I completely disagree. 95% would be slightly more accurate prior pandemic. Nowadays, I would say 15% of the city has turned into a dump, another 20% has three times more crimes than pre-pandemic. 30% of essential shops like drugstore and supermarket have shutdown due to thefts. Let’s forget about retail stores and shopping center. Do you know Macy’s headquarters are here in SF and they are closing down their storefront in SF? SF has less variety of retailers than pleasant hill in the East bay. I’m not normalizing this social and economic decline.
@@dvdgalutube These are the places we go frequently recently because my family & teenagers love them. I have never had any issues & use garages when available. Union Square - Neiman Marcus for tea & William Sonoma for shopping. Stonestown for revolving sushi, clothing shopping for teens & killer Asian desserts. I’ve bought groceries at Whole Foods Stonestown- it seems normal? De Young museum, Japanese Tea Gardens @ that whole area of the park. We walk to restaurants for lunch. SF Zoo is an annual visit. Just did a bunch of stuff in Mission Bay- parked outside. Visit friends in the sunset. Castro for niche perfumes, park on the street. Zero issues but we avoid the Tenderloin. Also if my kids really wanted to do F wharf I would just use a garage & not be worried. Probably the Ferry Building is next & I’m curious about Salesforce Park. The city has issues in certain areas but I still love it.
My girlfriend and I(24,26) want to move there with our son(about to be 3) & we just came back from the SF Giants beating LA this past weekend(June 28th & 29th) & it was the best experience ever! Had we listened to what’s being said online we wouldn’t have gone. The city is so clean, people from ALL over the world! We can’t wait to move there. I will be the #1 fan on your channel now😅
Longer video for your channel but I watched to the end and I think you did SF a very nice service with this content. Good show! I work in the service industry here in SF, smallest bar in the city, as a bartender and know the neighborhoods you highlight well. What I see is that people are slowly coming back to the city after the 2020 pandemic and that they are shy because of the national media, negative, attention. So, thank you for this long-form video trying to detail the return of SF social-life. I am also a PhD scientist and am finding the brain-drain from the 2020 pandemic beneficial to our community because those of us tenacious bastards are still here willing to show up physically to work 5 days a week. This should be a boon for SF in terms of science and service pros who have managed to weather the storm, so to speak. 😎😎
Love this - thanks for watching! It definitely feels like things are trending better but it’s a slow grind. Good on you being able to stick it out through it all in a tough business.
Thank you for making this video. I work downtown. Crime and filth aren't the issue now. It just feels slow and dead but without more significant return to the office, it can't get any livelier. There are some other major factors that are never mentioned by anyone... which would be good to discuss.
@Arkadyltkin I feel the same. The downtown is quiet. In one sense, it makes it more like the downtowns of so many more sprawling (and less interesting) cities where the car is king. But SF is still way denser, so it has at least the _potential_ to recover part of its lively character at some point. Less dense cities can only dream of that (looking at you, Houston). What we badly need IMO is to tweak the zoning laws so that some of the HUGE inventory of unused office space can be converted to housing. That'd kill 2 birds: partial relief for housing costs, and higher residential densities -- meaning more passive surveillance, meaning more inherent safety -- for the downtown core. It's shameful that city leaders have done absolutely nothing toward this goal.
In fairness though, physical retail was suffering long before the pandemic arrived, because online shopping has so many advantages for busy people. The pandemic introduced millions more consumers to that concept and hastened retail's decline, but it was almost certainly coming anyway. Thirty years ago, we'd visit downtown stores probably a few times a month, but that pretty much stopped in the mid-2000s. So when Macy's recently announced they'd be dosing the Union Square location, nothing really changed from my POV, as I hadn't even set foot inside the store for many years.
Thank you for making this video. So glad to see someone who actually lives in SF discussing SF with facts and truth. I'm also glad you mention Noe Valley because that's my neighborhood.
I was a resident befor, during and after the pandemic and what I observe is that the Union Square is dead. Multiple shops on Market Street don't exist anymore. The 6th street is more dangerous than before. Homeless everywhere. Shoplifting doesn't stop. What else is it than a ghost town?
