San Francisco's Got Problems. There's No Need To Exaggerate Them for Political Reasons.
If you don't like San Francisco, that's fine, but don't tell tall tales about it.
To hear conservatives describe the state of affairs in San Francisco, you'd think the City by the Bay is a harrowing dystopia along the lines of San Salvador, Juarez, St. Louis or Detroit. I can't tell you how many people have warned me against spending time there—or talked about the "poop app" that helps visitors avoid human feces on the sidewalks.
"San Francisco is sunk in a rancid drug-ravaged pit of human misery and city leaders have no idea how to pull themselves out of it," wrote David Marcus in his Fox News column last year. He knows why: "(B)ecause the progressive lunatics running the city believe that every criminal is a victim."
This week, I read a Twitter debate about which American city would essentially collapse under the weight of its own lunacy. Predictably, San Francisco topped the list. "Look what's happened to San Francisco," Donald Trump said during a 2020 campaign stop in Bakersfield. "It's worse than a slum, there's no slum like that."
I suspect that many of the San Francisco doom-tellers haven't been there, but even many who have joined the chorus. Bay Area native Michael Shellenberger's well-known book is called San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. He makes some solid points—progressives do wreck everything they touch and San Francisco has tons of problems—but his title promotes the "it's a nightmare" theme.
I travel to San Francisco regularly and have visited almost every corner of the city. I spent most of last week there for a wedding on Nob Hill and traipsed around several neighborhoods: Chinatown, North Beach, Alamo Square, and South of Market (SoMa). Not only did I live to tell about it, but left with warm fuzzies even after wandering its streets late at night.
San Francisco remains (arguably) the most beautiful city in the country. Its parks are lovely and mostly orderly and clean. On Sunday, we played miniature golf and frequented food trucks, along with hundreds of young families. People were generally friendly and the restaurants and nightlife were fabulous. Most neighborhoods are surprisingly quiet and safe.
The city's critics aren't entirely wrong, of course. Locals warned us not to leave anything in our cars given surging property crimes. The Tenderloin—the notoriously downtrodden downtown neighborhood—is an open sewer of drug dealing and panhandling, just as critics say. Homeless tents line a portion of Market Street near the main shopping drag. But is it fair to define an entire city that way?
Whenever I mention this, people misunderstand. Yes, some portions of the city are a mess. Yes, the city faces major property crime and homelessness problems. Just this week, the National Guard and California Highway Patrol were sent in to shut down open-air drug markets. Major retailers are exiting because of the theft problem. But conservatives undermine their case when they overstate things.
Simply put, conservatives bash San Francisco because of the city's progressive politics, just as liberals portray Republican states such as Texas as redoubts of sexism and racism. For instance, California lawmakers have banned official travel to 22 supposedly backward states. In both cases, politically minded people embrace stupid narratives that confirm their biases.
The San Francisco Chronicle looked at San Francisco's crime data in 2022 and found that crime rates soared after lockdowns temporarily turned the city into a ghost town, but overall rates have been in a downward trend over five years. The murder rate has increased since the end of COVID, but the city's murder rate is "towards the bottom for major cities," Police Chief Bill Scott told a local CNN affiliate.
It's a mixed bag, but my sense is the city government's lackadaisical approach toward lower-level crime and homelessness has created a real sense of civic disorder. Many property crimes aren't reported, so the crime problem is deeper than the data suggest. Residents understandably are feeling jittery about their overall safety.
So after a high-profile killing—such as when tech entrepreneur Bob Lee was stabbed to death this month on a downtown street—it feeds the narrative of a terribly dangerous city, even if this might not have been a random attack. None of my caveats are meant to downplay the seriousness of the crime problem but to put the matter in perspective.
I lived in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s and 1980s—when the murder epidemic was so severe that local newspapers published a death toll on the front pages every day. Crime rates have fallen dramatically nationwide since then, but have increased in recent years. Crime and homelessness partly explain why San Francisco has lost so much population, but crime isn't nearly as bad as those days.
Marcus lives in West Virginia, which has endured an appalling opioid overdose crisis. Yet that hardly defines an entire state. Isn't it better to figure out how to deal with these problems rather than just score partisan political points? My sense in San Francisco's critics despise the city's politics, so they jump on every bad event to conform to their narrative.
San Francisco is unlikely to ever become a conservative paradise, but even the politics there is self-correcting. Last year, voters recalled their soft-on-crime district attorney Chesa Boudin. The newly appointed DA has vowed to clean up the streets. Note the National Guard intervention mentioned above. If you don't like San Francisco, that's fine, but don't spread tall tales about it.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
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How much of the “decline in crime” is due to prosecutors deciding to not prosecute much of anything?
Stealing $900 worth of merch is a crime but SF does not care about it.
Exactly. If the crime isn’t reported, it doesn’t exist.
Sort of like the approach the Broward County sheriff took towards juvenile crime that eventually led to the Stoneman school shooting.
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Everyone knows that they cook the books on crime reports in proggie cities. reporting this numbers with a straight face reveals a profound lack of seriousness. It’s like reporting that china had only 5k death from the wuflu, just look at their self-reported numbers onit!
To be fair, has Greenhut EVER been a serious columnist?
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It is easy to underreport theft when victims realize the police have been instructed to do nothing. But it is harder to underreport homicides. (Though it has been pointed out that some murderous assaults that would have added to the murder rate 10 years ago nowadays can be saved by improved emergency treatment.)
It’s pretty easy to I derreport homicides. You just don’t report them. The FBI don’t know.
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Let’s be clear here. Greenhut lives in Sacramento and knows shit next to nothing about what is going on in the Bay area. Until last year I spent several days a month there. Greenhut is no different than the asshole Reason authors during the Boudin recall, using their New York Times articles to insist that SF people are wrong about what is happening to their cities. It is pathetic, and it is insulting.
https://reason.com/2022/06/08/prosecutorial-reform-recall-san-francisco-district-attorney-chesa-boudin/?comments=true#comment-9534569
Greenhut is pretty clearly the west coast version of Park Slope Welchie Boy.
When you can live pretty much anywhere in America you want to and still easily do your job (remotely submitting one or two pieces a week for publication) and you choose to live in a place like New York City or California, there is obviously a readon for that. And it sure as hell isn’t because you cherish your personal freedom!
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I live in a pretty affluent suburb of Sacramento. The real estate market has been very good because of all the people leaving San Fran for here. People that can are leaving. Just like NYC, but no crime problem in NYC say all the people that want to hide the degradation behind liberal run cities just like Greenhut is trying to do in this article.
This is a worthless article, even for Reason. SF is such a blighted shitpile that now Whole Foods, Nordstrom, and Rite Aid are all pulling out. With likely more to come.
Those are undoubtedly right wing companies.
It isn’t that it is reported or not, it is how it is classed. Some felony level crimes are down to misdemeanors and many misdemeanors are effectively off the books because of the threshold for reporting; namely how much you have to steal to be charged. Used to be if you racked up a series of petty crimes; not all are reported anymore; you would eventually receive a real charge.
So, no crime has actually never gone down, they just increased the threshold by which you can be charged with a crime.
It’s hard to overstate the problem in San Fran. Like when your kid get’s ready to go to school and comes back in because a crazed druggie is shooting up on your front porch. Or when you watch a thief break into your car, hot wire it and steal it all while you’re on hold with the police who never come.
But god forbid you defend your property. I’m sure the DA would be all over anyone that dared to do that.
Indeed. Although the entrepreneur in me thinks there might be a real opportunity it’s here for a ‘cleaning service’, for when one does to defend themselves, or their property.
Cool story, bro. Make that up on the fly? Way to prove the OP’s point.
Crime victims are an invention of the right.
