Blue Skies Over Union Square

Just twelve months ago JPMorgan Chase CEO and Democratic Party supporter Jamie Dimon was highly critical of San Francisco and its future: [bold added]

“San Francisco is in far worse shape than New York,” Dimon said in an interview Thursday on Fox Business.

“I think every city, like every country, should be thinking about what is it that makes an attractive city, you know, its parks, its art, but it’s definitely safety. It’s jobs, it’s job creation, it’s the ability to have affordable housing,” Dimon said. “Any city who doesn’t do a good job, it will lose its population — just tax more and more, it doesn’t work.”

560 Mission (Chron photo)

What a difference a year makes: JPMorgan to sign new lease expanding its presence in downtown S.F. office tower

JP Morgan will renew its lease for its longtime offices at 560 Mission St., committing to 280,000 square feet of office space.

The new term of the lease will be for five years in the 31-story office tower known as the JPMorgan Building. Real estate firm JLL represented JPMorgan in the deal. JPMorgan declined to comment on Thursday.

Previous reports show that JPMorgan occupied about 220,000 square feet in the tower previously, and its lease renewal represents a significant expansion in the building. Real estate market insiders say that JP Morgan has been working to consolidate some of First Republic Bank’s former employees into its 560 Mission office.

JP Morgan's new leases are just a fraction of the floorspace that First Republic Bank cancelled in 2024 when the latter was absorbed by JPM. Nevertheless, with the installation of billionaire businessman Daniel Lurie as its Mayor San Francisco feels like it has turned the corner. Restaurant and bar owners are optimistic.

Like Union Square used to be(Instagram)

“[The JPMorgan Healthcare Conference is] one of the best conventions of the year, and it affects us from the bottom up,” said John Konstin Jr., co-owner of John’s Grill at 63 Ellis St., which on Wednesday saw a crowd of conference badge-wearing patrons line up outside its doors ahead of its 11:45 a.m. opening. Konstin said that he brought former staff members back to work at the restaurant in preparation of the big week, which he expects will bring as many as 1,000 patrons to John’s Grill over the next three days.

“We are busy, lunch to dinner, nonstop during the conference,” he said, adding that the last six months of 2024 were “out of this world for us.”

“Business has been booming, and going into January with JPMorgan, I hope that continues,” he said...

“First and foremost, we have blue skies, that puts everyone in a good mood. But what I think is the important thing about today and this conference is what you see here (in Union Square): People sitting down and collaborating outside of the pressures that we normally deal with from our offices and behind our computers,” said Ali Tehrani, a partner at Amplitude VC, a venture firm in Canada. “This conference is really about breaking down silos, and what happens outside of the conference or in between sessions is critically important. You get to stress-test your ideas and concepts with another collaborator, versus doing it yourself.”

Mange: the Last Straw

In California citizens with a license can hunt coyotes. However, the general rule is limited because firearms, including archery equipment, cannot be discharged within 150 yards of occupied structures. An exception to the exception is that an owner or his agent may hunt coyotes on the owner's property.

Coyote hunting may be further restricted by local ordinances. San Francisco, not surprisingly, bans coyote hunting and their trapping and relocating. Coyotes have been steadily encroaching on humans, and it would not be surprising if people who are worried about attacks on pets and children start pushing back.

Coyote with mange (Presidio Trust/Chronicle)

There's another reason to stay away from canis latrans:

Wildlife officials in San Francisco are warning that a rise in sarcoptic mange among local coyotes could pose a threat to domestic pets.

The highly contagious skin condition, caused by microscopic mites, can easily spread from coyotes to dogs, the Presidio Trust said in an advisory to residents. While rare, the disease could also affect humans.

Wildlife experts are advising pet owners to leash dogs and keep them away from wild animals and to report any sick or injured coyotes to authorities.

Your humble blogger senses that the pro-wildlife anti-urban branch of wokeness has peaked. The Santa Cruz wharf collapsed because repairs were not permitted during the nesting season of unendangered seagulls. Protection of the endangered delta smelt has been blamed by President-elect Trump for Los Angeles not having the water needed to fight fires. With their human advocates soon to be in retreat, wild coyotes' days appear to be numbered.

SF Public Toilets: Reason for Optimism

April, 2024: The $200,000 toilet in Noe Valley (Chron)

San Francisco was understandably mocked when a public toilet was estimated to cost $1.7 million. After contractors donated time and materials and specifications were scaled back, the toilet was completed for $200,000.

Based on that experience, San Francisco has streamlined future toilets and "small" public works projects:

Now officials say they’re able to build one toilet in Bernal Heights’ Precita Park for $262,000 — a huge savings. Officials said the project timeline will also be significantly reduced, shrinking from roughly 17 months to just nine...

