Tag Archives: San Francisco

Another one bites the dust: The North-Face closing hometown San Francisco store

San Francisco is failing. Due to progressive policies (soft-on-crime DAs, open-air drug use, Defund the Police movement, Prop 47, etc.) many businesses have shutdown their stores in San Francisco.

Now goes another:

The North Face is closing its only store in its hometown of San Francisco that’s situated in dying downtown area

From Daily Mail:

“San Francisco shoppers receive another shocking blow as another major retailer is all set to move away from the crime and drug ridden city. 

The North Face officials have announced that they will be closing the doors of their Union Square store on March 31.  Although the rock climbing and camping supply company was founded back in 1964 in this city, the Union Square store is the only location to exist. 

Hailey Albright, a spokesperson for the company said in a statement: ‘The North Face was born in San Francisco, and we have cherished the time spent here, building roots and creating lasting memories.’

The retailer has not provided a clear reason for the closure of the 180 Post Street store.”

Read the whole story here.

No “clear reason” is required on behalf of The North Face.

Earlier this week voters in San Francisco passed two ballot measures to take steps to curb homelessness, drug addiction and crime. The initiatives require drug screening for welfare recipients and give police more surveillance power and less oversight

But it may be too little, too late. After 60 years of democrat rule, it will probably take DECADES to undue the damage progressive polices have created for that city. Y’all learn too late:

DCG

How’s it going in San Francisco? Another large firm plans to leave the city

In July 2022 San Francisco Mayor appointed Brooke Jenkins as District Attorney. She promised at that time to “fight the city’s lawlessness.”

Apparently she’s not fighting hard enough to keep KPMG (accounting firm renting 100,000 square feet) in downtown San Francisco.

From Daily Mail:

KPMG moving out of $400million ‘KPMG building’ in downtown San Francisco with nearby besieged mall loses another tenant as doom loop continues

“Accounting firm KPMG is set to move out of its $400 million namesake building, another high-profile exit from San Francisco’s beleaguered downtown.

The consulting and accounting giant first leased space in the 25-story office tower when the building opened in 2002.  Its name hangs above the entry to the skyscraper where the company currently occupies more than 100,000 square feet. It comes as shoe store Alto prepares to exit San Francisco Centre, the city’s biggest mall, next week.

Businesses and residents have fled downtown San Francisco since the pandemic with groups blaming crimehomelessness and work-from-home keeping people from downtown. 

Nearly 100 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent, according to a recent report. 

KPMG, a large accounting and financial firm, originally took 90,000 square feet at 55 Second St. in a 10-year contract, marking the second-largest office deal of 2003. It has since grown its footprint to span nearly one-third of the 380,000-square-foot building, leading to it being widely known as ‘The KPMG Building’.

The company is now considering ending its two-decade-long relationship with the building, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s the latest tenant looking to exit the downtown area. 

Now, another business is set to leave the area’s largest shopping center as Aldo moves its store from the San Francisco Centre. The mall lost Adidas last Saturday, as well as other recent losses including Hollister, Lego and J. Crew.”

Read the whole story here.

DA Brooke Jenkins isn’t trying hard enough to fight the “lawlessness” when the statistics from her first full year (2023) indicate that less than 50% of those arrested had cases filed against them and the “filing rate” and “action taken” rate are both declining.

With statistics like that, I guess San Francisco can expect more businesses to leave.

DCG

San Francisco, failed city part 3

We all know that democrat-run San Francisco is a failed city. The homelessness, crime, locked up store shelves, open-air drug use, poop-covered streets, stores closing, and the list goes on and on.

Yet I never did expect this headline:

San Francisco Bay boaters forced to fight off ‘pirates’ as seafaring bandits ravage community

Thieves are getting very creative in California. From the Fox News story:

“Residents living on houseboats and yachts in the San Francisco Bay resorted to physically fighting off seafaring bandits who are ransacking their ships, former harbor master Brock de Lappe said.

Another woman said she rescued a man whose sailboat drifted into the bay without a motor or any way to get back to shore after one of the “pirates,” which is what the resident call the burglars, cut his boat line during an argument. 

“The open shoreline of the (Oakland-Alameda) estuary is littered with sunken wrecks and derelict, end-of-life vessels, and crime has risen to truly intolerable levels,” de Lappe said during a municipal meeting. 

Since the summer, burglars have been using small boat homes to raid yachts and houseboats in the Oakland-Alameda Estuary, which is populated by marinas with over 3,000 slips, to steal anything of value.  Then they either sink the ships or dump whatever is left of the boats miles away in the Oakland Harbor or along its shorelines. 