This article is a joke. SF is a blighted disaster. Why do you think so many big box stores are pulling out. FFS, they’re losing Whole Foods and Nordstrom now. If there was ever a city made for those stores, it’s SF. But there is no more rule of law there, so they’re leaving because they can’t make money.
Like when your kid get’s ready to go to school and comes back in because a crazed druggie is shooting up on your front porch.
But that doesn’t happen on Nob Hill, which is the important thing.
The important thing is it isn’t happening in the touristy spots in San Francisco or the nice neighborhoods where people like Pelosi live.
Fuck everyone else, they shouldn’t believe their lying eyes.
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Pelosi had a druggie break into her house….
Did they finally determine that druggy wasn’t invited?
I seem to recall that was what you were saying back when that story was breaking, and I’ll admit I don’t keep up with stories about Pelosi’s husband that closely because he literally doesn’t matter to me at all.
The last word I heard on it was that it was a druggie break-in. I am more inclined to believe those alternate theories, but don’t recall any more clarfiying details being presented. The way the story was presented, changed, and died felt very controlled.
More like the hard right spawned a thousand baseless, insane theories, then went silent when the evidence showed it was a break-in and aggravated assault.
Note that pretty much everyone not submerged in the alternate reality of the hard right thought that was the story all along.
They went silent because he was one of the Qanon wackos. Too close for comfort!
“Last year, voters recalled their soft-on-crime district attorney Chesa Boudin.”
An unfortunate setback for the Koch / Soros / Reason #FreeTheCriminals & #EmptyThePrisons agenda. 🙁
Are you anxious om who replaces Kim Foxx?
Whoops. Gardner not Foxx.
The MO legislature is trying to pass a bill to prevent her from just running for office again in the next election cycle. But the next election cycle isn’t until 2024. We have ‘jungle’ primaries, so the eventual choice on the ballot is usually some black progressive from one area of the city vs. some white progressive from another area of the city, nowadays.
The one local attorney that had announced that he was planning to run against Gardner in the next election was unfortunately planning to run to the left of her. He didn’t think she was progressive enough.
Meanwhile, whoever takes over on June 1st will be appointed, I believe by the Republican governor. But hopefully he takes some local concerns into account and gets someone who will actually do the job and prosecute criminals, without abandoning every reform idea. If we see some significant improvement between now and the next election cycle, people might wise up and not even put her on the ballot in the first place.
It had gotten so bad here that even many of the far-left progressive democrats were starting to criticize her, and after she announced her resignation, were glad to see her go.
That one’s two years out, and it, like mayor, could be frying pan into the fire.
In other good news, St,. Louis Circuit Atty. Kim Gardner has resigned effective June 1, amid charges of corruption.
Another George Soros organ grinder monkey goes down.
Welcome to reason where in one, eight-word sentence, you can experience both antisemitism and racism.
Cliché alert. Does yelling “anti-Semite” and “Racist” always win the argument where you come from?
Or simply gaslight every comment with inane leftist bullshit.
Cool story, bro. Make that up on the fly? Lol.
Seriously tho, it’s fun to watch you idiots make words meaningless with overuse. If every criticism is “racism!”, nobody will listen at all.
Good job, dude.
Calling a black woman a “monkey” is racist in any book. And “George Soros” is the cliche’ anti-Jewish dog whistle.
You act like no one understands the standard incel-speak that passes for educated commentary here.
And “George Soros” is the cliche’ anti-Jewish dog whistle.
I think what you mean to say is that Soros is Jewish, therefore in your mind any critique of him must have to do with his being Jewish.
But importantly, you’re not the one being racist, in your opinion.
Huh, I didn’t see a critique of George Soros; I saw the reference to a rich Jewish guy controlling a black politician. These types of references are common, especially among adherents to “replacement theory.” George Soros is often the first name they go to as a form of shorthand. It’s like white nationalists think people don’t notice this stuff and they’re all being so clever about it.
How sick do you have to be to defend a Nazi collaborator?
I hear that a lot of white nationalists drink coffee, too.
I saw the reference to a rich Jewish guy controlling a black politician.
What you saw was a reference to a rich guy controlling a politician. You supplied the rest.
These types of references are common, especially among adherents to “replacement theory.”
And what evidence do you have of EISTAU’s adhering to “replacement theory” other than your choice to impose a racial dynamic on his race-free comment?
When left wingers complain about the Kochs are they engaging in anti-German racism?
This is one of the most clear cut and succinct take downs of someone’s internal bias that I’ve seen, and it could be shown in a textbook for rhetoric.
Always a pleasure S=O.
‘If you hear the dog whistle, you are the dog’.
Huh, I didn’t see a critique of George Soros; I saw the reference to a rich Jewish guy controlling a black politician.
Hey shawn, you marxist cockroach–if you hear a dog whistle, that means you’re a dog.
An ‘organ grinder monkey’ is a wind-up mechanical toy, much like a jack-in-the-box.
He was calling her a puppet (which she is), which has to do with her actions, and nothing to do with her race.
If you are the only one hearing the dog whistles, guess who’s the bitch?
“An ‘organ grinder monkey’ is a wind-up mechanical toy, much like a jack-in-the-box.”
LOL. No, it’s not. Crack open a history book or Google it up. It’s an actual live monkey used by someone “grinding an organ”–a musical instrument–to collect donations from spectators.
I’m betting you’re also one of the people who found the term “monkeypox” offensive.
I’m going to try to break this to you gently, but you’re the one who is automatically thinking of black people when you hear the term “monkey.”
Nice try at deflection. JohnZ literally called a black woman a “monkey.” No need to “automatically think” anything. JohnZ made that connection right up front.
Stop with the half truths, the term was organ grinder monkey. A pawn or a pet controlled by the organ grinder. You injected race into the conversation because you believe the word monkey equals black. Well I hate to break it to ya, but that makes you the racist.
JohnZ literally called a black woman a “monkey.”
No, he didn’t. He called a politician who is a puppet for a rich guy “an organ-grinder monkey.”
You’re the one who decided to supply some more vocabulary to change the dynamic.
Until you stated it in this post, I did not know Gardner was black.
John did…
obviously spam…
I label every single D.A. that is owned/ beholden to Sorass an “organ grinder monkey” they all dance to his tune.
It doesn’t get any worse than this.
Every single D.,A. the Soros owns is his personal organ grinder monkey….they all dance to his tune.
So where does the anti-Semite comes into play. I never mentioned ANYTHING bot Semites. besides I support the Semitic people including Palestinians.
“Welcome to reason where in one, eight-word sentence, you can experience both antisemitism and racism.”
Don’t welcome dooood who can pack piles of lefty shit and lies in short comments.
Fuck off and die, doooood.
Just by mentioning the names of those people? Fuck you, you lying. wokie piece of shit.
Keep it movin, propagandist. No one is buying what you’re selling.
Ive been to SF not to long ago. Its a complete shit hole, unless you are ultra wealthy and can wall yourself off from the druggies and criminals directly enabled by democrat policies.
Sorry bud, im gonna trust my lying eyes on this one.
I’ve not been there, but are the specific locations he said he visited the more affluent areas?
The fact that he waved away the poop app was pretty telling to me about his baseline judgement. He makes it out to be a bad thing that conservatives criticize the need for the app while essentially admitting to the need/usefulness of it.
There are nice parts of Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, NYC, etc. He’s trying to use a dumb rhetorical trick to wave off criticism and blind readers to the expanding problems. It’s all a ridiculous attempt to defend the location (which I don’t hate people for having nativist pride) but also the politicians and policies that are destroying it.
I have lived just outside of DC most of my life. If you ask me about the city then I’ll tell you it’s a shithole and to not bother going. Most of the city is awful. That being said, we’re still going there this weekend for a race and to take my daughter to the museums and monuments. The existence of nice and mostly safe areas do not discredit the notion that as a whole the city is a decaying mess that’s full of crime. My company stopped doing jobs in the city specifically because of our vehicles getting looted and techs getting robbed.
Either affluent or tourist focused, though SOMA really depends on which side(by the ballpark or not). What he didn’t do is walk a couple of blocks over into the Tenderloin or similar areas with the open air drug markets and people passed out on the sidewalk 24/7. More reasonably he didn’t walk into any outer neighborhood where half the storefronts are boarded up and graffitied over, but the tourist spots look nice.
This is a Libertarian magazine. Open air drug markets are markets free from any government regulation, an essential feature of Libertopia. The government is not “picking winners and losers” in those markets!
As for the people passed out on the sidewalk 24/7, they are exercising their right to put whatever they want into their own bodies, without government permission. Again, Libertopia.
I wou;dn’t object to open air drug markets any more than I do open air farmer’s markets if drugs were legal. As it is, it being illegal makes them dangerous. And I’m probably going to have to draw a hard line at open air drug *use* of anything other than weed or alcohol. And even that needs to be within the limit that the user can maintain some decorum.
This isn’t a particularly libertarian perspective. Also… what about being illegal makes something inherently dangerous? That argument needs some more work.
Also, if liberty is the goal, then open air consumption of any substance is the result. Otherwise, the government is using force to restrict which particular drugs you can do out in the open. And if we’re having the government do that, weed needs to be restricted to private residences in my book–mostly because I don’t like the smell. That’s not very libertarian of me, of course, but hey, if we’re going to randomly pick winners and losers, I’m picking weed to be a loser because it smells bad.
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“This isn’t a particularly libertarian perspective…”
How would a lefty shit like you know, doooooood?
what about being illegal makes something inherently dangerous?
Eric Garner would like a word with you.
open air consumption of any substance is the result
On your own private property, yes.
Why only on private property? Why the restriction of liberty on where one can enjoy a legal substance they’ve legally acquired?
Why only on private property?
Your own property. You see, when you’re in public, other people also have rights.
Other people’s rights don’t include the right not to see someone engaging in legal activity they don’t approve of, like say, prayer, or buying strawberries at an open market, or buying/consuming beer at a street fair, or seeing women in pants or not covering their hair?
Mind you, I’m not a libertarian and I don’t know of you are either, but on this libertarian blog I’d expect more people to find restrictions on liberty, especially restrictions based on merely seeing someone buy a legal substance in public, as anathema.
Other people’s rights don’t include the right not to see someone engaging in legal activity they don’t approve of, like say, prayer, or buying strawberries at an open market, or buying/consuming beer at a street fair, or seeing women in pants or not covering their hair?
Correct. What they have a right to is not being negatively impacted or harmed by this activity.
I have a right to smoke pot. I don’t have right to blow pot smoke in your face.
People have a right to urinate. They don’t have a right to urinate in a public right-of-way.
People have a right to shoot heroin, pass out, and soil themselves. They don’t have a right to do it in public spaces where they’re interfering with other people trying to go about their business.
He’s a democrat, he’s not capable of understanding that.
Squircle, you neatly avoided all of the provided examples. Coincidence?
Derp. Who’s property is this on? And is it interfering with anyone else’s property or individual rights?
The government is not “picking winners and losers” in those markets!
You don’t think the government picks winners and losers in an illegal market? Do you understand that they can literally round up those people at will and imprison them, or not, at their discretion?
I have lived just outside of DC most of my life. If you ask me about the city then I’ll tell you it’s a shithole and to not bother going. Most of the city is awful. That being said, we’re still going there this weekend for a race and to take my daughter to the museums and monuments. The existence of nice and mostly safe areas do not discredit the notion that as a whole the city is a decaying mess that’s full of crime.
Post-Floyd, expect most major urban areas to slough along as shitty behavioral sinks for a while. I say similar things about Denver–there are some islands where it’s not an open-air sewer, but as a whole it’s not somewhere you want to spend significant time and there are a lot of areas that need to be outright avoided. It hasn’t been this bad since the Blood-Crip drug turf wars in the city during the early-mid 90s.
At least in some parts of Denver you can watch street performers out in the middle of an intersection that block traffic until someone ‘tips’ them to get out of the way.
Worse by a long shot than Dallas-Fort Worth, at least in my experience.
Only thing in DC worth keeping is the Smithsonian.
Both the author and Mike Parsons are wrong. But to answer your questions directly:
– Yes, he listed some of the wealthier areas, though note that the Tenderloin district, which dead-ends into Civic Center and City Hall, is adjacent to some of those wealthier areas. One generally only finds human poop on the sidewalks and alleyways around the Tenderloin, for the most part. The rich areas have dog poop and, frankly, it’s far more common there.
– SF and any other city with high housing costs, has a homelessness issue. Florida’s homeless population has increased as it’s housing costs have increased as well. This isn’t a liberal vs conservative issue. SF cannot expand into endless suburbs as it is exactly 49 square miles with no room to grow outward. Roughly 60% of the homeless in the city lived here before becoming homeless; the rest migrated after. The city never freezes and almost never gets hotter than 75(f) which makes it better than most of California for year-round tent living. You can walk nearly anywhere in this city at night and be safe. The homeless make people uncomfortable and they can often make messes and they smell bad but they generally don’t go out of their way to harass people.
-SF has a lot of neighborhoods that are filled with normal families in single-family homes–mostly middle class by local standards–and there aren’t any homeless. I may see one a month, at most, in my middle-class neighborhood.
-California is mandating a ton of new housing construction and it’s voiding local zoning laws for cities that fail to meet housing quotas. The SF Mayor has tried both the carrot and the stick in the Tenderloin to get the homeless off the streets. She’s dealing with declining tax revenues while needing more cash for shelters and services. The state recently made it legal to institutionalize people who are unable to care for themselves and that will, hopefully, lead to a restoration of state mental health facilities that famous conservative Ronald Reagan got rid of when he cut the state budget years ago. If the program survives legal challenges, there will be a solution for the more visible homeless population.
-SF crime rates are down, year-over-year, for the last 20 years. (roughly starting 20 years after abortion became legal.) Property crime has ticked up slightly–mostly car break-ins–leading to a leveling out of the crime rate. The majority of the media reports about high crime have more to do with people clicking on articles with fear-driving subject-matter that drives ad revenue than it does an actual crime wave of any kind. But yeah, broken car windows are expensive and annoying.
A lot of the visible homelessness and car beak-ins are driven by drug use and mental health issues. Libertarians are cool with drug use and against publicly-funded medical care so… this is probably not the best place to criticize liberal approaches to these issues when the libertarian approach is essentially the status quo that created the problem in the first place.
Finally, to be fair, since I think few are being realistic here, the other main issues are NIMBYism and overly restrictive zoning–something that libertarians would have had a better take on than both liberals and conservatives.
Everything is so terrible and unfair, dude.
Yup. That’s called “life.”
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Deep.
^ This is called “bullshit”.
Getting rid of you and your fellow travelers will raise quality of life for all Americans. California will be a paradise when the democrat infestation is removed.
The state recently made it legal to institutionalize people who are unable to care for themselves and that will, hopefully, lead to a restoration of state mental health facilities that famous conservative Ronald Reagan got rid of when he cut the state budget years ago.
Last I checked forced institutionalization didn’t exactly work out so well in the United States, but leave it to the same progressives that did it the first time to bring it up again without a single word about the conditions people were forced to ‘live’ in.
I’m sure that just like socialism, it just wasn’t done right before and this time will be totally different.
Last I checked, “tough on crime” conservatives ballooning the for-profit prison system with forced institutionalizations was a time-honored tradition.
But by all means, I’m open for a conversation about the conditions people are “forced” to live in and how that drives them to drug use or insanity. Please expand on your arguments here. What’s the solution, as you see it?
Forced institutionalization is problematic. Crazy people unable and unwilling to care for themselves is also problematic. So if you rule out forced drug rehab and mental health facilities and demand a reduction in the number of crazy, drug-addicted homeless living on the streets, what’s your solution?
Conflating prison with a mental institution as an attempt to ‘gotcha’ on conservatives is perhaps valid in some regards, but the fact is I don’t condone either of those things whereas you openly advocate for one while shitting on the other.
One thing that would dramatically reduce the homeless population would be deregulation of housing and labor, but that sounds too much like ‘doing nothing’ to your brand of political animal and as such it’s a non-starter since it doesn’t involve the government deciding who belongs behind bars.
A harsh truth, perhaps, but true none the less.
I can respect your position on institutionalization; I’m not comfortable with either. (Though I’m 100% against for-profit prisons or mental health institutions that accept forced occupants.) But I note that your solution is vague and not well-connected to the specific problem in play here. The largest group of homeless in SF are people no one sees because they take advantage of public assistance, get places to live, and get their lives moving again. The city has a solid public safety net for such things. These are the people who would be helped by deregulation of housing and labor. The folks who wouldn’t be helped by the deregulation of housing and labor are those that are not able to care for themselves due to mental health issues or drug issues–the two of which often merge together, eventually. The poop, needles, and crazy antics are all by folks that have refused housing and help because they prefer to live in a tent on the sidewalk.
As for housing deregulation, the State has taken major steps in that direction. Not recognizing that undercuts your position. The city of SF, for example, has no single family zoning any longer. As a YIMBY, I support that but think it was too late in coming and that it doesn’t go far enough.
The harsher truth is that some people choose to live on the street or choose to do dangerous drugs or are so mentally ill (possibly from repeated drug abuse) they aren’t capable of making rational choices at all. How would you approach that issue without resorting to forced care of some sort?
The harsher truth is that some people choose to live on the street or choose to do dangerous drugs or are so mentally ill (possibly from repeated drug abuse) they aren’t capable of making rational choices at all. How would you approach that issue without resorting to forced care of some sort?
I’ll just quote this from C.S. Lewis’s God in the Dock: Essays on Theology from 1943 because it’s old and directly relates to your ‘question’.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
He may be dead, but it’s like he knew you personally. To make the claim that people who are currently surviving on the streets are somehow invalids and incapable of surviving is a self-refuting premise. It’s a baseline failure of even basic reasoning skills.
The few people who are mentally incapable and are living on the streets will probably stay there, the rest will get jobs and be able to afford a home. Even you made the claim that it’s mostly people priced out of homes who grew up in the area, so I’m wondering if you’re just pretending to be stupid or if you’re really this incapable of basic reason.
You want the government to decide who’s ‘mentally deficient’ enough to be put into asylums despite the fact we already know how that turned out the first time, and there were a ton of really good reasons why it was put into the trash bin.
The fact you don’t know what those reasons are shows you’re a shallow thinker that can’t be fucked to find out if something has even been tried before, let alone if it worked out well. You just want to throw these people behind bars and literally throw away the key. Best of luck with that, since even conservatives think ‘criminals’ should eventually get out of jail if they’ve done their time. No such luck from you.
You seem to have omitted your “solution” to the problem. Do tell.
Last I checked, “tough on crime” conservatives ballooning the for-profit prison system with forced institutionalizations was a time-honored tradition.
Except that actually lowered the crime and gun violence rates. Maybe it’s time to start throwing your political allies back in prison.
“…The rich areas have dog poop and, frankly, it’s far more common there…”
Bullshit, dooooooooood.
Just skimmed the article, but I don’t think he even mentioned all the retailers leaving town. Do they have a political ax to grind with progressives too? Haha.
Simple, free-market economics at play. The retailers leaving are all in the downtown area and were largely supported by the employees who are now working remotely. Further, there are other retail pressures at play, including Amazon’s death blow to special purpose retailers like drug stores and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Basic libertarian principles at play.
Free market economics in California? Surely you jest.
And it’s not only that conditions are already terrible there in much of the city but that they are get even worse as time goes by. Ten years ago was the app for shit necessary? No but apparently it is now. The homeless problem has grown over the last 10 years as well. And while crime is below it’s all time peak it is now much higher than just 5 years ago and is getting worse. The issue is that not only are things bad now but are getting worse, much worse.
It isn’t necessary then or now. That’s just hyperbole. There’s no effective difference between one kind of poop and another when you’re walking down the sidewalk and inconsiderate dog-owners are responsible for far more poop on city sidewalks than homeless people are.
San Francisco is the famously liberal crown jewel in the famously liberal state of California and people who don’t like liberalism are fond of making it a target. But it’s still the wealthiest state in the union with the largest GDP and has a concentration of universities, research, and industry that drives a lot of wealth.
>…San Francisco is the famously liberal crown jewel in the famously liberal state of California and people who don’t like liberalism are fond of making it a target…”
For the very good reason that proggy shits wreck everything they touch, doooooood.
It’s the prototype for progtopia. So of course it’s a go to reference for democrat run shitholes. A prototype they’re exporting to all the other democrat run cities. All with identical results.
Poop is poop? Lol.
Are the thoughtless dog owners leaving behind used needles too?
Just because dog poop can be bad doesn’t mean human poop should be ignored. It contains all kinds of bacteria and can create all kinds of health issues. Btw we fine dog owners that fail to pick up after their pets. Furthermore was there much human poop in San Francisco ten years ago? The problem has grown and shows no signs of abating. The same with violent crime. The trends say San Francisco is getting worse not better.
“There’s no effective difference between one kind of poop and another when you’re walking down the sidewalk.”
LOL, acceptance is the final stage, take your soma Bernard.
False Dilemma BTW, I choose no poop.
I lived in SF 40 years ago for several years and enjoyed it greatly. Of course, I was young. I’m still not far away. His article is not inaccurate as far as it goes. If I visit friends or relatives out in the neighborhoods it’s really not all that different from decades ago.
However, areas a visitor is likely to see have become worse and worse. I have had my car windows busted in SF. I once saw someone poop right near Levi’s Plaza as I was walking down the sidewalk. Major retail stores are closing. The downtown district is becoming emptier and emptier. Major corporations are relocating By some accounts only about half the office space downtown is in actual use (ie, not vacant or unleased, but businesses have only a few people rattling around in space that could accommodate many more).
It may well be true that SF’s crime rate is not as a bad as some other cities, but life has become worse there than it once was. As businesses leave and the tax base withers that’s a trend that will continue. I still go into the city once in a while but seldom for pleasure. I’m careful where I park (broken window glass is sometimes called San Francisco snow). Decline isn’t pretty.
San Francisco has a history of this boom/bust period all the way back to its first boom in the California gold rush. It went though this during the “dot com” era most recently. The downtown shrinkage has a lot to do with the changes in employment that came out of COVID where more people work from home and aren’t commuting into the city to spend money at coffee shops and lunch spots. Tax revenue is down as a result. For those of us that remain here, life isn’t “worse.” I’ve noticed zero changes in my own life but I don’t live downtown or frequent downtown. Would I really even call my life “worse” if my favorite Starbucks closed, though? If that’s the measure of “worse,” I’d say it has no real meaning.
Housing prices are down, which is an opportunity for others, and office rents are dropping, which is also an opportunity for others. Seems to me this is the “market” at work. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next. AI firms? Medical tech?
^ Folks, right here you’re looking at SF’s one and only problem; lefty shits like dooooooooood who elect lefty shits.
“I’d say it has no real meaning.”
Yes, rendering words meaningless is something you do understand, dude.
