Posted on 01/27/2024 11:21:51 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
The oldest toy store in San Francisco, which was the inspiration for the movie Toy Story, is shutting its doors for good due to rampant crime and other issues.
Jeffrey’s Toys said Friday it will be permanently closed by the end of February after 86 years of serving customers, the New York Post reported Saturday.
Attorney Ken Sterling said, “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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Who is #1, behind Joe Biden(#2)?
Yes, unfortunately.
Crime will increase as long as law is easy on them. Like it or not, punishment works better than ignoring it. Even kids at home, respond to know there will be ?? to pay for some things... and troublemakers are made by knowing nothing will happen .. People in charge have become easy on all but the ones they personally don’t like. And that is not right
If there were armed guards at the store, and word got around he would shoot.. crime would be lowered.. shoot one and they would choose another store. But the left society would throw a fit... so let them ... take control of the crime.
We are falling apart .. no discipline, no line drawn, yeah, they are just kids...
Exactly.
“You still have a choice. You can still salvage your right to be individuals, your rights to truth and free thought. Reject this false world of Number Two. Reject it NOW!”
Agree. . . some don’t have a clue . . . many do not want to have one.
It is changing rapidly. So rapidly it’s shocking 😳😱🤯😲🙀
COVID-19(84) made an excellent dry run.
I’m sure you’ve already seen these but for the thread:
Amazon adds RFID to cashierless tech to support apparel purchases
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4204181/posts
Video collection of Amazon One Commercials
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4189795/posts
Mark Carney calls for global monetary system to replace the dollar (2019)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3774028/posts
WIKI
The Goths, one of the Germanic tribes, had invaded the Roman Empire on and off since 238. But in the late 4th century, the Huns began to invade the lands of the Germanic tribes, and pushed many of them into the Roman Empire with greater fervor. In 376, the Huns forced many Therving Goths led by Fritigern and Alavivus to seek refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire. Soon after, starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the empire.
The Goths rebelled and began looting and pillaging throughout the eastern Balkans. A Roman army, led by the Eastern Roman emperor Valens, marched to put them down. At the Battle of Adrianople in 378, Fritigern decisively defeated emperor Valens, who was killed in battle. Peace was eventually established in 382 when the new Eastern emperor, Theodosius I, signed a treaty with the Thervings, who would become known as the Visigoths. The treaty made the Visigoths subjects of the empire as foederati. They were allotted the northern part of the dioceses of Dacia and Thrace, and while the land remained under Roman sovereignty and the Visigoths were expected to provide military service, they were considered autonomous.
Fritigern died around 382. Possibly in 391, a Gothic chieftain named Alaric was declared king by a group of Visigoths, though the exact time this happened (Jordanes says Alaric was made king in 400 and Peter Heather says 395) and nature of this position are debated. He then led an invasion into Eastern Roman territory outside of the Goths’ designated lands. Alaric was defeated by Theodosius and his general Flavius Stilicho in 392, who forced Alaric back into Roman vassalage.
In 394, Alaric led a force of Visigoths as part of Theodosius’ army to invade the Western Roman Empire. At the Battle of the Frigidus, around half the Visigoths present died fighting the Western Roman army led by the usurper Eugenius and his general Arbogast. Theodosius won the battle, and although Alaric was given the title comes for his bravery, tensions between the Goths and Romans grew as it seemed the Roman generals had sought to weaken the Goths by making them bear the brunt of the fighting. Alaric was also enraged he had not been granted a higher office in the imperial administration.
When Theodosius died on 10 January 395, the Visigoths considered their 382 treaty with Rome to have ended. Alaric quickly led his warriors back to their lands in Moesia, gathered most of the federated Goths in the Danubian provinces under his leadership, and instantly rebelled, invading Thrace and approaching the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople. The Huns, at the same moment, invaded Asia Minor.
The death of Theodosius had also wracked the political structure of the empire: Theodosius’ sons, Honorius and Arcadius, were given the Western and Eastern empires, respectively, but they were young.
...Rufinus, the praetorian prefect of the East, who took the guardianship of Arcadius in the Eastern capital of Constantinople.
Rufinus negotiated with Alaric to get him to withdraw from Constantinople (perhaps by promising him lands in Thessaly). Whatever the case, Alaric marched away from Constantinople to Greece, looting the diocese of Macedonia.
The withdrawal of Stilicho freed Alaric to pillage much of Greece, including Piraeus, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. Athens was able to pay a ransom to avoid being sacked.
Alaric’s rampage in Epirus was enough to make the eastern Roman government offer him terms in 398. They made Alaric magister militum per Illyricum, giving him the Roman command he wanted and giving him free rein to take what resources he needed, including armaments, in his assigned province.
Rome’s use of the feared Huns, and cut off from Roman officialdom, Alaric felt his position in the East was precarious.