The savings at Precita Park stem from the use of a prefabricated design and legislation around new cooperative purchasing rules introduced by then-Mayor London Breed in April that allow the city to purchase goods directly from suppliers. [Rec and Park spokesperson Tamara] Aparton told the Chronicle those rules changes mean the department can make several projects currently in the works cheaper to build, such as the new outdoor gym at Kelloch and Velasco Mini Park in Visitacion Valley and a turf field replacement at Raymond Kimbell Playground in the Western Addition.

Aparton said the cost savings for Precita Park’s bathroom should be “very” replicable across other projects.

Normally I'd be highly skeptical of their cost projections, but San Francisco officials should get the benefit of the doubt from the favorable outcome of last year's Noe Valley toilet project.

Santa Cruz Wharf

Debris from the partial collapse (CBS/YouTube)

The Santa Cruz Wharf experienced a partial collapse after being buffeted by large waves on December 23rd. Repairs had been planned since 2014 but were stymied by environmentalists to protect seagulls (who are not endangered): [bold added]

Strict permitting requirements and lengthy litigation by environmental activists have stalled efforts to fortify the pier that could have helped it withstand the storm, current and former city officials say.

At the center of the delays: seagulls.

It was for the benefit of the western gull, commonly known as the seagull, that the city of Santa Cruz delayed the most critical part of the repair work, installing new timber piles — the columns that hold up the wharf — until September, because gulls and another bird, the pigeon guillemot, make their nests in the wharf’s wooden beams.

The protections for the birds are imposed by the state Coastal Commission, from which the city must obtain a permit before it can do repairs. Most major construction — including replacing the piles — must take place between September and March to avoid the nesting season.

“Our work window is a very narrow six months over the winter time when we tend to have storms and big waves,” said Tony Elliott, director of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the wharf. “The wharf is a 110-year-old structure, and it requires a lot of work. … It takes more than six months out of the year to maintain it effectively.”

Neither the western gull nor the pigeon guillemot are endangered species, yet the Coastal Commission says federal and state laws protect their nesting areas.

One can see thousands of seagulls in San Francisco and down the Peninsula in Foster City. They swoop into the stands at the end of Giants games, looking for scraps. They are ubiquitous, far from endangered, and, frankly, hazardous to human and animal health. Somehow I think the seagulls will adapt if they couldn't nest at the Santa Cruz Wharf over several summers.

The blame for the wharf collapse rests squarely on the shoulders of the California Coastal Commission, which refused to modify its protection of the nesting areas of a species called by many as flying rats.

Songs of the Season

(Reprised):

In the late 1990's my former employer could draw on a talent pool of more than 200 financial professionals to put together a decent holiday choir. The grainy video (VHS tape) and monaural audio won't attract any hits today, but Christmas is a time of nostalgic sentimentality...



Note: here are parts Two, and Three.

Part Four is below:



Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow...

But the fates do not allow. As this year has reminded us, Our time together is fleeting, gone in the wink of an eye. Like the ghostly watchers in Grover's Corners, we have an eternity to mull the regrets of moments unappreciated until too late.

Sam Wo: The End?

Chef David Ho (Strazzante/Chronicle)

Every month we hear a report of a well-known San Francisco restaurant closing--often these announcements come as a surprise--but Sam Wo's demise has been in the cards for at least a decade. Its closure (for health code violations) occurred in 2012, and it reopened in 2015 at a different address. In 2020 long-time chef and co-owner David Ho, then 65, was feeling the effects of age.

His body is full of aches and pains. He’s scared of catching the coronavirus. Still, he doesn’t want to stop working, despite the pleas of his business partners. Even his daughter has expressed concerns he’s working too hard without a staff to back him up, according to co-owner Steven Lee, who helped resurrect Sam Wo, Chinatown’s oldest restaurant, after it temporarily closed in 2012.

Sam Wo will probably close on December 31st.

A 116-year-old San Francisco Chinatown landmark, Sam Wo Restaurant, is set to close Dec. 31 — potentially for good — as chef and co-owner David Jitong Ho retires and his partners scramble to find a successor.

First opened sometime after the 1906 earthquake by Chinese immigrants, Sam Wo Restaurant became a haunt of the 1950s Beat Generation poets, including Allen Ginsberg, and workplace of the late Edsel Fong, whose colorful personality earned him the title of “world’s rudest waiter” from Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

Ho, the second generation of his family to helm the restaurant’s kitchen, has been working at Sam Wo since 1981, except for a three-year break starting in 2012 when the restaurant temporarily closed. The 69-year-old said he is exhausted from the years of toil and needs to retire, in part, because of two torn tendons in his arm.

Sam Wo Restaurant was the subject of one of the first posts on this blog in 2003. At that time David Ho had already worked in the kitchen for over 20 years. He deserves a happy and restful retirement.