The people who work in that Starbucks that then closes might consider life to be worse. But as I noted, the neighborhoods aren’t that different from decades ago.
Yes, but is there any place you perceive as a nice place to be?
You literally moved from Silicon Valley to Idaho, you disingenuous fuck.
Traitors like Mike shouldn’t be allowed in good states.
“To hear conservatives describe the state of affairs in San Francisco, you’d think the City by the Bay is a harrowing dystopia along the lines of San Salvador, Juarez, St. Louis or Detroit.“
1. Who do you think runs St. Louis and Detroit?
2. Have you spent any quality time in either?
Perhaps you should take some of your own advice. I live in St. Louis. We have some issues that affect the whole city / metro area but for the most part, the ‘dystopian hellscape’ bullshit is limited to a few specific areas and one particular demographic. Large portions of the city and surrounding areas are relatively low crime and actually quite nice.
Yeah, there is some serious lack of self-awareness in that first sentence. I wonder if op-eds from Detroit writers say similar things about San Francisco.
For that matter, even Juarez is a place where the vast majority of visitors go about their business unmolested, eat good food at restaurants, relax in the squares and the parks, and get home safely at the end of the day.
The other way as well, as I indicate below, if your definition of a city is just a place where you can sit and eat food and get home safely from, you still rather apparently, have an odd affinity for eating and striving to get home safely from areas near where large numbers of people openly shit and inject drugs and, by his own account, with an inordinate probability of stealing your car.
Sure, you could have a spring picnic in Dresden in 1945. Doesn’t mean there weren’t parts of the city that lived up to every inch of the definition, well closer than any part of SF, of “hellscape”.
l felt *way* safer in Juarez the last time I went than I did in SF the last time I went.
Last visit was about 20 years ago for both cities.
I agree that the chance of getting molested or having to deal with some kind of transgressive behavior felt (and was) higher in San Francisco. People in Juarez are polite and respect each other’s space.
The only thing I’d say in the other direction is that in Juarez, in the unlikely event that something did happen, we’d be totally on our own. Calling the cops didn’t feel like an option.
I’m not sure if a US Embassy in SF would help or hurt.
It is an amusingly passive-aggressive refutation of his own complaint about conservatives.
I’ll be the first to admit Detroit has its problems, but it’s also greatly improved from even 20 years ago. Another really nice thing about it – the streets aren’t covered in human shit. Which I find to be a good thing. It’s also too cold to be a haven for homeless people, which means there isn’t much in the way of tent cities. I think San Francisco and LA are trending in the wrong direction, where Detroit and St. Louis at least seem to be trying to address their problems.
I’m not sure it gets too cold for anywhere not to have homeless tent cities. Like SF and LA, Chicago is ignoring the problem and doubling down on the causes. In the city, one, in spite of the climate, can find tent cities in quite a few areas not far from the Loop: under the Ryan at Canalport, next to the Ryan across from UIC, under the rail line near Ogilvie Station. The crime situation, like SF, has gotten out of hand with various Walgreens stores (for example) enclosing almost everything behind glass cases.
I grew up in the Detroit area many decades ago and still go there for business frequently. Detroit was badly damaged many years ago by a lot of different factors. The city is run by black politicians who are by definition Democrats. But they are nowhere near as insane as Chicago. When the BLM riots were burning down cities Detroit’s chief of police, a black man, made it very clear that if these assholes showed up in his city they would get their asses kicked. And the City of Detroit actually sued BLM. In the end there was much less damage done by the riots in Detroit than in every other city in the country.
1. Who do you think runs St. Louis and Detroit?
Sean McVay and Dan Campbell?
You are either blatantly lying or are so used to the utter shithole California has become that you simply do not see the sewer you’re wading through.
Given the nature of the writing on this site since The Lightbringer cometh, I suspect that you’re lying.
Only a leftist would say San Fran’s problems are exaggerated.
Poor sarc.
So many ideas.
It’s like lighting a retard signal. They come running yelling “Hurr durr! Hurr durr!” Two down, two to go.
Poor sarc.
I thought we were on mute.
sarcasmic 3 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User
Only a leftist would say San Fran’s problems are exaggerated.
Hey! look–one of sarc’s neurons fired.
No Steven, conservatives shouldn’t tell “tall tales” about San Francisco’s problems. That’s for Liberals to do when they are trying to get more funding to solve the problems that they created.
Lol. Thread winner. ^
“yes the city is a shithole, but do not exaggerate by calling it a shithole”
I dropped my load, in San Francisco
High on a hill, it smells like me
To be where homeless people are, selling meth in every bar
My morning dump may foul the air, I don’t care
This hole, smells like shit.
“politically minded people embrace stupid narratives that confirm their biases”
truth
“All people embrace stupid narratives that confirm their biases”
FIFY
“Nothing to see here.”
Retard truth.
Conservatives pounce on SF being a shithole. That even the leftist residents of SF call a shithole.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/sara-foster-slams-s-thole-san-frans-liberal-leadership-after-bob-lees-death/
If you sent this entire article to the Babylon Bee, they would probably send you a check for $25; it’s funnier than 90% of what they usually post over there.
Babylon Bee is\has been\and will always be measurably funnier than all the late night show [now mercifully paused] on tv.
Colbert, kimmel, meyers… and the like are all hacks with hack writing teams.
I often wish after watching a Babylon Bee video that they would have a show to compete in those time slots.
They kinda do. It’s called “Gutfeld”. They even have a self described libertarian on it. Who is kinda cute.
Who’s the cute one? Kat or Greg?
San Francisco is literally a shithole, to the point that the app which tracks where human feces awaits covers pretty much the entire city and California’s governor is now calling in the national guard to try to deal with the vagrants.
No, according to the app it’s just the places you would expect:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab720912642b6aedafdb02a76d2a4
I haven’t been there for many years, but I’m sure it’s worse now. But, it’s also probably not Beirut during the 1980s…
“Sure, my wife uses drugs, shits the bed, the living room, the yard, and the kitchen, sure she doesn’t come home for days at a time or hold down a job, and, yeah, I have to make sure all my valuables aren’t left in any given car she has access to, we can’t have nice appliances because of her, and her lawyers keep increasing the share of my salary they say I owe her, but we had some good times playing miniature golf and eating tacos in the park once. Sure, our marriage has its problems, but is it fair to define marriage any other way?
Don’t believe the critics exaggerating my marriage problems for political reasons I say.” – Steve Greenhut
Well done, sir. Well done.
This line from The Outlaw Josey Wales comes to mind:
https://youtu.be/PpwJ1n7g1pM
we played miniature golf and frequented food trucks
You realize you can tap rocks into holes and have prepared-food picnics on like 30% of the surface of the Earth, right? People can, and have, played golf and eaten hot, prepared food on the Moon.
Come to San Francisco! We have dirt *and* gravity!
He went to a wedding! and Don Lemon went out for a nice dinner
Most neighborhoods are surprisingly quiet and safe.
LIAR! TUCKER CARLSON SAID EVERY STREET IS A RIVER OF SHIT YOU LYING LEFTIST!
So many ideas.
The funny thing is the abject fusillade of legitimately fatal criticisms launched at Greenhut’s stalking horse and sarc, apparently, decides “I have to save that stalking horse! I know!” and grabs the nearest straw man and tosses it into the path of a couple of arguments coming in at 3000+ fps.
That’s an impressive man of straw you’re building to tweak people with there.
Except for gated golf course neighborhoods like the one Tucker lives in.
Fuck his white privilege, eh mike?
You ok, bro? You seem a little triggered.
What’s the point of this article? Other than to fill a deadline for an article. The thesis is that yes San Francisco is bad but not quite as bad as the critics say. “Hey were not as bad as Washington DC in the 70’s!” is not quite the rebuttal that Greenhut seems to think it is.
