as he was walking in. San Francisco has become “half ‘Glee,’ half zombie movie,” he said, and he remarked that the whole city is the Tenderloin now. “Y’all [N-words] need a Batman!” he exclaimed. 

He wasn’t aware of the incident of a business owner hosing down a homeless person and had to have the crowd explain it. He pivoted quickly, saying he now remembered watching the video on YouTube … a hundred times. The misdirection was followed by a cruel snicker and a trademark slap of the mic against his thigh....

"People threatened employees with guns, knives and sticks. They flung food, screamed, fought and tried to defecate on the floor..."

"... according to records of 568 emergency calls over 13 months, many depicting scenes of mayhem. 'Male w/machete is back,' the report on one 911 call states.... A man with a four-inch knife attacked several security guards, then sprayed store employees with foam from a fire extinguisher, according to a third...." 

I'm reading "In San Francisco, a Troubled Year at a Whole Foods Market Reflects a City’s Woes" (WNYUZ).

"The suspect is not a deranged lunatic or career criminal left free to roam the hills of the city by a district attorney who left office nine months ago..."

".. but, rather, a fellow tech entrepreneur with whom [tech executive Bob] Lee was familiar.... [This] will not quiet the doomsayers who see San Francisco as a post-apocalyptic zombie set filled with violent psychotic homeless people.... The fear of crime often gets presented as a response to numbers—murder rates, numbers of robberies, carjackings, and assaults—but it’s primarily an anecdotal phenomenon that very often runs counter to what all the metrics would suggest. Today, the bulk of the fearmongering appears to exist online, where an informal rubric of virality determines how much the country, at large, hears about one crime or another.... [V]iolent crimes will happen, they will be sensationalized by the local media, which will blame the progressive district attorney; this, in turn, will activate local online networks, which, most likely, will also blame the progressive district attorney.... The future of how crime—especially violent crime—is handled in big American cities will be determined along the fault line between those progressive voters and the angry residents who feel as if all the criminals are being dumped on their block once they get released by a lenient district attorney...."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang in "Bob Lee’s Murder and San Francisco’s So-Called Crime Epidemic/The killing of a tech executive reveals the cycle of outrage that puts enormous pressure on progressive district attorneys" (The New Yorker).

The cycle of anecdotalism, fearmongering, sensationalism, and blaming doesn't operate only against progressives. Progressives engage in it too, for example, when guns are used.

"Grief reigns in the kingdom of loss. I refer to not only the loss of a loved one but also the loss of a hope, a dream, or love itself."

"It seems we don’t finish grieving, but merely finish for now; we process it in layers. One day (not today) I’m going to write a short story about a vending machine that serves up Just the Right Amount of Grief. You know, the perfect amount that you can handle in a moment to move yourself along, but not so much that you’ll be caught in an undertow."

That's item #13 on "MONICA LEWINSKY: 25 'RANDOMS' ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BILL CLINTON CALAMITY/My name became public 25 years ago this week. What have I observed and learned in the quarter century since? Oh, plenty" (Vanity Fair).

Okay, let me try to write 25 "Randoms" on the text printed above:

"Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America."

"On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy... [The] downtown business district — the bedrock of its economy and tax base — revolves around a technology industry that is uniquely equipped and enthusiastic about letting workers stay home indefinitely.... Business groups and city leaders hope to recast the urban core as a more residential neighborhood built around people as well as businesses but leave out that office rents would probably have to plunge for those plans to be viable...."

From "What Comes Next for the Most Empty Downtown in America/Tech workers are still at home. The $17 salad place is expanding into the suburbs. So what is left in San Francisco?" (NYT).

From the comments over there, which I will characterize as left and right, politically:

The left-wing view: "The Techies came to town, made their money, drove up real estate prices and left. They strip-mined the culture, leaving behind a shell of what was once the most vibrant city on the West Coast. There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco. That brought depth and texture to the city, but those people are gone. It became all about money. And what's a book store, anyway?"

The right-wing view: "Homelessness receives a passing reference in this article. Crime is basically ignored. But these are significant quality of life factors contributing to the exodus of companies and office workers away from major US cities, including SF. Post-2020 life in our country is a lot different than before, in many ways not for the better."

"I walk around the neighborhood that encouraged me for so many decades, and I see the reminders of Harvey and the Rainbow Honor Walk, celebrating famous queer and trans people."

"I just can’t help but think that soon there will be a time when people walking up and down the street will have no clue what this is all about."

Said Cleve Jones, who lived in the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco for 50 years before moving out of the city altogether, to live in a small house with a garden, quoted in "Once a Crucial Refuge, 'Gayborhoods' Lose L.G.B.T.Q. Residents in Major Cities/Many are choosing to live elsewhere in search of cheaper housing and better amenities. They are finding growing acceptance in other communities after decades of political and social changes" (NYT).

It's not just about housing costs: