OLD AND BUSTED: “Mile Markers on the Road to Detroit.”

The New Hotness? Mile Markers on the Road to Mad Max! Coyote-fearing locals are putting vests with spikes on their tiny dogs in San Francisco.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco 49ers’ Ricky Pearsall shot during attempted robbery.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco officials weigh in on departure of Elon Musk’s X headquarters: ‘Good riddance.’

How many more businesses whose departures will be met by San Fran officials responding with some variation of “good riddance” before voters decide enough is enough? Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Robbers Announce They Will Have To Leave San Francisco Because Everything’s Been Robbed.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Swedish battery maker Northvolt lays off almost 200 in Bay Area as it shuts down subsidiary.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: One of America’s richest cities sinks in massive hotel debt — as tourists stop choosing it for their vacations. Harry Stein once wrote, “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” — or vacation there.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco’s dying downtown suffers another hammer blow as Saks Fifth Avenue bans window shoppers from coming inside.

Saks Fifth Avenue in Union Square has decided to change its customer experience by moving to ‘appointment-only’ this summer, according to KRON4.

Locals will have to pre-book appointments at the store located on 384 Post Street from August 28.

Customers can no longer walk in and browse the luxury items, according to a company spokesman.

It comes as areas in San Francisco have become known for their squalor and misery – so much so that local businesses are unable to recruit staff and residents have felt forced to flee.

In December of 2022, Virginia Postrel wrote in the Wall Street Journal: What Shopping Did for American Equality.

The urban palaces of early department stores, the climate-controlled corridors of suburban malls, the endlessly scrolling pages of Etsy, the utilitarian aisles of Walmart and the chatty reveals of haul videos aren’t merely sites of envy or exchange. They’re places where Americans—both buyers and sellers—work out who we are and who we want to be. Since the mid-19th century, modern retailing has tested the practical meaning of equality and freedom.

When A.T. Stewart opened his multistory dry goods store in 1846, the Manhattan merchant introduced two revolutionary practices that we now take for granted. He let anyone come and browse freely, whether or not intending to buy, and he charged every customer the same price. Both policies changed the everyday meaning of social equality.

At Stewart’s, wrote a journalist in 1871, “you may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.” The store and its many emulators established a new social norm. Any well-behaved patron, regardless of class or ethnicity, could freely examine the merchandise without being pestered or pressured to leave.

It was a revolutionary concept, and at least in San Francisco, it was fun while it lasted.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Google quits on huge, longtime San Francisco office in premium location.

Google is planning to move out of one of its massive offices on the edge of San Francisco Bay later this year, Google confirmed to SFGATE on Thursday.

As first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Google plans to depart from its 300,000-square-foot office in One Market Plaza’s Spear Tower within the next year. This is the first time in Google has been reported to be entirely leaving a building in San Francisco, even as the tech giant has moved to cut over a million square feet of office space elsewhere in the Bay Area. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

“We’re focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce,” Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont told SFGATE in an email Thursday. “We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco.” (Lamont gave an identical statement to the Chronicle.)

The Chronicle reported that Google’s lease ends in April 2025, but Lamont told SFGATE the company would move out later this year. He did not immediately respond when SFGATE asked for clarification of the timeline for the company’s departure from Spear Tower.

Fortunately, San Fran’s politicians are laser-focused in ending the doom loop, and they demand the same of their would-be successors: San Francisco Mayoral Debate: Democrat Mayor Breed Asks Challenger to Name Three Drag Queens.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a remarkable policy that would allow people to sue grocery stores that close too quickly.

Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months’ written notice to the city before closing down.

Supermarket operators would also have to make “good faith” efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form a grocery co-op, or any other plan they might work out by meeting with city and neighborhood residents.

Lest one thinks this is some heavy-handed City Hall intervention, the ordinance makes clear that owners still retain the ultimate power to close their store. It also creates a number of exemptions to the six-month notice requirement. If a store is closing because of a natural disaster or business circumstances that aren’t “reasonably foreseeable,” it doesn’t have to provide the full six months’ notice.

Still, should stores close without providing the proper notice, persons affected by the closure would be entitled to sue the closed store for damages.

San Francisco’s city government apparently can’t stop their city’s doom spiral, so why not extort those supermarkets closing up as a result of it? I’m sure that won’t accelerate the city’s descent at all.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Of Course: Employees Say Shoplifting was Rampant at San Francisco Macys.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Macy’s Shutters Union Square Location in San Francisco.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Charles Barkley eviscerates San Francisco for ‘homeless crooks’ during All-Star Game.

The NBA legend and TNT basketball host and analyst likely won’t be planning any vacations to the city anytime soon.

Barkley was speaking with polarizing Warriors forward Draymond Green and ex-Pacers star Reggie Miller, now an NBA analyst as well, on TNT’s alternate broadcast during the NBA All-Star game Sunday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indiana.

