For various reasons lately, I've had occasion to venture into quite a few San Francisco neighborhoods apart from my home in the Mission -- the Richmond (Inner and Outer), DogPatch, the Embarcadero and Fishermen's Wharf, Glen Park, Noe Valley, the Castro, Chestnut Street in the Marina, Fillmore Street in Lower Pacific Heights, core Downtown around Union Square.
This city is not prospering, whatever the data may be saying. Everywhere there are empty store fronts. Though there are plenty of tourists in the touristy bits in this season, I wonder what they are seeing. This is not what thriving looks like to me. (Though the sea lions at Pier 39 look happy enough.)
Maybe that thought is what I get for reading Dave Egger's The Eyes and the Impossible in my book group. It's a haunting tale set in an imagined Golden Gate Park.
2 comments:
A lot of downtowns in the U.S. haven't recovered from the double whammy of COVID and the destruction of brick-and-mortar retail by internet shopping. Went to Reno last month and was shocked by how Not Recovered the place appeared to be.
I spent the fall of '22 (still some sense of the pandemic) in Reno. The downtown felt hollowed out, but I took that to be new peripheral casinos. I do know we had a hell of a time finding short term lodging for canvassers apart from one failing hotel, but that may have been what we were willing to pay.
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