On Wednesday, ABC’s Good Morning America continued to highlight how dire things had gotten for downtown San Francisco, California as yet another major retailer, the Westville Mall was closing due to losing 45 percent of the shops it housed. But despite admitting that San Francisco was becoming a “zombie city” and the area around the mall and downtown were too unsafe for their crew, they refused to mention that the city’s purely liberal policies were the source of the problem.
After years of disorder and misgovernance, the City of Roses is taking steps to reverse its decline.
In the summer of 2020, Portland, Oregon, became the poster child for American urban disaster zones. During the day, tens of thousands of citizens protested peacefully against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But everything changed after dark. Nonviolent demonstrators with jobs, school assignments, and kids to raise went home; hundreds of anarchists swarmed in to take their place and waged a low-grade insurgency against the city. They fought pitched battles with the cops—throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, buckets of excrement, and even Molotov cocktails. They attacked coffeehouses, immigrant-owned restaurants, mom-and-pop retail stores, banks, museums, churches, bus stops, and the Multnomah County Democratic Party headquarters with baseball bats, crowbars, and hammers. Most were military-age white males wearing all-black clothing and hiding their faces. The violence kept up, night after night, week after week, and month after month, into the winter, long after the rest of America had calmed down. My city had become the most politically violent place in the country, and I got worried e-mails from people I knew around the world—even in the Middle East!—asking me if I was okay and why on earth this was happening.
They may be talking about “getting sober” but I doubt it will happen.
While local and national media outlets frequently report on food deserts, particularly in cities that lack sufficient grocery stores, there is one major shortage that goes largely unnoticed by the press: pharmacies.
“Pharmacy deserts” pose a real threat, particularly for vulnerable populations. This is something I’ve seen firsthand. Last year, the Rite Aid in my neighborhood in Riverside, California, closed down and was boarded up for good. It came as no surprise, as it had been repeatedly robbed. A few months ago, it reopened as a shoe store.
MORE … With new anti-theft stores, companies are stepping in where governments are missing
San Francisco’s struggling downtown has been dealt another blow as Westfield has stopped making mortgage payments on its massive mall due to crime and tanking sales.
The firm has defaulted on the $558million loan and is handing it back to the lender, which will appoint a receiver. The mall will remain open for now.
The decision was sparked by the decision from Nordstrom, the mall’s anchor tenant, to close in August.
Frightened neighbors have said one of Portland’s new city-sponsored homeless villages has become a hotbed for crime and drug dealing.
Homeless people, who were previously camping out on the Peninsula Crossing Trail in Portland, were taken off the streets and introduced to the city’s solution, the recently-completed Safe Rest Village.
But the new village, which houses 70 people, has caused mayhem for homeowners in the vicinity, who say it’s running rampant with drug dealers, loud noises and anti-social behavior.
The owner of two of San Francisco’s largest downtown hotels is stopping mortgage payments and going into foreclosure on the properties, stating that the city faces “major challenges” and that reducing exposure to the market is in the best interest of investors.
Park Hotels & Resorts said Monday that it was stopping payment on a $725 million loan secured by the two hotels, the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and 1,024-room Parc 55.
A Welsh billionaire has been criticised over a “misguided” poster campaign aimed at heavier enforcement of laws against drug users and dealers on the streets of San Francisco.
Michael Moritz is a funder of Together SF, whose poster campaign called for an end to open-air drug markets and more city-sponsored recovery programmes.
The posters were graffitied and some have labelled the campaign “misguided”.
The city of San Francisco has launched its biggest ad campaign to lure tourists and business travelers to the city that has been suffering from an intense and unending homelessness, drug addiction, and crime crisis.
The campaign, called ‘Always San Francisco’ cost a whopping $6million and is being spearheaded by the city’s tourism bureau.
It includes, among other things, the city’s first television commercial, a music video of sorts that seeks to highlight the quirkiness and diversity of the city.
The Memorial Day weekend in Chicago was the deadliest in eight years.
By early Tuesday morning, at least 11 people had been killed and another 48 wounded since early Friday evening. The death toll was the highest since 2015, when 12 people were killed. The total number shot, however, was still far below the 71 people wounded by gunfire over the 2016 holiday weekend.
The Gresham police district on the South Side recorded the most shooting victims, at least seven, followed by the Harrison District on the West Side, where at least six people were shot.
h/t HB
San Francisco Mayor London Breed is pushing back against reports of a retail “collapse” in the city’s downtown, saying that the departure of many high-end stores is the result of “changes to retail” in the economy in general.
How bad have things gotten in California? If you are somehow doing well enough to be able to afford to buy a new home there, you may not be able to get homeowner’s insurance. Or at least not from State Farm…
The city is now lawless and crime-ridden thanks to policies that decriminalised theft and the push to defund police
The first time I went to San Francisco, I was in my twenties and, possessing all the grace and poise of Ann Widdecombe on rollerskates, I drunkenly fell off a nightclub speaker, badly fracturing my shoulder. I’m back in the city at the moment, and I can honestly say this trip has been even more painful than that first visit.
What’s most distressing isn’t the rampant homelessness, which has long been a problem — although it’s clear there are even more people sleeping rough than there used to be (up 35 per cent since 2019.)
San Francisco Police Department shot dead a man after a three-hour standoff during which he was drinking vodka and snorting cocaine.
Sergio Barrios, 40, snorted cocaine, drank vodka and wine, listened to music and watched videos as dozens of police officers surrounded him, demanding he surrender a pistol he had sitting in front of him.
Democrat London Breed was heckled off stage after condemning the city for tolerating ‘illegal, out-of-control behaviour for far too long’
The mayor of San Francisco was forced to abandon a press conference held in a square known for open-air drug taking after the event descended into chaos.
London Breed, a Democrat, appeared at United Nations Plaza on Tuesday alongside Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the city’s legislative body.
Here’s video of the woman throwing a brick at UN Plaza in San Francisco following the postponement of a special session of the Board of Supervisors and a Q&A with Mayor London Breed. pic.twitter.com/hlAzWHJvpx
— Sergio Quintana (@svqjournalist) May 24, 2023
That woman is a Tranny;)
For years now the normal people have been lectured to by Portland, Ore., leaders about how woke, wonderful, and progressive they are and how out-of-step those who gasp at the controlled demolition of the City of Roses are. The results are now in. Normal people have left Portland in huge numbers, according to the Census Bureau.
