PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: This is the real doom loop. It will change everything about life in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area is facing a doom loop. It’s just not the one we usually think about.

For years we’ve heard of the potential economic doom spiral circling San Francisco, where a massive city budget deficit fueled by remote work leads to poorer services and even more residents fleeing. But another threat has been building in relative silence.

The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace.

That means fewer children, more elderly people and a declining number of 20-somethings. The confluence of demographic shifts will profoundly impact every aspect of life in the San Francisco area. Combined with rising housing costs and growing hostility toward immigration, the graying of cities and towns means the region’s continued prosperity is in doubt.

—The San Francisco Chronicle, yesterday.

Perhaps that’s because Chronicle readers took the newspaper’s advice on the topic. In 2008, the paper was complaining that “There is nothing more bacchanalian than a kid’s birthday party,” and how those bacchanalian birthday parties lead to increased global warming, from their perspective, those declining numbers were good news, right?

In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major American city:

Just 13.4 percent of San Francisco’s 805,235 residents are younger than 18, the smallest percentage of any major city in the country. By contrast, San Jose’s percentage of children is 24.8 percent, Oakland’s is 21.3 percent, Boston’s is 16.8 percent and Seattle’s is 15.4 percent, according to Brian Cheu, director of community development for the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Even Manhattan is composed of roughly 15 percent children, according to Dan Kelly, director of planning for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency.

In 1970, children made up 22 percent of San Francisco. In 1960, they constituted 25 percent.

I’d say there is a glimmer of hope for the city based on this Wall Street Journal headline, “Mayor Daniel Lurie: ‘San Francisco Needs to Save Itself.’” But “unexpectedly” the word “homeless” doesn’t appear until the comments section.

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

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: ‘Don’t invest in San Francisco, because you won’t make it:’ Facing closure, chef unloads on city.

When it comes to choosing where to operate a business, location is often the most important criterion. But if you ask chef Peter Hemsley of upscale seafood restaurant Aphotic, it is beyond that in San Francisco. Just 19 months ago, the chef opened Aphotic in a cavernous, inky black space near the intersection of Folsom and Third streets in SoMa. By the end of the year, it will be closed.

Hemsley is adamant that it wasn’t the food or even the $215 price tag on the 11-course tasting menu that caused the restaurant to fold. He blames the city.

“If I could have found a better location, I would have,” Hemsley told The Standard. “But it’s expensive and hard, and, for those who can’t, the lesson is: Don’t invest in San Francisco, because you won’t make it.”

* * * * * * * * *

In the Instagram post, Hemsley expressed in candid terms exactly why he decided to throw in the towel. On top of industry-wide issues, including the rising price of ingredients and labor, Hemsley called Aphotic’s location on the southwest side of the Moscone Center the “ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole” — a juicy quote that understandably showed up in headlines.

Hemsley told The Standard he saw the writing on the wall in recent weeks. It’d been a slow spring and summer, but as the usually busy fall season set in, reservations weren’t picking up. “I knew that forecasting into the spring and summer of yet another year, it probably wasn’t going to work and that this was the time to call it,” he said.

It’d be easy to write off Hemsley as bitter. But there is evidence to back up his experience. Tourism industry experts confirmed last month that 2024 has been a big letdown for San Francisco. This year, the Moscone Center will host just 25 events, down from 34 in 2023. Matters are on track to improve only marginally in 2025.

High-spending international tourists, the kind who might have splurged on a fancy dinner at Aphotic, haven’t returned to the city. Hemsley points out that he’s not the first to note the impossibility of keeping a restaurant alive in SoMa these days — even at a more approachable price point.

It really is a doom loop — the more the negative headlines keep piling up about Frisco, the less tourists want to visit, and the more the city contracts.

Exit quote:

I asked Hemsley what he thinks the city could be doing to support small-business owners. “No city official ever reached out to us to see how we were doing or to congratulate us or to let us know what their plans were or any multitude of things that they could do to help out small businesses,” Hemsley said. “So I think that lets you know about the mindset of the city.”

Well to be fair, SF politicians have much more important priorities these days than keeping their city’s businesses alive and tourists flying, bringing their disposable income with them:

● San Francisco Auditing 98 Monuments to Remove Those Deemed ‘Racist or Sexist’.

● San Francisco Police Are Fighting Crime By Dressing up in Inflatable Chicken Costumes to Catch Drivers Speeding Through Crosswalks.