During the broadcast, Green said, “Hey Reggie we love you, let’s not have another All-Star [game] in Indiana. Let’s let this be the last one, my friend.”

Next year’s All-Star game will take place at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

When Green responded, “yes you can walk around,” Barkley responded “yeah, with a bulletproof vest.”

It’s certainly not the first time Barkley has criticized San Francisco.

San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Iconic San Francisco toy store that inspired Toy Story films closing after 86 years over ‘perils and violence’ in city’s downtown.

San Francisco’s oldest toy store, which inspired the Pixar classic “Toy Story,” is permanently shutting its doors after nearly a century in business with the city’s widespread crime and violence problem playing a significant factor.

Jeffrey’s Toys broke the news Friday it will be closing up shop at the end of February, marking the end of an iconic 86-year run.

“The store has been struggling for a number of years, due to the perils and violence of the downtown environment, inflation, the decrease in consumer spending and the demise of retail across the world,” attorney Ken Sterling told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The family is saddened it has come to this and we’ve explored all other options to try and keep the business going,” Sterling explained.

* * * * * * * *

San Francisco’s rampant violent crimes also impacted the store’s staff.

Luhn told the San Francisco Chronicle that one of his former employees was pushed up against the shop’s wall and nearly stabbed.

Sterling blamed “the leadership of the City of San Francisco and the Downtown Association” for letting crime run wild in the “once vibrant and fun downtown experience.”

Luhn, who manages the toy store with his dad and stepmother, said they were “putting our money in, we’re putting our hard work in, and we’re putting our love into it,” but the local business was not getting any help from the city in return.

That last item isn’t all that surprising, when the SF Chronicle reported in 2022 that “San Francisco is the most childless major city in the U.S.” and in a great moment of urban self-awareness, exclaimed in 2008: “There is nothing more bacchanalian than a kid’s birthday party.”

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco’s Post-Apocalyptic Hellscape Is on Full Display in This Viral TikTok Video. “Police lights flashing, litter in the streets, and homeless encampments in doorways with sketchy individuals loitering everywhere are on full display in the video. The scene is something one would expect to see in a warzone like Gaza, not in a bastion of liberal America in the heart of one of the wealthiest regions of California.”

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: ‘Hostile architecture’ vs. beautification: Sidewalk planters are flashpoint in homelessness crisis.

Outside the City Hope Cafe in San Francisco stand two new large, gleaming metal tubs filled with hundreds of pounds of soil. Installed on the sidewalk last week, the planters will add a touch of greenery to the cafe that serves homeless people for free in the gritty Tenderloin neighborhood.

But the cafe’s operator, the Rev. Paul Trudeau, acknowledges that their purpose is also functional — a tactic that a recent Chronicle block-by-block survey showed is often resorted to by San Francisco residents and businesses to deter encampments on the sidewalks around them after the city proved unable to provide long-term solutions.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Even For San Francisco, This Story Is Almost Too Bizarre to Believe.

We all know that San Francisco has a terrible, awful, horrible, homeless problem with homeless people sleeping everywhere. One homeless man set up camp across from a Catholic grade school. It would have been a curiosity except for the signs he hung outside of his tent.

“Free fentanyl 4 new users” and “Meth for stolen items.”

WARNING: Explicit and potentially upsetting content

A San Francisco man who camped across the street from a school displaying sign offering "free fentanyl for new users," and who has a previous pedophile conviction has been arrested. pic.twitter.com/gmzGcL3azr

— The San Francisco Standard (@sfstandard) October 20, 2023

It’s the failed city of San Francisco in 2023, so of course, it’s totally believable.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Starbucks Is Closing Seven Downtown San Francisco Locations on October 22.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: What happened to the great West Coast cities?

Migration patterns have changed as well. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Seattle participated in the region’s boom, which saw the addition of 187,000 domestic migrants. But now the Seattle metropolitan area is losing net migrants while many residents are moving to the state’s smaller metropolitan areas such as Bremerton, Spokane and Olympia.

Portland never achieved Seattle’s economic dynamism but was widely hailed as a model for dense, progressive planning and social liberalism — it positioned itself as a leisure-oriented San Francisco where “young people go to retire.” Despite being the whitest of America’s big cities, it was wracked with almost constant violent protests for much of 2020, extending even to the gentrified Pearl District. Spurred by crime and disorder, the Portland area is now losing domestic migrants. The region added 252,000 net domestic migrants between 2000 and 2020, but since then the Census Bureau has found that Portland’s urban core county, Multnomah, lost 13,000 net domestic migrants while the surrounding suburbs grew modestly.