@taxi251 There's no way to reliably predict earthquake "chance." That said, some neighborhoods, and some building types, are more prone to quake _damage_ than others. Generally speaking, wood-frame buildings do better in a quake than brick -- most 'brick' buildings in SF are brick facades only -- and buildings on bedrock do better than those on fill (like in the Marina, much of downtown, and SoMa). What's called "soft-story" construction -- like garages that were added under existing structures, which was a common change in the 1950s and 1960s -- is especially vulnerable. But in the mid-2010s a rather large chunk of SF's older housing stock was required to complete seismic retrofit work to mitigate that risk. My own building sits on bedrock but has a soft garage story added around 1964. We've not had many quakes since our retrofit was completed (2017), but those we've had felt rather mild for their rating. Also, seismic standards for new construction are quite strict, so newer buildings are usually pretty solid in a quake, even if they're downtown.
Tourism is actually back to normal as is nightlife, even in downtown. SF had 23.1 million tourist visits in 2023. This is about average for pre-pandemic and exactly the same numbers SF had in 2014-2015. Same thing with nightlife in general, but surprisingly, nightlife in downtown. That's still where many of the clubs are, and yes people don't go to the office and don't go to the lunch places. But the clubs are as packed as they were pre-pandemic. Clubbing is not contingent on people being at the office during the day. Overall, the last thing that still hasn't recovered in SF is downtown daytime occupancy. And let's face it, it's not like the worker bees hiding in their cubicles all day and leaving their office once for the lunch hour were contributing anything to SF that made it the place we all love. Most San Franciscans don't know and don't care that daytime occupancy in downtown has decreased by 40-50%.
Thanks for this info and watching! Can you send me the tourism info source? Would like to read it because I was seeing other numbers. That’s great to hear!
@@austinklar I'm not sure if I can post links here, but here is the name of a random article that cites the numbers, "San Francisco expects visitor volume to reach 23.7 million in 2024" And here's a quote, "In 2023, San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors, marking a 5.2 per cent year-over-year increase. These visitors contributed significantly to the city's economy, with total visitor-related spending amounting to USD 9.3 billion." Note that these are exactly the same tourist numbers that SF was doing in 2014-2015 and the exact same revenue it had in 2016. I don't think that anyone can argue in good faith that SF tourism is not fully recovered. 2023 was literally a "mid" year by pre-pandemic standards both in terms of visits and revenue. The same type of year that SF regularly had when there weren't any big once-in-a-decade events. (e.g. Americas Cup, Super Bowl, etc.)
@@TohaBgood2 This from the SF Travel Association In 2021, San Francisco Travel reported 14.8 million visitors to the city, up 25% from 2020, but down 44% from a record high of 26.2 million visitors in 2019. Total spending by visitors increased to $3.1 billion from $2.8 billion in 2020, but was down 70% from $10.3 billion in 2019, including spending on meetings and conventions. So getting there. But not there yet. Good progress tho!
@@austinklar That's the data for 2021, not 2023. Here's a quote from the SF Travel website for 2023, "2023 Results San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors in 2023, a 5.2% year-over-year increase. Visitor spending grew by 18% to $8.8 billion. Total 2023 visitor-related spending, including $494.6 million in meeting planner and exhibitor spending, increased by 20% to $9.3 billion." The article is called "San Francisco Travel Association Announces 2023 Visitor Impact Results and 2024 Forecast"
@@austinklar That's the data for 2021, not 2023. Here is a quote from the SF Travel Website for 2023, "2023 Results San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors in 2023, a 5.2% year-over-year increase. Visitor spending grew by 18% to $8.8 billion. Total 2023 visitor-related spending, including $494.6 million in meeting planner and exhibitor spending, increased by 20% to $9.3 billion." The article is called "San Francisco Travel Association Announces 2023 Visitor Impact Results and 2024 Forecast"
How many times have you replaced the windows in your car? They blew the window out of my car on the embarcadero. I was only parked for four hours. Three of the usual suspects pulled up broke the window and took nothing because there was nothing in the car. Oh I'm 6th generation San Francisco. I am fairly smart I owned a tow truck service for 10 years in the city.🤔
LOL you work for London Breed? I have been living in SF over 15 years. Every year is worse than the previous year since the pandemic. Russian Hill and North beach used to be clean, safe and family oriented. Now homeless doing drugs on street, weeds shop just across a street of the library and children playground. Restaurants closed down. Packages all got stolen. Saw a couple of people driving a BMW, broken in every car that parked on Mason Street for three blocks straight. We even got a druggie went into the church and stabbed someone. Another day another druggie trying to start a fire inside the same church. The church has been in the neighborhood for over 100 years old and never had any of these incidents before this year. People can’t go to church in peace anymore. Garbage bins got removed because druggies set them on fire. The list goes on and on. After watching your video, it makes me wonder are we living in the same city. May be we have completely different perspectives of “safe neighborhood”. This is a complete failed governance. Why spend $2k to live in a tuna can where Walgreens, Safeway and target refuse to do business in the neighborhoods.