● San Francisco Flew ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag Until Saturday.

● San Francisco Spends $5 Million of Taxpayer Money to Give Free Beer and Vodka Shots to Homeless.

● San Francisco Mayor Appoints Drag Queen to Head Office of Transgender Initiatives.

● San Francisco’s Train System is Still Running on Floppy Disks.

● 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.

ALL-DAY BREAKFASTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED ON THE DOOM LOOP: Owner blames rampant crime as last Denny’s closes in San Francisco.

HOW IT STARTED: In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

How it’s going: San Francisco Mayor Orders City Staffers to Offer Homeless Bus Tickets Out of Town.

For several years, San Francisco has struggled with crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, which was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The degradation and talk of a “doom loop” has turned away tourists and driven out businesses.

In 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness sued the city, accusing it of violating its rules for removing camps. At one point, the city was hit with a wave of suspicious lawsuits from homeless residents who claimed that city workers had illegally disposed of their valuables – electronics, “priceless” baseball card and stamp collections, art, and “business prototypes.” In early 2023, a federal judge blocked the city from clearing camps.

That changed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in June. During a debate last month, Breed vowed to take action against the sprawling homeless camps that have taken over city parks and sidewalks. “Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties,” she said, according to the San Francisco Standard.

In addition to directing staff to offer relocation services to the homeless, Breed is also requiring police officers, firefighters, and paramedics to carry handouts with information about the city’s relocation services. The city will also establish a tracking system that will publish data about the effectiveness of its relocation efforts.

I’m so old, I can remember when San Fransisco leftists purported to be against bussing.

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.

JOHN NOLTE: Democrat-Run St. Louis Enters ‘Doom Loop.’

“The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves, and failing retail,” reports the Wall Street Journal of Democrat-run St. Louis, Missouri. “[E]ven the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.’”

Let’s look at the mayoral history of the doom-looping St. Louis, shall we?

Oh, look, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since — not a typo — 1949. For 75 years, the people of St. Louis have voted for More of the Same, so excuse me if I don’t whip out a violin over all this unavoidable doom looping.

“Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “St. Louis is already trapped in one.”

The Journal notes:

As offices sit empty, shops and restaurants close and abandoned buildings become voids that suck the life out of the streets around them. Locals often find boarded-up buildings depressing and empty sidewalks scary. So even fewer people commute downtown.

This self-reinforcing cycle accelerated in recent years as the pandemic emptied offices. St. Louis’s central business district had the steepest drop in foot traffic of 66 major North American cities between the start of the pandemic and last summer, according to the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. Traffic has improved some in the past 12 months, but at a slower rate than many Midwestern cities.

In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah, that’s a shame.

As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”

How on earth could we have seen St. Louis’ collapse coming?

● Rather than prosecuting car thieves, St. Louis wants to sue Kia and Hyundai for making their cars so easy to steal.

● Mark McCloskey’s “day will come,” threatens Cori Bush after St. Louis couple is pardoned by governor.

● St. Louis mayor accused of defunding police department by millions of dollars.

● St. Louis’ murder rate, already highest in US, soared last year; mayor vows to defund the police.

● Gateway to the Wild West: The accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America.

● Soros-backed St. Louis Prosecutor Ensures All Arrested Looters and Rioters Released From Jail.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: San Francisco Doom Loop Quickly Spiraling: Major Business Pulls Out of Its Downtown Office Tower.

Related: Doom Loop: San Francisco’s Budget Deficit Could Top $1.4 billion by 2027.

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE SOVIET UNION AND CHINA USED TO SWEEP THE DREGS BEFORE A BIG PUBLIC EVENT:  Anxious San Francisco Clears Out Homeless Camps, Pushes Back Against ‘Doom Loop’ Narrative as it Readies for Global Summit.

BLUE CITY BLUES: San Francisco mayor orders police, health and other departments to propose cuts of $206 MILLION in desperate attempt to reverse city’s ‘doom loop’ spiral into economic collapse.

Law enforcement budgets in the city, which is ravaged by homelessness, drugs and a downtown business exodus, face cuts of $27.6 million, while the public health department could lose a further $25.9 million, according to a DailyMail.com analysis.

The fire department must propose reductions of around $10.5 million to meet the mayor’s demand, while city’s crumbling Municipal Transport Agency must find savings of $15.5 million, a review of official figures suggests.