Some still praise Portland as “an anarchic wonderland.” But now its streets are best known not for quirky food trucks and street musicians but growing fentanyl use. Over the past three years, the LA Times reports, the number of unhoused people in the Portland metro area has jumped from about 4,000 to at least 6,600. Shootings in the city have tripled. Homicides climbed from thirty-six in 2019 to ninety-seven last year. Lower-level crimes have spiked too: more than 11,000 vehicles were stolen in 2022, up from 6,500 in 2019. According to Portland’s KGW-TV, “every forty-two minutes there is a report of vandalism,” often involving broken windows. There were more reports of broken windows last year than during the 2020 riot year.

It is certainly too early to write off the once mighty Pacific cities. They retain many critical natural assets: they’re near mountains and spectacular water views; they have relatively mild climates (likely a big plus in a period of global warming), and a concentration of promising industries. The education base from the University of Washington, Berkeley, UCLA, Caltech and other top schools still gives the region a headstart in many promising industries.

In each of these Western cities, the key challenge is political. No one should expect a GOP resurgence, but there has been some modest pushback to the progressive agenda. San Francisco, for example, removed some particularly radical school board members and replaced its ultra-lenient DA, as did Seattle. There are stirrings in minority communities, as evidenced by a growing shift of Asian and Latino voters to the right, and in Oakland, the local NAACP recently denounced lax policing as a cause of growing violence, particularly in the black community.

Gooder and harder.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Leads the Nation in Losing Money on Home Sales.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Joe Montana Sues San Francisco With Neighbors Over Sewage-Damaged Homes.

The residents are represented by prominent San Francisco attorneys, including Khaldoun Baghdadi, former head of the city’s Human Rights Commission. Baghdadi said residents filed the claims in June—which are often a precursor to a lawsuit—to put themselves “back where they were” financially before the flooding. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Iconic Retailer Nordstrom Closes Shop In San Francisco Thanks To Rampant Crime.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Luxury San Francisco store may close after 166 years due to ‘litany of destructive’ policies making the city ‘unlivable.’

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Walgreens’ Locked-Up Shelves Ripped Off by Thieves.

Stores from Safeway to Home Depot have been increasingly locking items behind screens to deter shoplifting in the Bay Area and across the country. Customers and staff in San Francisco stores recently described the security measures as irritating, with it taking several minutes to access basic items like toothbrushes or high-value items such as liquor and power tools.

Walgreens manager Chanh Luu said the group entered the Bernal Heights store at around 8 p.m. and began smashing the shelves in two of the store’s aisles, where laundry soap and dental products are locked away behind plastic shields due to rampant shoplifting in the city. The shields were torn away so the thieves could get their hands on the items but were already replaced by Tuesday when The Standard visited.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: In San Francisco, Government Failure Erases Billions of Dollars of Commercial Real Estate Valuations.

San Francisco is proving to be ground zero in the nationwide commercial real estate collapse. While the values of offices and malls are tumbling in many US cities, the losses in San Francisco are more dramatic and, unlike elsewhere, have extended to hotels. City and state government mismanagement have played a major role in destroying billions of dollars in assessable real estate values, but the role of these policies is easily overlooked.

San Francisco’s plight was thrown into sharp relief on June 5, when the owner of two downtown hotels containing a combined 2,925 rooms announced that it would cease making payments on a $725 million mortgage backed by the properties. Commercial bond investors will now have to find a company willing to purchase the hotels at a small fraction of their estimated 2020 valuation of $1.561 billion.

Gooder and harder, San Fran.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: AT&T to Shut Flagship Store in Downtown San Francisco.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO TRUMP: CNN’s Jim Acosta recalls ‘quaint’ Romney gaffes, including one that wasn’t a ‘gaffe’ at all:

For many voters on the Right (myself included), the “binders” moment served as further proof that it does not matter who the GOP submits as its presidential nominee. He can be as kind and decent as Romney, and Democrats and their allies in the press will still savage him as a retrograde monster, grinding him into dust with a relentless torrent of attacks and criticisms. And if Democrats and their supporters cannot find legitimate controversies with which to destroy the GOP nominee, they will simply concoct them from thin air, as they did with “binders full of women” and similar episodes of ginned up outrage. It makes sense, then, that Trump’s inability to feel shame, coupled with his love for fighting with journalists, appealed to the same people who watched in dismay in 2012 as their perfectly honorable candidate was torn to pieces by the White House and the press.

“Romney ran a hard-fought, respectable race,” Acosta recalls in his book, referring to the former governor as a “thoroughly decent human being” with “good manners.”*

Is that so?

Because that most certainly was not the message voters received in 2012, back when Acosta and others were busy obsessing over supposed “gaaaaaaffes” committed by the man who threatened to deny their beloved Barack Obama a second term in office.

Choose the form of your destructor, to coin an Instaphrase.

* Curious how Republicans invariably get rehabilitated by the DNC-MSM as wise elder statesmen to bash the current Republican in office, assuming that the public has forgotten the previous smears.