Alaric then invaded and took control of parts of Noricum and upper Pannonia in the spring of 408. He demanded 288,000 solidi (four thousand pounds of gold), and threatened to invade Italy if he did not get it. This was equivalent to the amount of money earned in property revenue by a single senatorial family in one year. Only with the greatest difficulty was Stilicho able to get the Roman Senate to agree to pay the ransom, which was to buy the Romans a new alliance with Alaric who was to go to Gaul and fight the usurper Constantine III.
Stilicho’s execution stopped the payment to Alaric and his Visigoths, who had received none of it.
The half-Vandal, half-Roman general is credited with keeping the Western Roman Empire from crumbling during his 13 years of rule, and his death would have profound repercussions for the West. His son Eucherius was executed shortly after in Rome.
Olympius was appointed magister officiorum and replaced Stilicho as the power behind the throne. His new government was strongly anti-Germanic and obsessed with purging any and all of Stilicho’s former supporters. Roman soldiers began to indiscriminately slaughter allied barbarian foederati soldiers and their families in Roman cities. Thousands of them fled Italy and sought refuge with Alaric in Noricum.
Attempting to come to an agreement with Honorius, Alaric asked for hostages, gold, and permission to move to Pannonia, but Honorius refused. Alaric, aware of the weakened state of defenses in Italy, invaded in early October, six weeks after Stilicho’s death.
Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Ariminum and other cities as they moved south. Alaric’s march was unopposed and leisurely, as if they were going to a festival, according to Zosimus.
The city of Rome may have held as many as 800,000 people, making it the largest in the world at the time. The Goths under Alaric laid siege to the city in late 408. Panic swept through its streets, and there was an attempt to reinstate pagan rituals in the still religiously mixed city to ward off the Visigoths. Pope Innocent I even agreed to it, provided it be done in private. The pagan priests, however, said the sacrifices could only be done publicly in the Roman Forum, and the idea was abandoned.
the siege continued and Alaric took control of the Tiber River, which cut the supplies going into Rome. Grain was rationed to one-half and then one-third of its previous amount. Starvation and disease rapidly spread throughout the city, and rotting bodies were left unburied in the streets.[64]
The Roman Senate then decided to send two envoys to Alaric. When the envoys boasted to him that the Roman people were trained to fight and ready for war, Alaric laughed at them and said, “The thickest grass is easier to cut than the thinnest.” The envoys asked under what terms the siege could be lifted, and Alaric demanded all the gold and silver, household goods, and barbarian slaves in the city. One envoy asked what would be left to the citizens of Rome. Alaric replied, “Their lives.”
Ultimately, the city was forced to give the Goths 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silken tunics, 3,000 hides dyed scarlet, and 3,000 pounds of pepper in exchange for lifting the siege. The barbarian slaves fled to Alaric as well, swelling his ranks to about 40,000.
To raise the needed money, Roman senators were to contribute according to their means. This led to corruption and abuse, and the sum came up short. The Romans then stripped down and melted pagan statues and shrines to make up the difference.
Honorius consented to the payment of the ransom, and with it the Visigoths lifted the siege and withdrew to Etruria in December 408
....
Honorius was now firmly committed to war, and Jovius swore on the Emperor’s head never to make peace with Alaric.
Alaric himself soon changed his mind when he heard Honorius was attempting to recruit 10,000 Huns to fight the Goths. He gathered a group of Roman bishops and sent them to Honorius with his new terms. He no longer sought Roman office or tribute in gold. He now only requested lands in Noricum and as much grain as the Emperor found necessary. Historian Olympiodorus the Younger, writing many years later, considered these terms extremely moderate and reasonable. But it was too late: Honorius’ government, bound by oath and intent on war, rejected the offer. Alaric then marched on Rome. The 10,000 Huns never materialized.
Alaric took Portus and renewed the siege of Rome in late 409
....
Alaric survived the attack and, outraged at this treachery and frustrated by all the past failures at accommodation, gave up on negotiating with Honorius and headed back to Rome, which he besieged for the third and final time. On 24 August 410 the Visigoths entered Rome through its Salarian Gate, according to some opened by treachery, according to others by want of food, and pillaged the city for three days.
Many of the city’s great buildings were ransacked, including the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian, in which many emperors of the past were buried; the ashes of the urns in both tombs were scattered. Any and all moveable goods were stolen all over the city. Some of the few places the Goths spared were the two major basilicas connected to Peter and Paul, though from the Lateran Palace they stole a massive, 2,025-pound silver ciborium that had been a gift from Constantine. Structural damage to buildings was largely limited to the areas near the old Senate house and the Salarian Gate....
