A tale of two San Franciscos: Harris’s big night puts city’s problems in spotlight

When Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage to accept the Democratic nomination Thursday night, she is expected to give a nod to San Francisco, a place where she built her political career as district attorney in the early 2000s. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and San Francisco Mayor London Breed sang its praises at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, trying to reimagine the perception people have of California’s fourth-largest city. They’ve pushed back on the narrative that San Francisco has devolved into a haven for the homeless, addicts, and the mentally ill. 

Breed hosted a party at the Tao restaurant and club this week, funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen. 

“We all know Trump is going to try to use the ‘San Francisco dystopian doom loop, poop-all-over-the-streets’ nonsense, right?” Larsen told the San Francisco Chronicle. “So we think this is even more important now. It’s good for Kamala’s campaigns, good for San Francisco and kind of a continuation of trying to set the record straight.”

The party was called “San Francisco Speaks: A Night of Technology and Truth,” and Breed took the stage. 

“Tonight is really a time to talk about not just Kamala Harris, but to talk about everything that San Francisco represents,” she told the audience. “It is so critical that we talk about the truth about San Francisco because the Republicans are trying to turn San Francisco into something it is not. They’re trying to turn San Francisco into a bad word.”

Breed, who is facing a tough reelection in November and has been slammed by her opponents for the city’s crime, drugs, and homelessness problem, went on to talk about how crime is down and how San Francisco is in the midst of a “renaissance.” 

“We’re the AI capital of the world — because I said so,” she joked. “So don’t let somebody else tell the story of San Francisco. We’re here tonight to fight for not just our city but to fight for Kamala Harris to be president of the United States.”

While former President Donald Trump and his supporters have tried to tie Harris to the city’s “doom loop” narrative, one look at the hollowed-out downtown area, the Financial District, or the infamous Tenderloin district shows they aren’t off base. 

San Francisco’s unraveling was put into sharp focus as the pandemic receded. 

A quarter of the offices downtown are vacant, overdose deaths surged, and reports of retail and personal property theft spiked. People and businesses like Macy’s, Nordstrom, L’Occitane, Christian Louboutin, and The North Face have either packed up and left or are in the process. 

Last year, the owner of Gump’s, an upscale retailer that opened its doors in the 1860s and sells high-end gifts, clothing, and jewelry, sent an open letter to the city threatening to close.

The letter was in response to “a litany of destructive San Francisco strategies, including allowing the homeless to occupy our sidewalks, to openly distribute and use illegal drugs, to harass the public, and to defile the city’s streets.”   

Some argue that San Francisco has experienced slumps before (most notably in the 1970s and 1980s when it saw a wave of crime and drug use) but bounced back.  

This time feels different. 

Other cities like Los Angeles and New York made pandemic recoveries relatively quick. San Francisco did not. 

“The pandemic and fentanyl collided,” Lydia Bransten, the executive director of the Gubbio Project, which offers coffee, health services, and a safe place to nap to a hundred homeless people a day, told the New Yorker. “People in the throes of addiction were hanging out with other people in the throes of addiction without the rest of the community. Then the city reopened, and housed people coming out of their homes were confronted with this scene of absolute devastation. And they’re flabbergasted: ‘How could this happen? We’ve spent all this money!’ ” 

Today, San Francisco is a sad ode to the city’s struggles. It’s littered with battered, painted-over, and boarded-up buildings that used to be architectural marvels. 

One such sight sits at 675 California St. and was nicknamed the “jewel box.” The building had been described as an “elegantly discreet rectangle” that was an “unexpected delight” that gave the city its “luster and depth.” 

“Our diminutive hero lines alley-thin Quincy Street directly across from grassy St. Mary’s Park, so you get the wide view while trudging up California Street to Chinatown (assuming, of course, that you aren’t staring intently at the sidewalk while panting for breath),” wrote John King, the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. “Old St. Mary’s Church and its neo-Gothic clock tower stand across the street, with Chinatown’s pagodas in the background. To the east, downhill, Financial District towers jut into the sky. All this makes for the type of structural collage you can only find in cities with an incandescent history — which makes today’s dark reality all the more bleak.”

Like so many others in San Francisco, the 4,000-square-foot A.E. Waegeman design has fallen by the wayside.

“The architecture is so spectacular, such a little jewel box, and the juxtapositions with everything around it are so great,” Stacy Williams, executive director of the American Institute of Architects’s local chapter, said. “Instead, it’s in such disrepair, it breaks my heart.”

King doesn’t think San Francisco is “doomed” for life and said he’s hopeful for an eventual turnaround. 

“But the scars you see on a casual walk through Union Square or down Market Street are real, too,” he said. 

Just how long it will take San Francisco to recover remains unknown.