Pod Living in SF's Future

$700 buys you the top or bottom

If I were single and in my 20's, starting a job in San Francisco, and didn't care about having a social life, I would definitely consider renting a sleeping pod:

Brownstone’s model is different in that it’s renting out pods that are much smaller in size than a traditional bedroom and more akin to Japan’s capsule hotels, which keeps prices lower. It’s also not trying to program social gatherings for residents, as previous startups have sought to do.

The reported rent of $700 per month is a fraction of the cost of a studio apartment. Even if one can afford to pay much more for housing, being a pod person may appeal to finance or engineering types who work long hours in the office and just need a place to crash and wash up. (This recalls the 2016 case of the Google engineer who claimed he was able to build his savings by $6,000 per month by living in a truck.)

Your humble blogger claims to have no expertise in San Francisco commercial real estate, but pod living appears to be one solution to 1) high housing costs and 2) a way to attract some young highly paid professionals back to the City and rejuvenate its night life.

Converting excess office buildings to pod housing is much less costly than conversion to standard apartments and condos. The only holdup seems to be, unsurprisingly, San Francisco's disorganized, inefficient regulatory agencies:

But last year, city officials ruled that the pods violated building codes because Brownstone hadn’t gotten approval for the residential conversion and the building was a safety hazard, in part because the front door required a key to open from the inside.

James Stallworth, CEO of Brownstone Shared Housing, said the city’s planning department was unresponsive for around nine months as the company sought to bring the project up to code. He said, ultimately, only a few minor changes were implemented: A stove was installed in the communal kitchen, permits were approved for a shower that was installed and the front door access was remedied.

Dan Sider, the planning department's chief of staff, said claims that the department was unresponsive were “utter nonsense” and said Stallworth only filed an application in July after “months of noncooperation.”

Thirteen residents were allowed to continue living in the building during that time, but Stallworth said the city told Brownstone to stop accepting new residents. It’s now advertising the pods for rent again.

Michelin-star Chef Gives Up on SF

Peter Hemsley prepares a dry-aged blue
fin tuna steak (Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle)

Michelin Award-winning chef Peter Hemsley thought that he could both succeed in business and help revive San Francisco's South-of-Market area. He has given up. [bold added]

Less than two years after Aphotic opened and drew acclaim in San Francisco, the fine dining restaurant will close.

Aphotic, which won a Michelin star in its first year of operation, announced on Instagram that it will close on Dec. 21. Chef Peter Hemsley said despite the accolades, the restaurant’s location at 816 Folsom St. in SoMa proved challenging.

“The fact that we all did this at the ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole in the post-panny apocalypse, is nothing short of a small miracle,” he wrote. “And I believe in miracles — I have to as a chef and restaurant owner in these times. But I also know that miracles do not last forever.⁠”

In an email to the Chronicle, he wrote, “The energy may come back to that part of town in the years to come, but it will be a long and painful battle. Longer, much longer than anyone expected.”

Aphotic's dry-aged blue fin tuna steak (Suzuki/Chronicle)

Hemsley, an alum of the Michelin-starred Quince, opened the moody Aphotic last March in the former home of Palette, his combination art gallery-fine dining restaurant. It served an ambitious, seafood-focused tasting menu and standout cocktails. Aphotic is one of the rare restaurants with a license that allows it to distill its own spirits, producing a seaweed-infused gin...

In an email to supporters announcing the closure, Hemsley wrote that he “stayed put where I am because I was always charmed by the architecture of my restaurant, and the potential it had as an exceptional dining venue from within." Yet he said he increasingly felt the city failed to address post-pandemic challenges in Aphotic’s neighborhood. In the message, he cited “fear of parking on the street due to broken windows,” construction and other issues, coupled with the rising costs of doing business.

Mayor Breed and other San Francisco boosters are trying to make us believe that San Francisco has put the worst of homelessness, crime, open-air drug use, and general filth behind it.

To get at the truth watch the behavior of Peter Hemsley and other business people who have their own money on the line.

Return of the Wild

St. Mary's Park, San Francisco

Coyotes have taken over some areas in San Francisco. Some residents have taken to outfitting their dogs with spiked vests:

This is how it goes in San Francisco, where over 870,000 people and tens of thousands of dogs are learning to live in harmony with about 100 coyotes on 49 square miles of land. Coyotes in particular are highly visible in the patchwork of green spaces that break up this densely populated concrete expanse. Sightings are common, and confrontations occasionally occur, especially when dogs are involved.

...Beyond dog safety, there’s been concern recently about coyotes and children. In July, a coyote bit a 5-year-old girl who was attending a day camp in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. In response, U.S. Agriculture Department trappers shot and killed three coyotes in the park, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials confirmed using DNA testing that one of the animals was the one that nipped the child.