Excellent! So many issues starting with the tech gold rush, people came to get rich and no community, everything is over priced and inflation rapid, now the city is in a deflation phase starting with commercial real estate and small businesses! So sad.I graduated from SFSU, been part of Bay Area living between Palo Alto and SF, since 1981.. maybe the reset will come but damage complete! Bad management and greedy businesses! Just happy I was there when it was best place on earth to live
Lies lies lies I live here. I spent a year doing security. Now I work helping fight homelessness. 800 overdose deaths. And nothing will change until the Mayor and Board is replaced.
Beautiful SF weather year round, the gentile tolerant people and material conveniences are both a blessing and a curse as lots of homeless folks are attracted to camp out here… 🥸
As a startup founder considering a move to SF, I found this content incredibly helpful. Thanks again!
That’s awesome-thank you so much! What type of company?
95 percent of the city is clean and beautiful. Sidewalk cafes, bars, shops, and clean parks.
100%. The issues are real but they’re mostly isolated to a select subset of the city
Yes!
I completely disagree. 95% would be slightly more accurate prior pandemic. Nowadays, I would say 15% of the city has turned into a dump, another 20% has three times more crimes than pre-pandemic. 30% of essential shops like drugstore and supermarket have shutdown due to thefts. Let’s forget about retail stores and shopping center. Do you know Macy’s headquarters are here in SF and they are closing down their storefront in SF? SF has less variety of retailers than pleasant hill in the East bay. I’m not normalizing this social and economic decline.
@@dvdgalutube These are the places we go frequently recently because my family & teenagers love them. I have never had any issues & use garages when available. Union Square - Neiman Marcus for tea & William Sonoma for shopping. Stonestown for revolving sushi, clothing shopping for teens & killer Asian desserts. I’ve bought groceries at Whole Foods Stonestown- it seems normal? De Young museum, Japanese Tea Gardens @ that whole area of the park. We walk to restaurants for lunch. SF Zoo is an annual visit. Just did a bunch of stuff in Mission Bay- parked outside. Visit friends in the sunset. Castro for niche perfumes, park on the street. Zero issues but we avoid the Tenderloin. Also if my kids really wanted to do F wharf I would just use a garage & not be worried. Probably the Ferry Building is next & I’m curious about Salesforce Park. The city has issues in certain areas but I still love it.
My girlfriend and I(24,26) want to move there with our son(about to be 3) & we just came back from the SF Giants beating LA this past weekend(June 28th & 29th) & it was the best experience ever! Had we listened to what’s being said online we wouldn’t have gone. The city is so clean, people from ALL over the world! We can’t wait to move there. I will be the #1 fan on your channel now😅
Great to hear!! Really appreciate it and glad you had a great time.
New subscriber!! I live in San Jose but I’m moving to San Francisco the next month!! Your content will be so useful. Thank you so much!!!
Love to hear it--thank you! What brings you to SF?
Longer video for your channel but I watched to the end and I think you did SF a very nice service with this content. Good show!
I work in the service industry here in SF, smallest bar in the city, as a bartender and know the neighborhoods you highlight well. What I see is that people are slowly coming back to the city after the 2020 pandemic and that they are shy because of the national media, negative, attention. So, thank you for this long-form video trying to detail the return of SF social-life.
I am also a PhD scientist and am finding the brain-drain from the 2020 pandemic beneficial to our community because those of us tenacious bastards are still here willing to show up physically to work 5 days a week. This should be a boon for SF in terms of science and service pros who have managed to weather the storm, so to speak. 😎😎
Love this - thanks for watching! It definitely feels like things are trending better but it’s a slow grind. Good on you being able to stick it out through it all in a tough business.
