My wife, Connie, and I were not very active in sports as we grew up. Our two boys participated in little league soccer and baseball. Our daughter was the opposite. She spent five days a week in the gym from sixth grade through high school.
Her sport was acro gymnastics.
In the summer of 2011, the national competition was held in San Jose, Calif. Having never traveled that far west, we took advantage of the trip and stayed an extra week in the Gold Rush State.
Before our return flight, we spent two days in San Francisco, where we toured Fisherman’s Wharf, experienced Chinatown, took a double-decker bus tour across the Golden Gate Bridge (where I lost my hat to the wind), drove down crooked Lombard Street and walked among the Giant Redwoods in Muir Woods.
It was a wonderful vacation leaving us with beautiful memories.
Today, if I had a reason to travel to California, I would not risk a stop in the City by the Bay — nor would I recommend it to others.
I am not alone.
Last week AT&T joined a long list of businesses when they announced the August 1 closing of their flagship store in Frisco. Since 2019, almost half — 90 of 203 — retailers in San Francisco’s Union Square have closed, as reported in the Daily Mail.
The Old Navy flagship store on Market Street is scheduled to close on July 25. It opened in 1999. In 2021 Walgreens closed five stores in the city due to a rise in “organized retail crime.”
According to an article in Newsweek, “In May, online news website SFGATE reported that T-Mobile had closed its flagship store in San Francisco’s Union Square the month before. In April, Whole Foods shut its downtown store after just a year of business, with bosses saying they were unable to “ensure the safety” of their staff in the city. Nordstrom followed suit, leaving the city’s central district earlier in May.”
Businesses are not the only ones leaving San Francisco. IRS data shows that the city population dropped by 32,000 in 2020. In 2019 the net loss was 39,000. This puts San Francisco’s population at its lowest since 2012. To be fair, the rising crime rate was not the only reason. Many are leaving because of the high cost of living and the homeless problem in the Democrat-controlled city.
ABC News revealed last Wednesday that it will not broadcast “Good Morning America” live in downtown San Francisco due to the “rise in crime.” ABC News chief national correspondent Matt Gutman noted that the rise in robberies and the ongoing fentanyl crisis risked turning the city into a “so-called zombie city.”
A story on FoxNews.com reports that, “In April, robberies were up by 11.4 percent with homicides rising by 83 percent in San Francisco since last year.” These figures do not reflect people who don’t report crimes because of a DA who’s soft on criminals.
“Many Twitter employees feel unsafe coming to work in downtown SF and have had their car windows smashed,” Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted. “They also got such a null response from the police that they rarely even bother reporting crimes anymore, because nothing happens.”
San Francisco is home to open-air drug markets and, as of 2022, 7,754 homeless people.
Darren Mark Stallcup, a Gen Z activist from San Francisco, said on FoxNews.com that far-left politics have made the city a “fourth world country within a first world country.” Sallcup shares videos on Twitter to bring more attention to what he calls “fentanyl genocide” in the city. The Golden City lost 647 people to drug overdoses last year. And it’s worse this year.
On it’s website, World Population Review lists the most liberal cities in the United States. Number one is San Francisco.
It’s liberal Democrat policies that are destroying this once “Golden” city. Policies like not jailing people who break the law, defund the police and no consequences for illegal drug use. George Christopher, 1956 to 1964, was the last Republican mayor of San Francisco.
After CashApp founder Bob Lee was stabbed to death in April, in the city actress Sara Foster posted on social media, “I have no words,” she wrote. “SF is a complete s—hole. I am a registered Democrat and feel confident saying liberal politicians are ruining cities.”
More Democrats need to sit up and realize what far-left liberal policies do.
The current Democrat mayor of San Francisco, London Breed defends the city as safe.
Ignoring problems will not make them go away.