One hundred years ago San Francisco was determined to rid itself of coyotes and did so:

There was a period when coyotes were fully eradicated from San Francisco. “There were coyote killing competitions and bounties and poisoning,” [UC-Davis PhD candidate Tali] Caspi explained, as well as the runoff effects of urbanization destroying habitats. The last coyote spotted and officially recorded in San Francisco in the 20th century was in 1925 in Golden Gate Park.

But thanks to changing attitudes, new laws were passed that banned state and federal agencies from incentivizing animal killings. By the 1970s and ’80s, the coyote population began inching up again in California. In 2002, coyotes began to return naturally to San Francisco, initially in the Presidio, and thrived. After all, while San Francisco may be a big city of concrete and speeding cars, it’s also prime coyote habitat, with pockets of overgrown green spaces and an abundant and novel food supply.

The situation is untenable. It's easy to foresee more attacks on dogs and children and the public outcry that will result.

Posting warning signs will only delay the inevitable.

Another Reason the Chicken Crossed the Road

Police Lt. Jonathan Ozol in a SF crosswalk

San Francisco police have a new crime-fighting initiative. They're tagging drivers who don't stop for officers who are dressed as inflatable chickens.

On Monday morning [Sept. 16], San Francisco police Lt. Jonathan Ozol wore a flamboyant, inflatable chicken costume as he attempted to navigate a crosswalk on Alemany Boulevard near the intersection of Rousseau Street. The purpose of the exercise was to issue tickets to drivers who flouted state law by not yielding to a pedestrian like Ozol as he attempted to cross. Quite a few drivers failed that test.

The ostentatious costume, according to police Capt. Amy Hurwitz, serves two purposes. “I don’t want them to get run over,” she told me. “But the costume is so bright, it’s like, how can you miss it?”

...State law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians who are entering a crosswalk. Ozol said that failing to do so can result in a citation that could cost the driver a hefty fine of as much as $400.

...Ozol would attempt to enter the crosswalk, and if a driver didn’t yield and allow him to cross, he would wave at two other officers parked nearby. From there, one of the two officers — one on a motorcycle, and the other in a standard squad car — would follow the flagged driver and pull them over.

The numerous tickets and the irresistible publicity have had the desired effect: drivers are slowing down.

Your humble blogger laughed, too, but I think that those who mock the chicken/Big-Bird costumes as a "stunt" have an anti-SF or anti-police agenda.

Kudos to SFPD for their creativity, and coming up with a strategy that appears to be working.

The Chickens are Going Elsewhere to Roost

Intuit HQ in Mountain View (Mercury photo)

Despite economic strength in the rest of the country Bay Area tech layoffs continue. IBM, Cisco, and Advantest announced that a combined 1,000 jobs will be "permanently" eliminated by the end of November.

Added to the 384 positions extinguished at Intuit's Mountain View HQ in July, over 45,000 jobs have been lost in the Bay Area since 2022.

None of the aforementioned companies are in trouble. In fact, all their stocks are trading near the high for the year.

Udemy looks like it was a nice place to work (Chron)

San Francisco-based Udemy is more explicit about the reasons it is cutting Bay Area jobs: [bold added]

Udemy, the world’s largest online learning marketplace, announced plans to lay off 280 employees, representing approximately 20% of its global workforce. The company said it intends to rehire about half of these positions in locations with lower operational costs.

The restructuring is expected to incur costs ranging from $16 million to $19 million, mainly in severance payments, and will span from the third fiscal quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025. Udemy aims to complete the restructuring by March 31.

Udemy is a relatively small company with 1,443 employees at the end of 2023. Earlier this week we posted about how California's inhospitable business environment (taxes, regulatory inefficiencies, anti-business Progressive attitudes) caused Elon Musk to move his multi-billion dollar enterprises to Texas.

California's heavy hand applies to small businesses as well.

Twitter Be Gone

After moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas, Elon Musk has completed his divorce from California by moving X (Twitter) headquarters to Austin:

The light goes out on Market Street

Twitter, now known as X, is expected to close its San Francisco headquarters this month, leaving behind the Mid-Market neighborhood it has called home since 2012. The company is reportedly moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas, but plans to relocate its San Francisco employees to San José and Palo Alto, where it has already listed job openings.

The departure is another blow to a city that has been buffeted by high-profile business departures and that once held up Twitter as a key part of its revival. Downtown San Francisco’s vacancy rates have ballooned as tech companies slashed their real estate expenses and halted office expansion plans as the pandemic has relented.

Confronted with a falloff in foot traffic, major retailers such as Nordstrom and Anthropologie also shut their stores amid heightened concerns about crime, theft, vandalism, drug use and homelessness.

