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

you got a gas car, is it gassed enough to get us out of here?

 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/mayor-london-breed-election-18678601.php?utm_content=cta&sid=639dd066a27ce8ac0b0bafbc&ss=P&st_rid=null&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=features&utm_campaign=sfcn%20%7C%20editorial%20features

A poll of nearly 1,000 likely voters, conducted this month, found that the vast majority disapprove of Mayor London Breed’s job performance.

‘In very serious trouble’: Chronicle poll shows S.F. Mayor Breed’s re-election bid is in danger
J.D. Morris

Composite of Daniel Lurie, London Breed, and Mark Farrell.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle, Stephen Lam/The Chronicle, Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
Mayor London Breed is at serious risk of losing her reelection bid, with a pair of challengers in close competition to unseat her and a majority of San Francisco voters holding negative views of her, a new poll commissioned by the Chronicle shows.

More than eight months out from election day and as about 40% of the electorate remains undecided, the poll found that former mayor and supervisor Mark Farrell — who officially announced his candidacy the day before polling began — would have the most support in the first round of ranked-choice voting, though his lead is within the poll’s margin of error.

Twenty percent of likely voters said they would rank Farrell as their first choice or were leaning toward doing so. Breed came in second at 18%, while nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie had 16% and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí had 8%.

Critically, the poll suggests Breed may struggle under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, in which many voters’ second or third choices are usually important in the final outcome. Breed received fewer second-choice votes in the poll than either Farrell or Lurie, the latter of whom was strongest in the second round. More than a third of respondents said they would rank Breed last, after her three main challengers currently in the race.

“Obviously, with the number of undecided voters that we have, you don’t want to draw too firm of a conclusion,” said Jonathan Brown, the Sextant Strategies president who led the Chronicle poll. “But … if this is the field of major candidates right now, it certainly looks like Breed is in very, very serious trouble.”

The poll of 812 likely voters, conducted this month, found that the vast majority — 71% — disapprove of Breed’s job performance. A 2022 Chronicle poll found that Breed’s popularity had plummeted and 35% of residents thought she’d done a poor or very poor job at making the city a better place to live.

In this most recent poll, dissatisfaction with Breed was consistent across key issues: Voters reported broad displeasure with how the mayor was handling public safety, homelessness, drug overdoses and housing affordability.

Breed’s campaign argues that she’s beginning to turn the city around. And she could still get re-elected — especially if she’s able to win over a sizable number of undecided voters or if enough voters change their minds about some of her opponents.

Maggie Muir, a political consultant for Breed’s re-election campaign, defended the mayor’s leadership in a statement and pointed to one of the poll’s positive findings about public safety. Even though most likely voters said they disapproved of Breed’s approach to crime, 70% said they felt somewhat or very safe in their own neighborhood.

Muir also credited Breed with beginning to improve San Francisco’s business climate and reducing the city’s overall crime rate. Experts previously told the Chronicle it’s too soon to say whether Breed’s policies are responsible for the 7% drop in reported crimes last year.

“Mayor Breed continues to boldly lead the city’s recovery, with a laser focus on economic revitalization and public safety,” Muir said. “The election that Mayor Breed is focused on right now is in two weeks when voters go to the polls for her proposed ballot measures to make the city safer, support our neighborhoods, and bring more investment and housing Downtown.”

In a statement, Farrell’s campaign manager Jade Tu said she was “encouraged” that Farrell was in the lead on first-choice votes just days after officially entering the race. While other candidates have spent large sums and campaigned for months, “we are just getting started,” Tu said.

“It is clear that voters have lost faith in Mayor Breed’s ability to turn San Francisco around and are hungry for a candidate who has a track record of effective leadership inside and outside of City Hall,” Tu said. “Voters are backing Mayor Farrell’s vision and platform that is focused on creating a safer, cleaner, and more vibrant San Francisco on Day 1 of his administration.”

Lurie, who founded the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community, performed best on second-choice votes in the Chronicle poll. Among the likely voters who selected a first-choice candidate, 24% said they’d rank Lurie second, compared to 17% for Farrell and 10% for Breed. Lurie’s campaign-commissioned poll conducted in January also found that he would get the most second-choice votes if the election were held now.

In the ranked-choice system, voters can rank up to 10 candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on the first ballot, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to their voters’ next-highest choices. The tallying process gets repeated until one candidate secures a majority of the votes.

Tyler Law, a consultant for the Lurie campaign, said in a statement that the Chronicle survey and the campaign’s internal polling show that Lurie “has the broadest appeal and widest path to victory.”

“This is the worst possible environment to run as a City Hall insider who has failed on crime, homelessness, and corruption — a profile that matches all of Daniel’s opponents,” Law said.

The Chronicle poll was conducted from Feb. 14-18. Likely voters were recruited by text and email to respond to an online survey. To assure the results were representative of San Francisco’s likely voter population, the results were weighted to account for differences in response rates by demographic groups. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%.

Asked how they would describe the quality of life in San Francisco, 61% said it was “just adequate” or “poor.” A similar percentage said they thought the quality of life in the city would either stay the same or worsen in the next few years.

Less than a third of likely voters — 28% — said they approved of Breed’s job performance. Twenty-nine percent said they somewhat disapproved and 42% said they strongly disapproved of the job she was doing as mayor.

The Chronicle poll also asked voters to rank their approval of Breed’s handling of five duties: “Keeping residents and businesses safe from crime,” “providing shelter to the homeless,” “keeping neighborhoods clean,” “handling the city’s overdose crisis” and “providing enough reasonably-priced housing.” More than two-thirds of likely voters disapproved of her response to each issue, with the share of negative responses exceeding 70% in four of the five categories.