Mary Spicer, who founded a group of volunteers that has been cleaning the estuary since 2017, canceled their cleanup this year “because of safety concerns” from a particular homeless encampment, where she said there have been violent incidents. “Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable bringing children to the site until those are addressed by the city of Oakland,” Spicer said.”

Read the whole story here.

I sound like a broken record:

DCG

San Francisco, failed city part 2

Time and time again we see demorat-run cities that are in utter chaos: Rampant homelessness, public drug use, and increased crime. See examples here, here and here.

Man caught pooping in aisle of a Safeway store in San Francisco.

San Francisco is one of those progressive cities that tops the list of failed cities. Not only are their streets dangerous and covered with feces, tax-paying citizens are held hostage to the criminals.

Shoplifting is all but legal in California so now stores are forced to lock up goods to prevent theft. Enjoy your shopping experience, tax-paying citizens!

From Daily Mail:

“Theft has become so bad in San Francisco that some stores are now padlocking shut their freezers and tying metal chains to ensure the doors remain closed overnight

Video shot by one potential shopper at a local Walgreens in the city sees aisle after aisle of products locked away behind Perspex and glass, out of the reach of thieves.

Even lower value items such as toothpaste and tissues are kept under lock and key, such is the rampant theft that has been occurring in many of the city’s pharmacies and supermarkets. 

At one particular location, on 16th Street and Geary Blvd, the freezer doors are entirely chained up, with staff concerned thieves will come into the store overnight to empty the contents.

Shop workers have already reported a problem with thieves coming in to the store as many as 20 times a day to fill their bags full of products including items that need to be kept at cool temperatures such as frozen pizza and ice cream. “

Read the whole story here.

Don’t feel too bad for most of the citizens though. They voted for this. And have voted for this for decades. They never learn:

DCG

San Francisco, failed city

Man caught pooping in aisle of a Safeway store in San Francisco. (Khon2)

Matthew Lynn reports for The (UK) Telegraph, May 7, 2023:

San Francisco should be one of the best retail centres globally; an easy place to sell every kind of luxury good, fashion essentials and high end electronics. The money is there, as well as the people to spend it.

Yet this week, the department store Nordstrom announced it was shutting its locations in the city, joining a growing exodus of big name retailers. Household brands are in despair over the damage inflicted by an ultra-woke local government….

Nordstrom’s announcement was yet another blow for San Francisco’s battered retail industry. The company told employees it would not be renewing its leases at the Westfield Mall, nor at the Nordstrom Rack across the street, due to the “changed dynamics” in the city.

The “deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco,” Westfield Mall told the Washington Post, has left both customers and staff unsafe.

The retailer is hardly the first to put up the “closing down sale” signs. The upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods has shuttered a flagship store; the H&M, Gap and Banana Republic have all left. While some British high streets risk becoming boarded-up wastelands, they could soon look positively vibrant compared to what used to be known as “the golden city”.

There is no great mystery here. Under its ultra-woke Mayor, London Breed, San Francisco has been testing out a wide array of faddish, progressive policies. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, Breed was one of the first to jump on the “defund the police” bandwagon, cutting $120 million from the law and order budget.

Sales and corporate taxes have been pushed up. Homelessness has been tolerated right across the city centre. Motorists reportedly leave car windows and doors unlocked to deter overnight break-ins.

Last summer, a groups of business officials wrote to officials threatening to stop paying taxes if politicians failed to clear litter from the streets and stop people from openly taking drugs….

The quality of life has deteriorated steadily in San Francisco, not least for those who cannot afford to escape to the wealthier suburbs. Businesses are shunning the city, perhaps deterred by an increasingly unfavourable local tax, social and regulatory environment.

In 2021, foreign direct investment into new projects in San Francisco fell to their lowest level since 2009. And as shops close, real estate prices are tumbling. Let’s not forget that one of the big reasons the San Francisco based First Republic Bank had to be rescued was because of expected losses on property loans. The city is slipping into a vicious cycle of decline from which it is hard to see any exit….

There is a lesson in the closure of Nordstrom in San Francisco. It is one of the wealthiest places in the world. It has a per capita income of $160,000 (£126,000), according to figures from the Federal Reserve….

It is often complacently assumed that businesses will just take any amount of punishment so long as there are still customers with money to spend. You can push taxes up to any level you like, let crime run out of control, turn the streets over to vagrants, and impose as many virtue-signalling rules and regulations as you can think of, and they will stoically put up with it all because they need the market. San Francisco is a warning that that is simply not true.

There is always a final straw. That was true of Nordstrom and the golden city…. Ultra left local governments can destroy even successful cities – and once it starts it is almost impossible to reverse.

~E