X is the second-largest tenant in the Mid-Market neighborhood, leasing 457,793 square feet, according to CoStar, which tracks real estate trends. Vacancy rates in Mid-Market are at their highest in decades at 62%, according to CBRE.

California is so invested in its Progressive politics that it rather let megabillion employers like Tesla depart than change its ways.

(In an infamous exchange, California Progressive Congresswoman Lorena Gonzalez tweeted “F—k Elon Musk” in 2020 when Musk threatened to move Tesla because of California's COVID lockdown rules.) He responded "exactly" and Tesla departed for Texas.

IMHO, the biggest loss to California is privately held SpaceX, which is the leading American space exploration company. Its current valuation is estimated to be $210 billion, and $1 trillion is well within reach after it goes public.

On the other hand Twitter's valuation has fallen from $44 billion to an estimated $19 billion. (He can't admit this to the bankers and investors, but IMHO Elon Musk's primary objective wasn't to make money from the purchase but to make Twitter a free-speech platform.)

Although the Musk family of companies retains substantial operations in California, the loss of their headquarters is a blow to the tax base. Not only do headquarters support a host of ancillary businesses (hotels, printers, law firms, banks, etc. etc.) repatriated international income and intangible income such as royalties and licenses are attributable to the state of the company's residence.

Progressives rather lose the tax base upon which their carbon-free equality-of-result dreams depend than admit they are wrong. Unfortunately, when the majority of the people of California realize that, it will be too late.

SF: Another Neighborhood Market Closes

(SF Gate photo)

Despite political leaders' assurances that San Francisco is cracking down on crime, homelessness, and drug use, one local business has given up:

After 35 years in business, a family-owned market in South Beach is closing its doors. Co-owner David Pesusic said high operation costs and mounting neighborhood crime were the driving factors.

Bayside Market, located at 120 Brannan St. near the Embarcadero, will cease operations on Sept. 13. Some of its 12 employees will be transferred to RJ’s Market near Fisherman’s Wharf, the business’s other location, but most will be laid off, Pesusic said.

In addition to inflation-fueled bills and declining foot traffic, the small grocery and deli has suffered from “rampant” crime, including near-daily shoplifting and three break-ins in the last couple years, Pesusic said. He blamed city officials for the increased crime, slamming law enforcement and city leaders for being unresponsive and overly permissive...

Law enforcement has taken hours to respond to petty crimes at Bayside, if they respond at all, Pesusic said. During two of the three break-ins the business faced over the past two years, he said police officers took over eight hours to arrive on the scene. And the market’s employees have stopped reporting shoplifting incidents, which Pesusic said occur at least 5-6 times a week, and sometimes up to five times in one day.

Crime in the city plunged in the first quarter of 2024, the Chronicle reported in April. From January through March, San Francisco saw decreases in every major crime category tracked by the FBI for its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which includes homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, arson, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft.

But Pesusic said market employees have stopped reporting many crimes.

“We don’t even call 911 anymore because they don’t respond,” Pesusic said. “This isn’t fun, playing security-slash-police officer, trying to hold on to my inventory.”

In the absence of law enforcement, people deal drugs right outside Bayside’s doors and serial shoplifters operate with no consequences, Pesusic said.

“These guys think our store is a pantry where they can take whatever they want,” Pesusic said. “We’ve been spit at, we’ve had knives pulled on us, we’ve been called names.”

For a City that is hostile to automobile traffic, San Francisco doesn't seem to be helping residents shop, dine, and receive services without forcing them into their cars or using problematic public transportation.

Also...after the Federal jobs report was "revised" down by 818,000 from April, 2023 to May, 2024, I've stopped blindly accepting improvements -- such as San Francisco crime decreases--in government statistical measures without corroboration.

SF Zoo: Improvement Requires a Candid Assessment

2011 was the last time we commented about the San Francisco Zoo. The post was about the 2007 incident where an escaped tiger mauled a young man to death and injured two of his friends. Police killed the tiger, and the two injured young men received a $900,000 settlement from the Zoo. Although they taunted the animal into an enraged state, they were not held responsible because the Zoo's tiger enclosure wasn't 100% secure.

The grizzly was caught on video entering the zookeeper's area

Recent investigations into the Zoo's policies and procedures have uncovered incidents that could have resulted in more tragedies but luckily didn't. The most dangerous was one involving a grizzly bear.

One Saturday morning last May, a keeper at the San Francisco Zoo heard footsteps behind him in the grizzly bear grotto. Believing it was a co-worker, he turned, only to see the hulking brown form of Kiona. He thought he’d safely locked her in her den, but the door, which is operated from an adjoining room, had an unusual feature: Its lock could be fastened even without the door being securely closed.

The zookeeper began to run, and with Kiona in pursuit, he circled the grotto, according to people familiar with his account. He then sprinted through the door into the keeper area, according to surveillance video. When Kiona stopped briefly, the keeper escaped through a gate and closed it behind him.