“There just doesn’t feel like there’s a toehold anywhere for her to use as the building block of her campaign in terms of justifying (another) term,” Brown said.

 

San Francisco Macy’s to close in devastating blow to downtown

https://www.sfchronicle.com/realest...atures&utm_campaign=sfcn | editorial features


Macy’s will close its massive flagship store in Union Square, San Francisco officials said Tuesday, a major setback to the city’s premier shopping district and its larger downtown recovery efforts during an election year.

The store will remain open until the company finds a buyer for the property, Mayor London Breed said in a statement Tuesday morning. The Chronicle has learned that the store will remain open until, at least, 2025.

“The process to undergo the sale of their building to a new owner with their own vision for this site will take time, and Macy’s will stay open for the foreseeable future and people will remain employed at the store,” Breed said. “Macy’s has expressed to me their commitment to remaining a part of Union Square and our City while they undergo this transition. The City will continue to work closely with Macy’s and any potential new owner to ensure this iconic location continues to serve San Francisco for decades to come.”

Representatives of Macy’s would not confirm the news Tuesday morning. The company’s investor relations team declined to release the list of stores being closed.

Concerns about the future of the store were rampant early Tuesday morning after Macy’s Inc. announced during an earnings call that it plans to shutter 150 “underproductive” stores across the country through 2026, including 50 by the end of the year. The move came in response to dropping sales and consumer demand shifting online.

The San Francisco Business Times was first to confirm the Union Square store’s closure.

It was not immediately clear if the store would stay open beyond the 2026 deadline if the company does not find a buyer for the property. The company also owns the Bloomingdale’s in San Francisco’s downtown mall but it was unclear if that store would be affected by Tuesday’s moves.

Around 400 employees work at the Macy’s, according to their union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5.

Macy’s massive, 400,000-square-foot Union Square store — which spans nearly an entire block fronting Geary Street between Powell and Stockton streets — is the company’s last outpost in San Francisco. Macy’s presence in the city dates back to 1947 and its store is a landmark on the south side of Union Square. Its loss marks one of the biggest retail closures the city has ever seen, on top of the loss of a nearby Nordstrom that had been open since 1988 and dozens of smaller retailers since the pandemic. The timing comes as Breed faces a tough reelection campaign this year, with voters worried about the city’s struggling downtown and a looming budget deficit.

“As someone who grew up in San Francisco, Macy’s has always meant a lot to the people of this city,” Breed said. “It’s where families came to shop for the holidays. It’s where many people from my community got their first jobs, or even held jobs for decades. It’s hard to think of Macy’s not being part of our city anymore.”

Union Square business stakeholders described the news as a “devastating blow” to a neighborhood that has struggled with commercial vacancies in the wake of the pandemic, but in recent months has been targeted for investment by the cityand shown noticeable signs of improvement.

While most small storefronts that dot the Union Square area are filled, it’s the large spaces that are sitting dark. Following Forever 21’s departure in 2019 from a larger corner storefront at Powell and Market Streets, H&M pulled the plug on its 35,000-square-foot flagship location on Powell Street in 2020. Others, like Uniqlo and T-Mobile, soon followed.

“Those are some very large holes,” said Ali McEvoy, a leasing broker with Maven who is focused on Union Square. “And there aren’t many players to fill them.”

“The question is, ‘How relevant is a department store in the city of San Francisco today? ’ And is that really reflective of the consumers’ tastes,” said Alex Sagues, vice president for retail with brokerage CBRE.

Sagues described the news of the closure as “not great for Union Square, but also not overly surprising.”

“Retailers close stores that aren’t performing and the reason that stores don’t perform can be a multitude of reasons. It’d be impossible not to attribute some of the conditions in San Francisco, including crime and security, to some of the challenges to operating a business here. But that’s certainly not entirely responsible,” Sagues said. “At the end of the day, the biggest impact on sales is consumer demand. And I think if Macy’s is closing the store, it’s because the store is not performing, which is a reflection of the demand for what they’re selling.”

The Macy’s closure is the latest in a string of exits of prominent retailers from the city’s downtown core, highlighted by the five-story Nordstrom department store that anchored downtown’s Westfield mall for the past 35 years, but pulled out this summer after its lease expired. While the mall’s owners — who surrendered the mall to their lender in the fall — cited a lack of enforcement against criminal activity as a motivating factor for Nordstrom’s departure, they, for years, sought to convert portions of the property’s retail space into other uses.

More than 30 retailers have exited their downtown San Francisco locations since the pandemic. Among the stores that have abandoned downtown in recent months: Saks Off Fifth, Old Navy, Adidas and Anthropologie.

 

https://underscoresf.com/san-franci...one-of-the-best-cities-to-visit-in-the-world/

San Francisco Has Been (Again) Named One of the Best Cities to Visit in the World

We know San Francisco is one of, if not the best city in the country… and the world, for that matter.
Recently, Resonance Consultancy ranked the World’s Best Cities, and San Francisco slotted it into the #7 spot out of 270-plus global cities analyzed.
And now, Time Out has included San Francisco in its wrap-up of the best cities to visit in the world for 2024.​

 

in about ~~ 50 weeks San Francisco will be hosting the 2025 NBA all-star game


how's that for a ghost town

 

a little more context is in order

The rise of e-commerce has led to a decline in popularity at malls over the years. As a result, many malls have suffered increasing vacancy rates, and some have even been demolished.
in line w this trend, like many of its big-box retail brethrens, Macy's will be shutting down 150 stores thru out the US in a realignment effort, roughly 30% of its current porfolio

​

 

please go visit.

 

twice last year, once this year. will visit again in the fall

 

where’d they all go?