San Francisco turned ghost town?: Dave Chappelle ‘what the f happened to this place ?!’

NYTimes:

What Comes Next for the Most Empty Downtown in America

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/business/economy/california-san-francisco-empty-downtown.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 

I need wine on tap, hot yoga microrooms, rooftop spas, bean bag meeting rooms, safe places and oh someplace to work some when I feel like it in my workspace to entice me to come in.

 

You're so 2000's.

 

SF is empty because tech workers are home.

If Elon Musk had his way, tech workers would go back to the office 5 days a week, therefore making SF lively once more.

Wonder what is going to win out.

 

specialty's was a good lunch spot.

 

Althouse reads the comments so we don't have to:

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/12/today-san-francisco-has-what-is-perhaps.html

excerpt:

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

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

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

 

why not both dot gif.

 

Never really understood railing against the global innovation hub.

Sounds like folks should have learned to code instead of being haters….

 

I'll check it out in a couple of weeks.

 

I agree. The smell of human piss outside of the BART station was the worst, even worse than sixth street in Austin at 2am

 

Make sure you get out of the downtown/Civic Center/Soma areas. As with any city, a commercial district isn't the best indicator of what life is like there. However, SF has always been strange, though, in that the worst part of the city (Tenderloin) is adjacent to city hall and Market street. Anybody portraying the Tenderloin as a recent byproduct of liberal city governance is being dishonest. It's been a problem in one way or another since the 1920s.

I was just there for work and downtown did feel eery because of little activity there was. But, downtown has never been the best part of San Francisco which is all about the neighborhoods. It's one of those cities like New York: I wish I had enough money to comfortably live there, but there's not a lot of "middle ground" for raising a family. You can either afford to live with privacy and comfort or you're young and getting by with roommates.