In a letter dated October 11, Mayor London Breed ordered departments to propose massive cuts to this year’s budgets in order to prevent San Francisco reaching a $500 million deficit by 2025.

The radical cuts mark an embarrassing change of tack from Breed, who is now forced to tear up the record-breaking $14.6 billion annual budget she signed off just three months ago. Department heads across the city have until Thursday, October 26 to propose their cuts.

San Francisco has serious problems with crime, mental health, and drug addiction, so it’s big cuts for police and health.

DISPATCHES FROM THE DOOM LOOP: Former SF County Supervisor Issues Warning about San Francisco Becoming Detroit (Video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCfHCoBIsew

DISPATCHES FROM THE DOOM LOOP: Is reporting on San Francisco unfair or just accurate?

The story ends with a long list of articles from major media outlets about San Francisco’s problems. The list includes one story from FAIR titled “The Character Assassination of San Francisco” which seems like it might have been the jumping off point for this story. FAIR concludes, “This is media outrage focused not at systemic injustice, but based in disgust at the victims of injustice.”

That really does sum up what all of this is about. For the most part, the Chronicle isn’t complaining that the stories by CNN, Good Morning America, the Financial Times, etc. are untrue. The facts are what they are. San Francisco does have a downtown with more empty commercial space than most cities. It does have a string of closing retailers who have cited crime and street conditions as part of the problem. It does have a failing public transportation system that can’t survive apart from handouts from the state. And it does have a serious problems with homelessness, open-air drug dealing, retail theft and car break ins, all of which are worse than in many other cities.

Rather they are arguing that the coverage is wrong, the articles are arguing it’s wrong-think. These things shouldn’t be mentioned so often not because they are false but because they are true and embarrassing to those who would prefer to view the city as a progressive wonderland where everything is gong swell.

Related flashback: Detroit’s comeback is a myth.

QUESTIONS THAT NO ONE IS ASKING: Could Pickleball End San Francisco’s Doom Loop?

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 1995 FOR $500, ALEX: Downtown San Francisco had a good run. Can it recover?

Downtown San Francisco is in distress. Indicators of urban well-being point in the wrong direction: office occupancy, BART ridership and retail foot traffic are down, as is the city’s population. Every week brings news of another high-profile exit: Recent closures include a Whole Foods flagship and Nordstrom, which announced the end of its 35-year run on Market Street due to changes in the “dynamics” of downtown. First Republic Bank, another San Francisco success story, went under after it couldn’t retain its wealthy customers and was sold to JPMorgan Chase. The future of its branches, the familiar green-and-gold presence downtown, is uncertain.

Now barely a day passes without the San Francisco Chronicle or another publication referencing a “doom loop” in the city. There’s a lot of finger-pointing, but no agreement about how to solve the actual issues, including the spiraling homelessness crisis, the unsustainable cost of living or a property crime rate consistently higher than that of similar metropolitan areas. If you see people smiling downtown, they’re probably tourists inside double-decker buses — and even that might be deceptive. Hotel occupancy rates remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels.

Like most people who had a good run for too long, San Francisco didn’t see it coming.

Ahh, but they did see it coming. They simply refused to change course: S.F.’s Homeless Legacy / Two decades of failure.

—The San Francisco Chronicle, September 7th, 2003.

SAN FRANCISCO MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop. What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed:

A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’ed, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”

I shook my head.

“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”

As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when the original Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”

GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Retail exodus: Another major chain announces store closure in San Francisco.

The loss of Nordstrom, a neighboring Saks Off 5th store and other global brands like Uniqlo, Gap and H&M hurts not only the city’s sales tax base and labor force, but also the vitality of critical downtown streets where tourists flock, helping shape San Francisco’s global reputation.

The city’s economic malaise was brought on by remote work and the pandemic, but some city officials and Nordstrom’s landlord also blamed an inadequate response to crime as a key reason for the spate of closures in the city’s chief shopping district…

Weeks of grim news have fueled a debate over public safety and how the city can best promote an economic recovery — or at least stop the bleeding of losing store after store, which feeds into fears of an economic “doom loop.”…

Nordstrom is still expanding in California despite the San Francisco closures. The company said last month it would open five new Rack stores…

And the stores that are left will everything behind plexiglass: San Francisco Target puts entire department on lockdown amid shoplifting crisis.