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When in doubt, blame businesses for closing their doors instead of the crime that has made it unsustainable for them to operate. San Francisco might even do you one better: force the businesses to stay open anyway. One of the 11 members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is floating reviving a vetoed 1984 law that would force grocery stores to stay open against their will. Supervisor Dean Preston calls it a “good idea” because of the risk of “food insecurity” that comes with grocery stores closing. The law in question would require stores to give a whopping six-month notice...

Citizens in a residential area of San Francisco are bolstering their homes with chicken wire in a bid to keep out intruders. Happening in the city's Richmond District, the safety measures come amid a recent jump in burglaries, robberies, and homicides in the affluent neighborhood. Headline-grabbing incidents like thieves making off with a Bank of America ATM earlier this year have even longtime residents on edge - with some installing cameras and safety locks along with the unconventional farm equipment. Several have attended community meetings and made posts on social media as the rampant crime wave persists. In interviews with...

Add Macy’s to the long list of Union Square retail stores that have closed recently — the department store announced this week that it would close 150 locations in the coming years, including its flagship store in San Francisco.

San Francisco's supervisors plan to offer a formal apology to Black residents for decades of racist laws and policies perpetrated by the city, a long-awaited first step as it considers providing reparations. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the resolution apologizing to African Americans and their descendants. All 11 members have signed on as sponsors, guaranteeing its passage. It would be one of the first major U.S. cities to do so. The resolution calls on San Francisco to not repeat the harmful policies and practices, and to commit “to making substantial ongoing, systemic, and...

Citing what they describe as a “hostile” political climate, hundreds of Adobe workers are protesting the company’s decision to hold its flagship MAX conference in Miami Beach in October, according to a Wednesday report from Business Insider. The outlet secured a 10-page petition sent to company leadership, signed by more than 500 employees of the San Jose tech giant. The petition said workers were “shocked and dismayed” by MAX’s move to Florida, and called out the state’s history of “egregious policies,” BI reported. “We sincerely hope that the overwhelming evidence that Florida is a hostile environment for Adobe’s employees, partners,...

(1/31/24 story) On the heels of Safeway's decision to keep its Fillmore grocery store open until January 2025, one San Francisco supervisor wants to regulate grocery store closures in the city to ensure local communities are not blindsided. Why it matters: The proposal is an effort to ensure food security throughout the city and is a direct response to Safeway's announcement and subsequent reversal of its decision to close its Fillmore supermarket, the only full-service grocery store in the neighborhood, in March. What's happening: Supervisor Dean Preston plans to officially introduce an ordinance, dubbed the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act, that...

A conservative group known for exposing Joe Biden’s dog as a serial biter of Secret Service staffers is suing San Francisco over its guaranteed income program for transgender residents. The nonprofit Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court this week “on behalf of San Francisco taxpayers” Michael Phillips, Paul Wildes and Reed Sandberg. It names Mayor London Breed, Treasurer José Cisneros, City Administrator Carmen Chu and the executive director of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives as defendants in the lawsuit, which argues that the city’s GIFT program violates the California Constitution’s equal protection clause. GIFT, San...

An iconic San Francisco toy store famed for inspiring the Toy Story movies has been forced to close after 86 years due to the city's rampant crime and homelessness epidemic. Jeffrey's Toys shared the news this week that it would be permanently closing its doors, citing a crimewave that had left it 'struggling for a number of years'. The store's attorney named the 'perils and violence of the downtown environment' as the main factor driving the decision, alongside 'inflation, the decrease in consumer spending and the demise of retail across the world'. 'The leadership of the City of San Francisco...

The San Francisco Center, once a thriving mall home to the largest Nordstrom in America, is a shell of its former self after a string of high-profile departures.. Staff and shoppers in the mall, where five more stores closed in January .. crime and falling foot traffic is ruining the palatial building.. The mall lost $1 billion in value last year ... The mall's cavernous, marble-floored atrium is eerily quiet. There's not a single shopper in sight and a litany of abandoned stores lay mostly empty, but for a few leftover cardboard boxes or fading signs which serve as a...

Bloodhound, a cocktail bar in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood, closed for good on Jan. 18, the owner said. | Source:Courtesy BloodhoundA San Francisco bar has permanently shut its doors after the pandemic slashed business in the neighborhood and emptied out Downtown offices, the owner said.The SoMa watering hole Bloodhound shut its doors for good on Thursday, according to co-owner Mike Goebel.Goebel said that since reopening after a one-year closure during the pandemic from March 2020 to March 2021, sales have been down 70% compared with before the pandemic."The business wasn't making money," Goebel said. "The neighborhood is just so...