Next up: Mogadishu on Lake Michigan.
Even in the 70s, people in shitty urban areas found things to like about them. New York City during that period and into the mid-1980s was an absolute sewer, but there were still plenty of decent areas in the city that weren’t “Escape from New York”-style apocalypse zones.
Yes Khartoum is bad, but it’s not as bad as Mogadishu in the ’90’s.
Sure, a modern American flagship city that is only 10% total crap and potentially deadly does not deserve to be bad-mouthed.
Exaggeration, that’s what we humans do, specially if it ramps up fear. Whether it is “Hillary is close to death from some dreadful disease” in 2016, or “The GOP will outlaw all abortions for any reason” in 2023 or just about any Libertarian candidate who promises “when I’m elected, I will…..”
I spent most of last week there for a wedding on Nob Hill and traipsed around several neighborhoods: Chinatown, North Beach, Alamo Square, and South of Market (SoMa). Not only did I live to tell about it, but left with warm fuzzies even after wandering its streets late at night. San Francisco remains (arguably) the most beautiful city in the country. Its parks are lovely and mostly orderly and clean. On Sunday, we played miniature golf and frequented food trucks, along with hundreds of young families. People were generally friendly and the restaurants and nightlife were fabulous.
This basically reads like Marie Antionette visited San Francisco. You really come across as an elite in a bubble writing these words.
“oh sure, we had to remove anything visible from our cars and leave them unlocked, and most of the major retailers are closing shop due to rampant theft that the cops cant even be bothered with and – to be sure! – down the street is an open air drug market full of depraved lunatics screaming at each other all night and pooping all over the sidewalk, but the tea and crumpets we had at the luncheon were DELIGHTFUL!”
Let the proletariat eat cake.
The fugazi libertarians of Reason don’t give a flying rat’s ass that roving gangs of young thugs now feel completely emboldened to go on their coordinated looting rampages in the Soros-controlled districts. I’ve seen more than one of their sockpuppet accounts give “who really cares” responses here in the comments.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that a fee of them secretly think it’s freaking awesome, because they aren’t actually libertsrians at all, they’re “burn this mother down” lefties, which isn’t remotely the same thing as a libertarian.
SF is go great a crazed homeless person can break into the home of its most famous resident and beat her husband upside his head with a hammer. And in front of the police who got the whole beating on camera.
There’s no need to exaggerate the problems of San Francisco. They write themselves. It’s no exaggeration the amount of businesses leaving town have created a massive amount of abandoned office and retail space. Some have suggested the homeless could be housed in these unused spaces but the cost for making them inhabitable, according to liberal standards, would be enormous.
School children have to avoid walking in human feces, used needles, condoms ….. the usual refuse the homeless leave behind. they can learn the consequences of liberal policies.
No one has to exaggerate the situation in that town, and it’s only going to get worse.
“but the cost for making them inhabitable, according to liberal standards, would be enormous.”
Yes, but the Pelosi’s construction company would make a fortune.
Yes, the city faces major property crime and homelessness problems. Just this week, the National Guard and California Highway Patrol were sent in to shut down open-air drug markets. Major retailers are exiting because of the theft problem. But conservatives undermine their case when they overstate things.
I know AI is in its infancy, but there’s bound to be better products out there than what they used to write this crap.
This is what passes for “information” on Reason. It’s turned into an ironic parody of the National Enquirer but instead of “Bat Boy” you get constant antisemitic dog-whistles and brainless re-hashes of Tucker Carlson’s latest racist rants.
Who brought race into the discussion?
You did, dude.
It’s all he’s got.
“Yes, some portions of the city are a mess.”
Buuuuuut….the real problem is that Conservatives “overstate” their case. How do they overstate it? No explanation. But Greenhut wants us to know that the big problem is all those icky conservatives who criticize the Tenderloin “as an open sewer of drug dealing and panhandling”.
If Greenhut couldn’t crap on conservatives, he would have nothing to write about. He lives in the capital city of one of the most corrupt, expansive, liberty-infringing governments in the country, and all he can ever do is bitch and moan about the five conservatives he comes across each year.
Well, let’s start with pretending the problems in the city’s roughest areas are common across the entire city. If there’s poop on the sidewalks near where homeless encampments are, there’s poop on every sidewalk. If windows get broken out of cars in the tourist areas, they get broken out of cars in all areas. etc. That’s how conservatives overstate it. Focusing on a single area of the city and pretending it represents the entire 49 square miles is how conservatives overstate it.
They also overstate it by ignoring roughly 20 years of decline in crime rates and focus on the last few years where the crime rate has essentially leveled off, mostly after a highly unusual pandemic that has reshaped a number of industries all across the country.
They tend to ignore the plank in their own eye while trying to describe their political foes as “the most corrupt, expansive, liberty-infringing governments in the country” without explaining how that is so and how it is worse than, say, Florida’s state government which is banning books, legislating how people can request others address them, the clothing people can wear in public, the medical care women are allowed to get, restricting free speech for corporations, etc.
Well, let’s start with pretending that the problems driving big retailers and corporations out of the city are racism and dog poop. Like shawn dude.
Idiot.
“They also overstate it by ignoring roughly 20 years of decline in crime rates and focus on the last few years where the crime rate has essentially leveled off,”
Well the problem here is that crime hasn’t “essentially leveled off”. If you are a blue-bubble acolyte who gets their talking points from NYT, that might be your view. But in reality, the main reason crime appears down is because the government has made it so retailers have no reason to report crime. Even the SF Gate agrees with this. I analyzed their stats here:
https://reason.com/2022/06/08/prosecutorial-reform-recall-san-francisco-district-attorney-chesa-boudin/?comments=true#comment-9534569
“1) Overall *reported* crime is down.
2) That is almost *completely* driven by a reduction in larceny (retail theft) crime. And SF Gate makes clear that it is likely this reduction is due to stores giving up on reporting these crimes.
3) Burglaries and Car thefts are up. WAY up.
4) Violent crime is down.”
Also, just to show how far out of left field Shawn dude is….Here we are talking about california and Shawn wants nothing to do with that shit. Instead we need to talk about…florida?
“which is banning books,”
Never happened. Show me a book that is banned in Florida. Please.
“legislating how people can request others address them”
Oh I would love to see the explanation of this one.
“the clothing people can wear in public”
Yeah, those fucking French and their Burkha bans. Fucking conservatives.
“the medical care women are allowed to get”
Right, because conservatives want to complain about a government (SF) that doesn’t protect the innocent while ignoring a government that…enforces the protection of the innocent?…Um ok.
“restricting free speech for corporations”
First slightly correct thing you said, but also irrelevant.
Your laundry list is basically, “How dare conservatives respect things Conservatives value, while failing to respect things liberals value.”
San Francisco has problems.
Weird how when these big cities had Republican mayors they weren’t all fucked up.
“I lived in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s and 1980s—when the murder epidemic was so severe that local newspapers published a death toll on the front pages every day.”
So let’s graph this.
Major crime increase after the “social justice” movements of the 1960s. Crime decrease after the Nazi-like Reagan era (or let’s say the Nazi Giuliani era in NYC), and even Bill Clinton impersonated a conservative for these purposes.
Major crime increase after the “social justice” movements of the Ferguson, George Floyd, and BLM era.
Gee a dumb person might think there’s a pattern or something.
I was in San Francisco for a few days last year and it is indeed a beautiful city, maybe the most beautiful I have been. Granted it’s not perfect but it is indeed better then Detroit (which has its own good areas) a city I also have been. I even walked through part of the Tenderloin and it didn’t seem like the hellhole it is made out to be. Not saying all but many who attack San Francisco probably have never been there, again not saying all, but probably a good deal. San Francisco symbolizes liberals so it makes an eager target for many on the right-wing to attack.
