Protesters scared San Francisco’s “doom loop” guide out of showing up last weekend, but they couldn’t erase the rampant rot.
So when those who’d gathered to condemn the exercise instead took the 70 tourists who showed up on a two-hour “positive walk” past City Hall, Union Square, the Civic Center etc., the group still saw eerily deserted streets, drug deals in broad daylight and countless homeless tents and smelled the odors of unwashed bodies, urine and human feces.
You can’t take the doom out of the loop so easily.
Nor stop the exodus. The same weekend, Nordstrom closed the doors of its San Fran flagship, after 35 years of hosting a five-star spa, champagne-and-caviar bar and live pianist, mourning how “the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically.”
And Gump’s, a city icon for 17 decades, is likely gearing up for its last holiday season.
The luxe store’s owner’s public letter spells out the city’s woes: “destructive San Francisco strategies” let multitudes of homeless “occupy our sidewalks,” “openly distribute and use illegal drugs,” “harass the public” and “defile the city’s streets.”
Add in the official blind eye to crimes like shoplifting and car burglaries, and it’s not so much a doom loop as a doom spiral.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, there’s a lot of ruin in a major city: ’Frisco can surely be saved if it elects politicians determined to fully reverse course.
But it’s running out of time.