The people of Rome were devastated. Many Romans were taken captive, including the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia. Some citizens would be ransomed, others would be sold into slavery, and still others would be raped and killed. Pelagius, a Roman monk from Britain, survived the siege and wrote an account of the experience in a letter to a young woman named Demetrias.
This dismal calamity is but just over, and you yourself are a witness to how Rome that commanded the world was astonished at the alarm of the Gothic trumpet, when that barbarous and victorious nation stormed her walls, and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of birth, and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees leveled at that time and promiscuously huddled together? Every house was then a scene of misery, and equally filled with grief and confusion. The slave and the man of quality were in the same circumstances, and everywhere the terror of death and slaughter was the same, unless we may say the fright made the greatest impression on those who had the greatest interest in living.
Many Romans were tortured into revealing the locations of their valuables.
There was no general slaughter or wholesale enslavement of the city’s inhabitants and the two main basilicas of Peter and Paul were nominated places of sanctuary. Most of the buildings and monuments in the city survived intact, though stripped of their valuables.
Refugees from Rome flooded the province of Africa, as well as Egypt and the East. Some refugees were robbed as they sought asylum, and St. Jerome wrote that Heraclian, the Count of Africa, sold some of the young refugees into Eastern brothels.
After three days of looting and pillage, Alaric quickly left Rome and headed for southern Italy. He took with him the wealth of the city and a valuable hostage, Galla Placidia, the sister of emperor Honorius. The Visigoths ravaged Campania, Lucania, and Calabria. Nola and perhaps Capua were sacked, and the Visigoths threatened to invade Sicily and Africa. However, they were unable to cross the Strait of Messina as the ships they had gathered were wrecked by a storm. Alaric died of illness at Consentia in late 410, mere months after the sack. According to legend, he was buried with his treasure by slaves in the bed of the Busento river. The slaves were then killed to hide its location. The Visigoths elected Ataulf, Alaric’s brother-in-law, as their new king. The Visigoths then moved north, heading for Gaul. Ataulf married Galla Placidia in 414, but he died one year later. The Visigoths established the Visigothic Kingdom in southwestern Gaul in 418, and they would go on to help the Western Roman Empire fight Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451.
The Visigothic invasion of Italy caused land taxes to drop anywhere from one-fifth to one-ninth of their pre-invasion value in the affected provinces. Aristocratic munificence, the local support of public buildings and monuments by the upper classes, ended in south-central Italy after the sack and pillaging of those regions. Using the number of people on the food dole as a guide, Bertrand Lançon estimates the city of Rome’s total population fell from 800,000 in 408 to 500,000 by 419.
The Roman Empire at this time was still in the midst of religious conflict between pagans and Christians. The sack was used by both sides to bolster their competing claims of divine legitimacy. Paulus Orosius, a Christian priest and theologian, believed the sack was God’s wrath against a proud and blasphemous city, and that it was only through God’s benevolence that the sack had not been too severe. Rome had lost its wealth, but Roman sovereignty endured, and that to talk to the survivors in Rome one would think “nothing had happened.” Other Romans felt the sack was divine punishment for turning away from the traditional pagan gods to Christ.
The religious and political attacks on Christianity spurred Saint Augustine to write a defense, The City of God, which went on to become foundational to Christian thought.
The sack was a culmination of many terminal problems facing the Western Roman Empire. Domestic rebellions and usurpations weakened the Empire in the face of external invasions. These factors would permanently harm the stability of the Roman Empire in the west. The Roman army meanwhile became increasingly barbarian and disloyal to the Empire. A more severe sack of Rome by the Vandals followed in 455, and the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 when the Germanic Odovacer removed the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italy.
extracts from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)
COVID-19(84) made an excellent dry run.
Right on!
It reshaped EVERYTHING
AND it was WORLDWIDE 🌍🌎🌏 /Captain Obvious
How rapidly things changed.
It’s a major reason I think other bad things are coming soon.
Perhaps World War III.
And when Amazon refuses to enter that city....Maybe Best Buy— Uber deliveries?
More proof that Democrats can’t run a city.
The fellow is right, in that its partly this and partly that.
But the immediate, fatal problem is the zombies that destroyed downtown SF.
Jeffries was a small toy store. When the kids were little the big fancy one was FAO Schwarz off Union Square. That was multi-floor toy wonderland. That one died almost 20 years ago, I think because of a shortage of children. Toys R Us had locations in malls around the area, but that too died for the same reason. Jeffries hung on while the dinosaurs passed away.
different movie but that works also….
“I’m Kit! Keeping It Together…..
Toys R Us is still going strong in Asia - they just gave up on the US market and went where the growth is.
They are back online in usa.
There seems to be an marketing expectation of children I noticed several specialty high end stores recently have expanded their infants and children’s departments.
Every baby producing family I see is going for 3 to 5 children. Certainly not enough of them. Sadly.
soon to be america’s biggest ghost town.
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