Thank you for making this video. I work downtown. Crime and filth aren't the issue now. It just feels slow and dead but without more significant return to the office, it can't get any livelier. There are some other major factors that are never mentioned by anyone... which would be good to discuss.
Thanks for watching! We’ll see if return to work gets more adoption and foot traffic returns. Going to take a long time
@Arkadyltkin I feel the same. The downtown is quiet. In one sense, it makes it more like the downtowns of so many more sprawling (and less interesting) cities where the car is king. But SF is still way denser, so it has at least the _potential_ to recover part of its lively character at some point. Less dense cities can only dream of that (looking at you, Houston). What we badly need IMO is to tweak the zoning laws so that some of the HUGE inventory of unused office space can be converted to housing. That'd kill 2 birds: partial relief for housing costs, and higher residential densities -- meaning more passive surveillance, meaning more inherent safety -- for the downtown core. It's shameful that city leaders have done absolutely nothing toward this goal.
@@mark99k thanks for being able to relate. Well said.
In fairness though, physical retail was suffering long before the pandemic arrived, because online shopping has so many advantages for busy people. The pandemic introduced millions more consumers to that concept and hastened retail's decline, but it was almost certainly coming anyway. Thirty years ago, we'd visit downtown stores probably a few times a month, but that pretty much stopped in the mid-2000s. So when Macy's recently announced they'd be dosing the Union Square location, nothing really changed from my POV, as I hadn't even set foot inside the store for many years.
Thank you for making this video. So glad to see someone who actually lives in SF discussing SF with facts and truth. I'm also glad you mention Noe Valley because that's my neighborhood.
Appreciate you!
perfect videos without any bullshit.
🙏🏻 thank you!
I was a resident befor, during and after the pandemic and what I observe is that the Union Square is dead. Multiple shops on Market Street don't exist anymore. The 6th street is more dangerous than before. Homeless everywhere. Shoplifting doesn't stop. What else is it than a ghost town?
Thank you for your video, very detailed. Can you talk about earthquake chance in SF?
Will do some digging. Thanks for watching
@taxi251 There's no way to reliably predict earthquake "chance." That said, some neighborhoods, and some building types, are more prone to quake _damage_ than others. Generally speaking, wood-frame buildings do better in a quake than brick -- most 'brick' buildings in SF are brick facades only -- and buildings on bedrock do better than those on fill (like in the Marina, much of downtown, and SoMa). What's called "soft-story" construction -- like garages that were added under existing structures, which was a common change in the 1950s and 1960s -- is especially vulnerable. But in the mid-2010s a rather large chunk of SF's older housing stock was required to complete seismic retrofit work to mitigate that risk. My own building sits on bedrock but has a soft garage story added around 1964. We've not had many quakes since our retrofit was completed (2017), but those we've had felt rather mild for their rating. Also, seismic standards for new construction are quite strict, so newer buildings are usually pretty solid in a quake, even if they're downtown.
@@mark99k Thank you for your valuable information. I will learn more about it. ❤️
Tourism is actually back to normal as is nightlife, even in downtown. SF had 23.1 million tourist visits in 2023. This is about average for pre-pandemic and exactly the same numbers SF had in 2014-2015.
Same thing with nightlife in general, but surprisingly, nightlife in downtown. That's still where many of the clubs are, and yes people don't go to the office and don't go to the lunch places. But the clubs are as packed as they were pre-pandemic. Clubbing is not contingent on people being at the office during the day.
Overall, the last thing that still hasn't recovered in SF is downtown daytime occupancy. And let's face it, it's not like the worker bees hiding in their cubicles all day and leaving their office once for the lunch hour were contributing anything to SF that made it the place we all love. Most San Franciscans don't know and don't care that daytime occupancy in downtown has decreased by 40-50%.
Thanks for this info and watching! Can you send me the tourism info source? Would like to read it because I was seeing other numbers. That’s great to hear!
@@austinklar I'm not sure if I can post links here, but here is the name of a random article that cites the numbers,
"San Francisco expects visitor volume to reach 23.7 million in 2024"
And here's a quote,
"In 2023, San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors, marking a 5.2 per cent year-over-year increase. These visitors contributed significantly to the city's economy, with total visitor-related spending amounting to USD 9.3 billion."
