TO BE FAIR, THIS FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION HAPPENED QUITE A LONG TIME AGO: ‘Disturbing’ photos highlight drug, homelessness issues in San Francisco’s SoMa.

The scare quotes around “disturbing” are a nice touch, San Francisco Chronicle. As Harry Stein quipped in his 2000 book, How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), you can tell if you’ve already joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy when “Someone’s going on about how fantastic San Francisco is, and it suddenly hits you that’s one place on earth you never want to live.” When I was visiting both San Francisco and Manhattan during the pre-de Blasio era, I often thought how much cleaner and safer New York seemed to be. But Manhattan seems once again eager to outpace San Francisco in their Red Queen’s Race to the bottom.

San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office in January of 1964.