GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Where Have All the Chairs Gone? This Is Why Many Downtown SF Starbucks Locations Are Seatless.

Where have all the chairs gone? That was the question posed by a Standard staffer during a recent morning editorial meeting. She was referring to the Starbucks at the corner of Stockton and Sutter streets, just off of Union Square.

Populated by a lonely hightop table and a slim bar without stools, the place appeared to be offering grab-and-go service only—even though the cafe’s floor was clearly large enough to accommodate tables and chairs.

She wasn’t the only one in our newsroom to have encountered a seatless Starbucks in the city. A few months ago, I came across a very similar scene at 1390 Market St., where I popped in for a hot chocolate one day to find nary a place a place to sit and sip it.

Being that we journalists can be quite cynical, we wondered if removing chairs from these locations was a corporate strategy for deterring unhoused people from hanging out in the cafes. Or perhaps it was a monetary decision aimed at moving more caffeine addicts and their dollars through stores at a faster clip.

The “unhoused people” line employed by the reporter at the San Francisco Standard is a classic — as Thomas Sowell wrote almost 20 years ago, “Politically Correct Terms Replace Honest Words.” (Also available here under a different headline if the article is paywalled):

Another word that the left has virtually banished from the language is “bum.” Centuries of experience with idlers who refused to work and who hung around on the streets making a nuisance — and sometimes a menace — of themselves were erased from our memories as the left verbally transformed those same people into a sacred icon, “the homeless.”

As with swamps, what was once messy and smelly was now turned into something we had to protect. It was our duty to support people who refused to support themselves.

And now apparently the euphemism for “bum” is considered a hot (vegan) potato.