Note that these are exactly the same tourist numbers that SF was doing in 2014-2015 and the exact same revenue it had in 2016. I don't think that anyone can argue in good faith that SF tourism is not fully recovered. 2023 was literally a "mid" year by pre-pandemic standards both in terms of visits and revenue. The same type of year that SF regularly had when there weren't any big once-in-a-decade events. (e.g. Americas Cup, Super Bowl, etc.)
@@TohaBgood2 This from the SF Travel Association
In 2021, San Francisco Travel reported 14.8 million visitors to the city, up 25% from 2020, but down 44% from a record high of 26.2 million visitors in 2019.
Total spending by visitors increased to $3.1 billion from $2.8 billion in 2020, but was down 70% from $10.3 billion in 2019, including spending on meetings and conventions.
So getting there. But not there yet. Good progress tho!
@@austinklar That's the data for 2021, not 2023.
Here's a quote from the SF Travel website for 2023,
"2023 Results
San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors in 2023, a 5.2% year-over-year increase. Visitor spending grew by 18% to $8.8 billion. Total 2023 visitor-related spending, including $494.6 million in meeting planner and exhibitor spending, increased by 20% to $9.3 billion."
The article is called "San Francisco Travel Association Announces 2023 Visitor Impact Results and 2024 Forecast"
@@austinklar That's the data for 2021, not 2023.
Here is a quote from the SF Travel Website for 2023,
"2023 Results
San Francisco attracted 23.1 million visitors in 2023, a 5.2% year-over-year increase. Visitor spending grew by 18% to $8.8 billion. Total 2023 visitor-related spending, including $494.6 million in meeting planner and exhibitor spending, increased by 20% to $9.3 billion."
The article is called "San Francisco Travel Association Announces 2023 Visitor Impact Results and 2024 Forecast"
Can you do Oakland next?
I’ve never lived there and usually only go there when I go to the Fox for concerts. So can’t really do a video on it!
Everything by Market/ shopping and Pier 39 area is closed. I do agree that the lawlessness is in pockets as with the smash and grabs.
How many times have you replaced the windows in your car? They blew the window out of my car on the embarcadero. I was only parked for four hours. Three of the usual suspects pulled up broke the window and took nothing because there was nothing in the car. Oh I'm 6th generation San Francisco. I am fairly smart I owned a tow truck service for 10 years in the city.🤔
I've replaced mine once in the 11 years i've been here. Should be 0.
Having local people speak is important.
Can't stand doomism it makes everthing worse.
Thanks! Can’t stand it either-there’s no point to it. It’s not reality
SF is still falling down it's Doom Loop
LOL you work for London Breed? I have been living in SF over 15 years. Every year is worse than the previous year since the pandemic. Russian Hill and North beach used to be clean, safe and family oriented. Now homeless doing drugs on street, weeds shop just across a street of the library and children playground. Restaurants closed down. Packages all got stolen. Saw a couple of people driving a BMW, broken in every car that parked on Mason Street for three blocks straight. We even got a druggie went into the church and stabbed someone. Another day another druggie trying to start a fire inside the same church. The church has been in the neighborhood for over 100 years old and never had any of these incidents before this year. People can’t go to church in peace anymore. Garbage bins got removed because druggies set them on fire. The list goes on and on.
After watching your video, it makes me wonder are we living in the same city. May be we have completely different perspectives of “safe neighborhood”. This is a complete failed governance. Why spend $2k to live in a tuna can where Walgreens, Safeway and target refuse to do business in the neighborhoods.
Excellent! So many issues starting with the tech gold rush, people came to get rich and no community, everything is over priced and inflation rapid, now the city is in a deflation phase starting with commercial real estate and small businesses! So sad.I graduated from SFSU, been part of Bay Area living between Palo Alto and SF, since 1981.. maybe the reset will come but damage complete! Bad management and greedy businesses! Just happy I was there when it was best place on earth to live
Lies lies lies I live here. I spent a year doing security. Now I work helping fight homelessness. 800 overdose deaths. And nothing will change until the Mayor and Board is replaced.
Some video,does the commentator sell bridges as well?Tax base GONE NOW........
Banks won’t be lending for such dubious valuations.
Valuations of what?
Beautiful SF weather year round, the gentile tolerant people and material conveniences are both a blessing and a curse as lots of homeless folks are attracted to camp out here… 🥸