At that point, the almost 500-pound grizzly ambled into the keeper area and was separated from the public by a gate, a regular door and a chain-link barrier, said Travis Shields, then the assistant curator of the zoo’s carnivores department, which includes the bears. Shields was away at the time but was briefed by workers who were involved or listening on the radio.

Zoo employees who came to the keeper’s aid found him in a panic and the grizzly roaming the keeper area, Shields said. The zookeepers managed to coax Kiona into her other outdoor habitat and locked the doors.

It's healthy that the San Francisco Zoo is undergoing an audit. It will need substantial improvements in public safety and animal welfare before the pandas come. From April of this year:

“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled that we will be welcoming giant pandas to our San Francisco Zoo,” Breed said in a statement Thursday from Beijing, where she signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese wildlife officials regarding the panda plan.

No timeline was given for the pandas’ arrival. The announcement said it depended on the completion of an enclosure for the animals at the zoo. The number of pandas was also not specified, though pandas often have been sent in pairs...

Owned by the city, the zoo is run by the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society. In addition to the estimated $1 million annual price tag to rent the pandas, it could cost an estimated $25 million to build housing for them at San Francisco Zoo, Peterson told ABC News in February. That would be on top of the cost of maintenance and upgrades needed for the facility’s aging structures, some of which date to the 1930s.

The Residential Streets of San Francisco

San Francisco, somewhat belatedly, is trying to attack homelessness, crime, and open-air drug use in this election year.

Addressing one subset of crime--prostitution--has been a low priority, especially since sex work has long been regarded as "victimless" (two consenting adults engage in a quid pro quo transaction where supposedly no one gets hurt).

Sex worker Rene, 20: “This is a good street. Quiet. Safe.
Way better than Oakland, where I live. I’ve got two kids to
support, and I can make $1,000 a night here." (Chron photo)

However, street prostitution has spilled over into San Francisco residential areas and has become a severe nuisance: [bold added]

A year after San Francisco officials put up bollards to deter sex work on Capp Street in the Mission District, residents say the activity hasn’t disappeared — it has just migrated a couple of blocks east.

Now, Shotwell Street is the Mission’s epicenter for the illicit sex trade, and all the noise and bumper-to-bumper traffic that comes with it. And frustrated neighbors are suing.

Hiding these problems or pushing them around “is not the solution,” said Ayman Farahat, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this past week in San Francisco Superior Court. The suit aims to force city officials to eliminate what the plaintiffs describe as a public nuisance.

...at Shotwell’s Saloon on 20th and Shotwell streets, owner David Hall flinched when asked about the nightly activity. “It’s horrible, horrible,” he said — so bad that he now closes the bar at midnight to protect his customers from solicitation or harassment.

Advocates of helping, rather than arresting, sex workers say pushing them off Shotwell might give the locals some relief like Capp Street got, but it won’t solve the larger problem. The area’s reputation as a lucrative sex-trade spot is so widespread it has drawn people from as far away as Seattle — which is where 21-year-old Maryanna was walking the streets until last week.

Customers up north were too edgy, she said, “and then a friend told me ‘There’s this place called Shotwell Street in San Francisco where business is good, you can make good money.’

“She’s right,” Maryanna said the day after she arrived in San Francisco, strolling Shotwell to scope out the night’s work. “I like it here. It’s more intense, but there’s good money. I’ll stick around awhile.”

...Lyon-Martin Community Health Services sends a van to Shotwell two nights a week, offering condoms and other sex-work supplies along with aid references. And though some locals resent that as enabling, Lyon outreach director Celestina Pearl says it is life-saving.

“Nobody is pro-trafficking, and yes we do want better lives for these women,” Pearl said. “But the better solution is not to vilify, stigmatize and criminalize. If people really want to solve the problem I would love to see them advocate for decriminalization of sex work, so these women can move indoors where it’s more dignified and safer and more peaceful for the residents.”

There is a substantial lobby that is (still) in favor of decriminalization, and with so many other problems San Francisco is unlikely to devote substantial resources to ridding the streets of prostitution. Besides, anyone arrested will be released because San Francisco is philosophically opposed to incarceration. The residents of Shotwell Street (a Zillow search values homes at more than $3 million) will have to live with the situation indefinitely or get the politicians to move it to another neighborhood.

Out of Rhythm

Lester Beach, South Lake Tahoe (Chron)

Moderate weather is forecast for this Labor Day:

Tranquil weather is expected in the Bay Area for the holiday weekend as west-southwest winds keep marine air flowing from the ocean to the land, preventing temperatures from climbing too high. Sunday will be the windiest day of the extended weekend, with gusts up to 30 mph.