Not saying all but many who attack San Francisco probably have never been there, again not saying all, but probably a good deal.
There’s also a lot of preference being glossed over as well. Some people love SF because it’s CA but not LA both geographically and culturally. If you like snow in any amount, SF is already never going to get an A+ in your book even without poop on the sidewalks. If you only like marine beach fronts above 80 degrees, it’s not going to get an A+. If you don’t particularly care for ocean-sized beach front settings or beach/lake/riverfront settings of any type or if you like mountains (like mile-high ones) or if you like open plains or if you like tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands of people…
My parents love SF’s geography. I’m near completely ambivalent about the geography, the Thames, Danube, and Seine are far more appealing to me. The fact that there are several hundred thousand people sitting on the geography isn’t a plus to any of us. The further fact that a disproportionate amount of people shit on the sidewalks move the city itself from being just a bunch of shingles to being shit on a shingle, even if there isn’t shit on every last shingle. And that’s from a group of people who, for a couple generations, have gotten up in the morning to shovel livestock shit without ocean front views.
The Thames? I guess you mean upstream from the green/ brown, dead open sewer that runs through London.
The author claims to provide a reasonable evaluation of San Francisco but then kills it with “progressives do wreck everything they touch.”
Meanwhile, in conservative states, the governments are taking away freedom of choice for women, parents, and trans adults. They’re banning books, firing librarians, and retaliating against corporations that disagree with them. They’re legislating clothing choices for adults while sloganeering about “freedom” and “liberty.” FFS–tend to your own glass house.
Derp da derp da tiddly terp.
How many lies can you pack into one comment, doooooood?
The specifics of your allegations are your undoing.
Left-wing people lie constantly. It’s their nature.
No books have been banned in conservative states.
Color me shocked that these are your stated political preferences for what matters most. It fits all too neatly into exactly what we’ve come to expect a progressive socialist living in San Francisco would say.
Is it irony that you commit the exact same sins you’re complaining about in others? No, more like blind hypocrisy.
What terrifies me the most is that you seem to believe in coddling and state sponsorship of some delusions and forced state institutionalization of others.
You probably couldn’t be more vapid if you tried.
LOL. I don’t think “vapid” means what you think it means.
I listed items that relate to personal liberty. This is supposedly a libertarian blog. Do you not support personal liberty? Or do you only support it for the things you like?
I listed items that relate to personal liberty.
You missed the right to own firearms. I’m sure that was just an oversight.
I don’t think “vapid” means what you think it means.
No, I think it does.
vap·id
adjective
offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging.
According to Google, anyway, it seems you fit the term exactly considering you’re mouthing platitudes straight out of Washington D.C.’s progressive wing. If you think you’re ‘challenging’ by stating the most surface-level nonsense you’d see on MSNBC you’re out of your mind.
If you wanted to be stimulating, you’d be discussing conflicts of natural rights in abortion. That’s something that progressives have failed to understand for almost a hundred years, so why break the trend.
“LOL. I don’t think “vapid” means what you think it means…”
“LOL”? Your parents must live on a hill to be commenting from the basement, doooooooood.
You’re stupid, it’s an affront that you are disputing or at spying to correct anyone. Your impertinence is are a stupid, worthless creature, but you might just benefit from a schedule of regular savage beatings.
Stopping the sexual mutilation of children is not taking freedom away from trans adults. School boards in liberal states are then ones taking away from parents. Washington just passed a law that your kid can get trans surgery without parental consent. Liberals as we have seen with the release of the twitter files are the ones doing the censoring. Keeping pornography from the kids has always been the law. We watch these school board members writhe in shame as a 8 year old reads these books out loud at the meeting. Everyone has the right to not support or buy from a corporation or small business for any reason. As for abortion, you worry about the women, but not the child. Does not a child have rights too? if women have such right to control their body, why are they getting unwanted pregnancies? As for clothing laws, they why should we have any indecency laws? Should we allow underage kids to attend strip bars too? A lot of this is about protecting underage kids. Are you against that? Why can’t you walk down the street with your pecker swinging in the breeze? Does a pregnant woman have a right to use heroin? Isn’t that controlling her own body too? Why is attempting suicide against the law, isn’t that the ultimate control of one’s own body?
Both your blame and rational are irrational.
“Meanwhile, in conservative states”
You must be lost, Fox.com is thataway…
Another major reason for the decline in San Francisco’s population is the boom in remote work since the COVID pandemic. The Bay Area being on the cutting edge of high tech, it is also on the cutting edge of workers who would prefer to work from resort homes far from the madding crowd.
SF commercial real estate is in the middle of an apocalypse apparently.
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Remember when SF was all bent out of shape when the big tech companies had their own buses for employees? I bet that’s a small issue compared to empty buildings.
This is an interesting comment. There is no “SF” as a singular, monolithic entity with one opinion on anything. But yes, there was a significant group of (actual) progressives that were pissed off about the tech boom in the city generally and at the biggest example of that, Google busses, specifically. If you were to ask any of them what they thought of the change to downtown office space, probably to a person, they’d be happy about it regardless of the overall impact on tax revenue and businesses closing down. The city’s liberals and conservatives are less happy about it. (In SF, “progressives” and “liberals” are two different groups. Conservatives are a tiny minority and not much of force in local politics.)
There is no “SF” as a singular, monolithic entity
The fact that you construed this shows how willfully stupid you are.
No… the fact that I tried to engage with you and your ideas shows how willfully stupid I was.
That’s not past tense, steaming pile of lefty shit.
There is no “SF” as a singular, monolithic entity with one opinion on anything.
But there is a “Red State America.”
Another major reason for the decline in San Francisco’s population is the boom in remote work since the COVID pandemic
I’m not sure this fully explains it, though, because as Unicorn Abattoir points out, it wasn’t that long ago that tech workers were making great sacrifices and commuting long distances because they wanted to live in SF.
Facebook, Apple, and Google HQs are a good hour’s drive from SF, and if you lived an hour the other direction, like, say, Gilroy, you’d cut your living expenses in half, easily.
I think fewer people want to live in SF anymore, apart from any commuting considerations.
If you like San Francisco, that’s fine, but don’t spread tall tales about it.
Best summary of the OP in the entire thread.
Tell the truth; are you the OP?
Doood has been posting the offal of a steaming pile of shit here for a while; no reason to assume he’s responsible for this as opposed to other steaming piles of lefty shit.
Dooood! Fuck off and die!
SF is a blighted shithole because of people like you. Who are only capable of increasing human suffering. Which is the democrat way.
So, because every square inch isn’t covered in hobos and needles, it’s all good. Way to downplay the problem of large sections of the city becoming hellscapes. No need to worry until it spreads to your neighborhood, I guess.
So, because every square inch isn’t covered in hobos and needles, it’s all good.
No, that’s not what it means at all when someone calls for keeping a sense of perspective. Your comment just gave a textbook example of not keeping a sense of perspective.
Your comments are indicative of delusion, stupidity, and propaganda.
Yes, the poop doesn’t travel as well as the broken car windows, that is true.
I’ve seen things in San Francisco I wish I could unsee. As someone who’s travelled the world, I can’t say that about other cities. Probably the closest rival would be documentaries on subsaharan Africa.
I’m sure my personal experience may not reflect the reality of experiencing the city all over everywhere at once in some impossible way, and I could be giving it too little credit. But it is what it is.
San Francisco is the largest jewel in the crown the left calls “California.” It’s pretty obvious that they can’t solve the challenging social problems they blame on republicans, or even avoid enormous wealth inequality: their sin of sins. Sure, California’s economy is big, but so is Russias, and that has more to do with scale and map lines than anything else. By their own metrics, it’s failure, but they’ve been running the place for decades. I’d expect them to notice, except their head is too far up their ass to see their own results.