A Hilton hotel in San Francisco has defaulted on its mortgage, missing its $97 million loan payment - in the latest in the 'doom loop' crisis for the liberal city. The city’s hospitality sector is faltering alongside the rise in rampant crime, debilitating homelessness, and dangerous public drug use - with fewer people wanting to visit San Fran compared to before the pandemic. According to a securities filing, the owner of the Hilton Financial District, a 544-room hotel, said it defaulted on a loan last Wednesday. It was warned that its lenders could potentially seek to foreclose on the property...

One of San Francisco's last remaining toy stores may have to close its doors if business doesn't pick up soon. The beloved Jeffrey's Toys in Union Square, which has been family-owned and operated since 1938, has been hit with hard times. "We all know, the pandemic has been hard on people, the uptick in crime. I look around me right now and see so many buildings that are closed and shuttered. Why are we here? We love San Francisco, we love toys, and we're the type of family that doesn't give up," said co-owner Matthew Luhn. Luhn says this week...

If there's anything that indicates a politician or group of politicians isn't taking something seriously, it's when they apply a Band-Aid over a problem when it's noticeable, and then let things go back to the way they were. That's what happened in San Francisco when the city cleaned up their homeless encampments and open-air drug bazaars during the visit of the Chinese dictator Xi. Now, according to one San Francisco business owner, it's once more business as usual in the city by the Bay.Less than a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit,...

San Francisco was cleaned up for Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit for the APEC Summit in November Less than a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, San Francisco is reverting to a den of homelessness and drugs, according to locals. "It's recognizable. San Francisco, same as before. Anyone they pushed out of important zones has just slowly crept right back in," Crossfit Golden Gate Gym owner Danielle Rabkin said on "Varney & Co" Tuesday. In November, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jingping met during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) in...

The LEGO store in the San Francisco Centre mall has officially closed, right in the middle of the Christmas retail season, joining a retail exodus from the city that is driven by crime, homelessness, drugs, and the nation’s slowest post-pandemic recovery. As Breitbart News has noted, Westfield stopped making mortgage payments on the San Francisco Centre mall in June, after losing Nordstrom, which was its anchor tenant. Many other retail businesses, small and large, boutique and chain, have left.

One of the solid hits that Ron DeSantis landed on Gavin Newsom during their Thursday night debate was his waving a map graphically illustrating that San Francisco is covered with human fecal matter (aka poop), something that magically vanished only when a Chinese dictator came to town. San Francisco may be the worst city for human poop, but it’s not the only problem facing urban America. In Baltimore, the fact that the city has become a giant urinal is destroying the city’s historic buildings. Until the modern era, cities were vast dung heaps, crawling with human and animal fecal matter....

San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that viral videos showing crime and homelessness in the streets of San Francisco were not accurate. Anchor Martha Raddatz said, “I know it annoys you when people look at the city and say it’s either dangerous or crime-ridden or drugs are a huge problem, but you’ve got your own citizens saying the same thing. I think about 17% think the city’s on the right track.”

A Bay Area photographer captured an unusual photo of San Francisco this week that reveals the amount of surveillance hovering over the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Ian Servin used his Sony A7 III mirrorless digital camera with a basic 50mm lens to document the swirling light trails from the numerous surveillance aircraft over APEC and the city. The composite is a stack of 150 images shot with 30-second exposure that he took from his apartment in Oakland. He then used Photoshop for the layering, applying the "lighter color" blending mode to create the final image. ”In terms of how many...

The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), offered an apology in court on Tuesday, claiming the former Speaker’s husband was “never” his target, according to the Associated Press. In an emotional testimony on Tuesday, David DePape, 43, described to the court how his political views shifted from leftist to right wing after reading a comment on a YouTube video about former President Trump.

SAN FRANCISCO - A foreign news crew covering the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco was allegedly robbed while working. Journalists from a Czech Republic public television, who were in the Bay Area on assignment, were robbed of some of their equipment on Sunday evening while recording near the famed City Lights bookstore, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The San Francisco Police Department confirmed it is investigating an armed robbery of a production team at 4:56 p.m. in the area of Broadway and Columbus Avenue. According to officers, a vehicle stopped on the street, and three armed men with...