Along the coast, the ebb and flow to the marine layer will keep temperatures in San Francisco in the 60s to low 70s with morning and evening clouds from Friday through Monday. Oakland should reach the mid-70s each day, while San Jose will steadily be in the low to mid-80s.

It looks like a good weekend to get away.

During my working years I looked forward to holiday weekends. Dates were circled months in advance, and travel was scheduled to minimize the use of paid vacation. Holiday weekends took a lot of work, but the payoff was often great.

Now that I'm retired I don't much care for long weekends. Shopping centers, restaurants, and supermarkets are crowded on what would normally be a weekday, and the local bank and post office are closed. I rarely go on long car trips, especially not when most other people are on the road like the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

I do regret being out of rhythm with the rest of America.

SF Public Art: the Latest Chapter in the Culture War

Piss Christ

Lefties used to laugh at the bluenoses who wanted to put fig leaves on nude statues.

They mocked the negative reaction by many Christians to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987), a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist's urine. A work of art should provoke feelings in the observer, they said, your personal morality limits you.

Four decades later Progressives turned a blind eye to the toppling of historical public works that reflected "power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism." The destruction accelerated during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

The city had its share of monuments destroyed in 2020 when bronze statues of Junipero Serra, Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key were all knocked off their pedestals by protesters in Golden Gate Park. The city removed the statue of Christopher Columbus at Coit Tower to avoid a similar fate. All four statues are now secured in storage.

2018: SF removed an "Early Days" statue depicting
a white missionary towering over a supine Indian.

Now San Francisco will spend $3 million from a Mellon grant to determine which works are acceptable and which are offensive.

San Francisco is about to embark on evaluating its nearly 100 statues and monuments to figure out which ones no longer represent the city’s values and should be removed from view, relocated or re-interpreted with explanatory plaques.

The debate over the city’s monuments began in 2018 with the removal of the “Early Days” sculpture from the Pioneer Monument in the Civic Center because it represented a Native American seated before a Spanish Catholic missionary. The effort gathered steam amid the racial-justice movement in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd. That year, crowds toppled statues throughout the country that glorified Confederate Civil War leaders, which critics said paid homage to the country’s racist past.

The survey of San Francisco’s civic art collection — funded by a $3 million Mellon Foundation grant — will be conducted by an outside firm and should be completed by January.

The project, called “Shaping Legacy,” was discussed at an Arts Commission meeting last week when senior project manager Angela Carrier explained that looking at San Francisco’s monuments and memorials as a whole shows “a concentration that talks about power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism.”

“These monuments no longer represent the values that we say the city stands for,” she added.

IMHO, this is a self-defeating move by Progressives. Keeping the "bad" monuments up would be a constant reminder of San Francisco's white supremacist past and prove that this claim has validity.

Another observation, updated now that Progressives control big cities, media, and the elite colleges: art, like free speech, can still provoke, as long as it doesn't go against the Progressive narrative.

We'll end this post with a quote include in the article from Stanford History professor James T. Campbell:

"To me, the real danger of these kind of exercises is not so much historical erasure as self-congratulation, with all of us pointing accusatory fingers at our benighted forbears and patting ourselves on the back for our own superior moral wisdom,” he said. “It’s worth asking what San Franciscans a hundred years from now might say when they audit us."

Stonestown Galleria: Foodie Paradise

Our lunch at Marugame Udon

For the past decade, even during the COVID lockdown, we've stopped at Stonestown Galleria whenever passing through San Francisco because of the food. From 2019:

In recent years, the 66-year-old mall in the Outer Avenues has quickly and quietly become a top culinary destination in San Francisco, thanks to a flood of new restaurants that have brought crowds ready to line up for freshly made noodles, fruity boba tea and, most recently, Japanese souffle pancakes.

In 2024 Stonestown is adding more restaurants:

The San Francisco mall already considered by some to be a foodie paradise is about to get another infusion of trendy eateries. Three new restaurants are opening at Stonestown Galleria in the next year...

Le Soleil, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Inner Richmond, is expected to open a second SF location at the mall by the end of the year. The restaurant, which serves dishes such as bo luc lac (shaking beef) and imperial rolls with pork and vegetables, also has a Hong Kong location. Le Soleil will take over the former Banana Republic space, reported KRON-TV.

Supreme Dumplings, a Seattle area restaurant known for its soup dumplings, is expected to open at Stonestown by the end of 2024 or early 2025. With two existing restaurants in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington, this will be Supreme Dumplings’ first California restaurant. The restaurant will be in the former LensCrafters space on the second floor of the mall, according to KRON.

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya, a Japanese chain with over a dozen U.S. locations, is also slated to open at Stonestown in the first quarter of 2025. The bulk of its American restaurants are located in the Seattle area, with this one being its first in California. According to KRON4, it will replace the popular souffle pancake spot Gram Cafe, which is closing after Aug. 27.