In today’s American political culture, the same thing can be said about just about any topic. Teams Blue and Red are culture warring over everything under the sun, and dropping all sense of perspective is a common rhetorical tactic from both teams.
No, ‘team blue’ wants to groom kids into all kind of sexual depravity, and/or to mutilate their genitals. Among other horrific things. They are not equivalent. ‘Team Blue’ is pure evil.
I lived in the Bay Area for nearly three decades.
I spent tons of time in San Francisco. Aside from a couple of times when I stayed in a B&B overnight or when I slept over at my now-wife’s apartment while we were dating, I always enjoyed whatever the day’s activities were and then gladly went back home to the suburbs of Silicon Valley. I would not want to actually live there.
To summarize Greenhut: If you ignore the crime, the homelessness, the vagrancy, the panhandling, the taxes, the outlandish cost of living, the poop on the ground, and the open-air drug bazaars, San Francisco is a wonderful place.
Greenhut wants you to understand that SF is merely pining for the fjords.
If you don’t like San Francisco, that’s fine, but don’t tell tall tales about it.
Can the author provide an example? The article is sorely lacking on details.
This is the kind of specious reasoning BLM activists and their media pals use to claim that the George Floyd protests were “mostly peaceful”. Only like 1% of protests were actually violent! Only a few cities out of dozens that saw some level of protests actually burned down!
If you live in a city where you can’t leave anything inside your car because theft is rampant, then its reputation of being dysfunction is well deserved. The overall atmosphere is irrelevant. I have cousins in SF who were ALL carjacked. They smashed the window grabbed things. They apparently smash first and look later, so taking things out of the car is no panache. This isn’t just a urban crime thing, it’s becomes part of their city existence.
Seriously, how often do you see multiple Walmarts, Walgreens, and major clothing retail close down in a major American city within a year or two? The Walmarts near my house has been there since the Clinton years, if not earlier. When was the last time the national guard entered the picture in a modern city, aside from riots and natural disasters? Greenhut lists all the reasons why the city earns scorn from the right, and says “BUT” – which is what exactly? It’s a nice looking place overall, like the city of LA depicted in Blade Runner? From outside, you see towering skyscrapers, tech wonders and flying cars, so it’s NOT a dystopia?
The Boudin recall has a lot do with the city’s Asian population. Asians make up 37% of a 800,000 population and some are business and property owners. SF is a white and Asian majority city and in that unusual makeup in a smaller population, some level of self interest prevailed. In a city like LA, where democrats have drones of black and Latino loyalists in reserve, no similar “correction” will occur. LA couldn’t even recall Kevin Deleon.
Steven Greenhut, I typically agree with your articles. But this one I’m going to disagree. As a resident of San Francisco since 1997, the homeless situation and small crimes have gotten out of hand recently, and are truly unbelievable. Photographs don’t really do it justice. It’s as bad as you’ve been told.
Also, looking at crime statistics over time or compared to other cities are not really useful. Since tent cities on the sidewalks with trash strewn around and mentally ill and drug addicted people all over certain neighborhoods ruining quality of life aren’t captured in any crime stats. (PS this is my first post ever)
In the early 1970s my parents went to San Fransisco. They saw some hippies and open gays. They swore that they’d never go back to that hellhole. Reno was more to their taste.
“San Francisco’s Got Problems. There’s No Need To Exaggerate Them for Political Reasons.”
San Fran’s problems are a direct result of political reasons; no “exaggeration” required; check the asshole doood’s post above. A great majority of SF has been turned into an uninhabitable waste as a result of doooood and his assoholic fellow voters; they think it’s OK to reward bums to show up (and STAY) here. Doooood and his assoholic associates are more than willing to allow SF to drift into a third-world condition as a result of lefty ignorance/stupidity. Start here: Elect those who would allow automobile traffic on all of Market St. “Broken Window” theory of civility; seems to work. We live on a hill; we don’t have bums. They are too lazy to go up-hill.
Oh, and dooooood, no, we don’t have dog poop and if you do, it tells us something of your residence or honesty.
Please make the world a better place and your family proud; fuck off and die.
It is not possible to “exaggerate” the problems of San Francisco.
Talk about gas lighting! Nob Hill was nice? That’s like saying LA doesn’t have a homeless problem because Beverly Hills is clean. Try downtown. I was working in SF recently. Bums were urinating in the alcoves for high-end stores. We had to cancel an activity in a residential park due to all the drug addicts shooting up. Embarcadero Plaza was a big homeless camp. I watched as a bum tried to dismantle a Lime electric scooter which the police simply ignored. San Fran USED to be a great city. Not anymore.
It would be gaslighighting if he hadn’t also mentioned a lot of the same negatives you just did.
SF is a shithole because of people like you. At long last do you feel any shame for what you have done, and what you supported?
Nobody needs to exaggerate anything concerning San Francisco. Nor any other democrat run city. The truth is, you cannot exaggerate because even an attempt to do so becomes fact.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12050937/Shocking-images-TWO-MILE-long-encampment-people-living-RVs-trucks-trailers.html
The comments here are a perfect illustration of a bizarre phenomenon: call BS on a BS popular narrative, and you will be rebutted by…reference to the BS popular narrative. You will also be roundly and thoroughly denounced, because people cherish their BS.
Or, the people who live in SF are calling BS on Greenhut.
They’re not tall tales. They’re stereotypes.
And stereotypes are pervasive for a reason – there’s always an element of truth to them.
Want to get out from under them? Start defying the stereotype.
I’ll wait.
None of the cities iny state *have* a poop app at all. None of them have open air drug markets that require the national guard to shut down.
Property crime is not surging to the point that you’re warned not to leave things in your car even in the ‘nice’ areas.
Article sounds like cope – ‘there are some nice areas left!’
There is a reason for the “low” San Francisco murder rate.
.
SF has a relatively low African-American population, and African-Americans have a much, much higher murder rate than other groups.
My best friend has worked for SFPD for something like 15+ years now. I am told not all “murders” are reported, that whatever the number is double it and you would be getting close to the actual number of murders in SF. I was told that so far this year they saw 13 homeless murders that were not reported as such, but reported as drug overdose instead. So one has to consider the numbers are not really reflecting what is actually going on in SF
Somehow that does not surprise me in the least.
OK… I have been living and working in SF since 1990 and I am ready to leave. I am sorry, this city has slide into 4th world status. Reflecting honestly about where you live is most important and I have to agree that the people that knock the city (conservatives) are dead on right. San Francisco had it’s moment in time where things were the best in the world, then the actual policies took hold and the city digressed into a sh1thole. I live in a nice area of SF, where crime has been low.. even though my car has been broken into 7 times since living here… it could be worst. A man overdosed on our buildings door step and my daughter watched it all as the man died. And the list goes on and on. SF is not the prettiest city in the US, this is a lie and is dishonest. It has its breath taking views, but when you turn around a man is pissing and sh1tting right in front of you… Just go hang out at Twin Peaks for a day… BREATH TAKING views… meanwhile you might get robbed, stabbed or beaten. What good are the views when the next view is a woman sh1ting herself? Really… I must say out of all the places I have been in the world from places in Africa to Asia to Europe… I have never seen such bad conditions than that of SF. Watch the film District 9.. I was in that part of the world… at least I did not see people pissing in public there!
Aanndd across the Bay in Orcland, they had a nice celebration of peace and good will just this past weekend. Setting a few cars on fire and street takeovers were just a few of the celebratory events along with looting and burning shops.
A beautiful weekend of joy.
The train is wobbling, but everything’s ok until it derails. Yeah, right.