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Abandoned stores, streets overtaken by the homeless and drug-addled, theft so rampant that CANDY is locked away: Welcome to San Francisco's ghost town downtown
UK Daily Mail ^ | June 18 2023 | UTH STYLES and LEWIS PENNOCK

Posted on 06/18/2023 11:46:48 AM PDT by knighthawk

A photo plastered on the empty windows shows it as it used to be: a colorful branch of Gap surrounded by crowds of cheerful tourists and not a drug addict or scrap of litter in sight.

Today, San Francisco's once bustling Union Square and downtown area is a shadow of its former self: rows of empty stores, sparse crowds even on peak weekend shopping days and nearby hotels – including a huge Hilton - unable to cover their mortgage payments.

The historic Flood Building, a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, stands largely empty: Gap has gone along with nearly every other business in the property with the exception of a tired branch of Dr. Martens and an Urban Outfitters store offering 70 per cent discounts.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: anarchotyranny; california; dystopia; sanfrancisco
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To: mosaicwolf

I lived in SF in the ‘70s and ‘80s and it was delightful and safe then. Of course a neighborhood or two I wouldn’t walk through, but every city has those. Come to think of it, a female friend of mine did get an apartment in one of those awful ‘hoods and felt and was perfectly safe there. That was decades ago, before drugs and crime took over.


61 posted on 06/18/2023 2:28:50 PM PDT by Veto! (FJB Sucks Rocks)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

Reminds me of the rug shops on El Camino Real south of SF who were forever going put of business.


62 posted on 06/18/2023 2:29:29 PM PDT by Noumenon (You're not voting your way out of this. KTF)
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To: knighthawk

I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Sung by: Tony Bennett
Songwriters: Douglass Cross, George C. Jr Cory

The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the Bay
I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog may chill the air, I don’t care
My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco
Your golden sun will shine for me
When I come home to you, San Francisco
Your golden sun will shine for me


63 posted on 06/18/2023 2:31:01 PM PDT by Jyotishi (Seeking the truth, a fact at a time.)
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To: catnipman
Newsome says this is all alarmist propaganda, that ALL cities are like that ...

All Democommie run cities ARE like that, or getting closer every day.

. Is there any large city in the country that is NOT Dem-run?

64 posted on 06/18/2023 2:35:24 PM PDT by workerbee (==)
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To: dsrtsage
"And like a horde of locusts, the refugees will flee over the Sierra Nevada and ravage Reno"

The fix is so simple. Take the offenders to a dockside courthouse for a quick court session, then dump the guilty some distance offshore based on the severity of their crime with instructions to "swim home".

Crime will drop like a rock, and those who make it back to shore will have had a free bath.

65 posted on 06/18/2023 3:25:34 PM PDT by The Duke
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To: Jim W N

Pacific Heights is most certainly NOT trashed. Do you think Pelosi and Feinstein as well as gazillionaires like the Gettys would let the homeless set up camp on their blocks?
The area around Oracle Park (latest in a series of names for the Giants’ ballpark) is so-so. Fair amount of open drug-use and homeless in that zone.


66 posted on 06/18/2023 3:32:29 PM PDT by irishjuggler
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To: knighthawk

It is really disgusting

I no longer go to the city for business or pleasure

Hayes Valley but, I abhore looking for a parking space where my car will be safe


67 posted on 06/18/2023 3:33:15 PM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: frank ballenger; fieldmarshaldj

Heh. True.

Don’t get me staahhhhhhhted. Fuhhhhhhhgeddddabout it.

In the early 90s I went through a room where my two little nephews were watching an animated series. The intrepid environmentally conscious group of young people discovered a corporate boss deliberately polluting the river. Kids were one black, one Asian, one female.
He was caught and arrested.

He looked like Karl Rove, Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh, bald, heavy set and in a fancy suit.

I knew years later the nephews would be always Dem voting Leftists someday. True, they are today.

TV works.


Believe it or not, this was going on before then. Late ‘60s there was a kids’ story (print not TV) about some children examining coded price tags for TV sets in a department store. They figured out the store manager was hiking prices and spoke up about it, shaming the manager. Don’t recall if it was a racially mixed group of kids but they were boys and a girl.


68 posted on 06/18/2023 3:41:15 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: knighthawk

I remember living in a garden apartment on California Street near Buchanan in 1979. Hubby worked at Basta Pasta in North Beach and I was a cocktail waitress at a disco on Union Street. The city was fun and lively and breathtakingly beautiful. Breaks my heart to see it destroyed like this.


69 posted on 06/18/2023 4:08:06 PM PDT by Prince of Space (Trump 2024!)
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To: Prince of Space
The city was fun and lively and breathtakingly beautiful. Breaks my heart to see it destroyed like this.

Progressives turn everything they touch to sh!t.

70 posted on 06/18/2023 4:47:04 PM PDT by Gritty (The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the Revolution. - Saul Alinsky)
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To: xp38

Probably NOTHING.


71 posted on 06/18/2023 5:35:00 PM PDT by Old Grumpy
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To: knighthawk

I just finished watching “Star Trek IV, the voyage home”
It is amazing how far SF has fallen since 1986.


72 posted on 06/18/2023 6:11:12 PM PDT by Zathras
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To: knighthawk
Those tourists that still come can't avoid San Francisco's homeless problem. Here a tour bus drives past a tent city in the Tenderloin area

Caption of a pic of an open top tour bus.

Can you imagine the smell? Fisherman's Wharf crossed with filthy rest stop restroom & overflowing toilets.

73 posted on 06/18/2023 8:52:00 PM PDT by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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