Within the past few years, Stonestown has become a food hub, bringing in popular international Asian restaurant chains such as Marugame Udon and Kura Revolving Sushi Ba

We have more restaurants to try, so Stonestown will continue to be a place for us to stop.

SFGate Gives Kamala Harris Advice That She Will Ignore

I'm behind the times: I thought that the San Francisco Chronicle still owned the free SFGate website, which was founded in 1994. (SFGate runs several Chronicle articles verbatim every day, so perhaps my mistake was understandable.)

That relationship lasted 25 years, until the Chronicle's parent, the Hearst Corporation, split the two organizations, complete with separate news and editorial staff. Technically they are now sister publications owned by the parent Hearst Corp.

She can think on her feet. WaPo reminds us that
she weathered the SF crime lab scandal in 2010.

Although SFGate leans left in its Opinion section, it's much more centrist than the Chronicle which still carries the flag for DEI, slavery reparations, etc. The following SFGate editorial advice to the Vice President would never be published in the Chronicle:

The GOP says San Francisco is a mess. Kamala Harris should agree. [bold added]

The San Francisco attacks will be potent. The city has long had a national image problem, and it’s not just people who don’t live in the city who feel that way; poll after poll from recent years shows San Franciscans themselves believe the city is on the wrong track. There’s a reason this year’s leading mayoral candidates are accusing one another of copying their policy proposals on police staffing and public safety.

But Harris could take a course of action that would not only parry the attacks but also help solve another problem she has. She can throw San Francisco — the city where she launched her career in electoral politics — under the bus.

Let’s back up. Harris has two major weaknesses to overcome if she wants to win the White House. The first is the issue that is, frankly, San Francisco. Harris’ national ascent started in San Francisco, when she became the city’s district attorney in 2004; her mantra that she can “prosecute the case against Donald Trump” is her directly campaigning on her tenure in the city. The problem is people across the political spectrum now view the city as a wasteland of needles, vacant storefronts and cars with shattered windows.

The second is the fact that Harris is a career political shapeshifter, and that shapeshifting — specifically her attempts to cater to the progressive wing of her party in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries — has left her exposed to attacks that she’s a radical leftist who wants to defund the police and weaken enforcement against illegal immigration. Early polling confirms that Harris’ biggest issue is that she's perceived as too liberal. This week, she named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a gun owner and hunter who used to represent a rural congressional district, as her running mate, reportedly in part because of his possible appeal to rural and exurban areas that traditionally vote Republican.

Throwing San Francisco under the bus helps Harris with both weaknesses. She is already stylizing herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor and someone who is more of an immigration hawk than Trump. She should more specifically portray herself as the last non-radical San Francisco district attorney. She has a set of spinnable facts that can tell the story of San Francisco’s demise and how it was not because of her but rather despite her. It’s because of her departure (she left to become California’s attorney general in 2011) that San Francisco went to s—t, she can say. After all, her two successors, George Gascón and Chesa Boudin, are now national bogeymen with name ID for anyone who has watched even five minutes of Fox News while visiting their grandma for a holiday.

The editorialist, Eric Ting, proposes a plausible defense against future Republican attack ads against San Francisco. Ms. Harris can say, look at the mess it became when I departed, my successors went too far left, and my policies will restore it.

That strategy can work, but it will also require the Harris campaign to admit that she made some mistakes in the past (e.g, supporting 2014's Prop 47, which lowered some felonies to misdemeanors, including property crimes involving less than $950).

However, reversing course requires some facility in argumentation, and Vice President Harris has not demonstrated that skill in the past five years. That's probably why her handlers will keep her under wraps as long as possible.

Once an Asset, Now a Liability

Proximity to San Francisco was once an asset but is now a liability to some Bay Area counties.

Headline: San Francisco's rotten reputation is killing tourism across the Bay Area [bold added]

According to the survey results, the city’s rotten reputation — regardless of whether this perception was valid or not — is actively deterring domestic travelers from even considering the rest of the region.

A striking number of respondents, nearly half in some cases, agreed that San Francisco’s woes have made visiting a county like Sonoma unattractive, even though it’s 45 miles away and vastly different from the city.

We unwound at the Kenwood Inn in Sonoma County

Fixing San Francisco's problems isn't as critical to the economic health of counties that are tech-based, but those dependent on travel and leisure, like Sonoma and Napa, have been particularly affected.

Speaking from personal experience, we've been very satisfied with overnight trips to Wine Country. Napa and Sonoma counties are well over an hour's drive from San Francisco, but both geographically (hot and dry during the summer) and culturally they feel much more distant. Here's hoping that they can endure the pain while San Francisco fixes itself.