As New York goes hard left, San Francisco edges back towards the center

...It’s a bicoastal split screen that speaks to a realignment of America’s progressive power base. In New York, Mamdani, a democratic socialist who took office on Thursday, was swept into power on promises of free buses, childcare and widespread rent freezes. In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie, an heir to the billion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune, has focused on austerity measures, beefing up policing, reviving a hollowed-out downtown core and supporting the booming artificial-intelligence industry.

San Francisco, once an incubator to a host of modern progressive ideas from the LGBTQ+-rights movement to ethnic studies in classrooms and protections for undocumented immigrants, has changed. Even progressives acknowledge it isn’t the liberal trendsetter of yesteryear.

That shift has already upended the national political narrative around the city. For decades a lefty caricature and punching bag for conservatives, pundits and politicians on the right are now racing to make Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party in the midterms. Meanwhile, moderates in San Francisco, while celebrating their victories, hold their city up as a warning sign for what they cast as the excesses of the left.

“The message is you can take things too far,” said Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a moderate who’s helped lead the city’s centrist shift. She added, “Don’t expect that voters won’t notice forever.”

Or as Chris Larsen, a billionaire crypto titan who has been pouring money into local elections, put it: “The cost issue was the overriding thing in New York. Whereas, in San Francisco, it was cleaning the mess that the far left created over the last decade … It was safe, clean streets and getting back our reputation, which I think we largely have now.”

Read the rest here

San Francisco is Giving Free Booze to Homeless Alcoholics

Words fail.

Why San Francisco Flushed $1.7 Million Down A Toilet They Couldn't Build

...Fifteen months after city officials were ready to throw a party in the Noe Valley Town Square to celebrate funding for a tiny bathroom with a toilet and sink, nothing but mulch remains in its place.

The toilet project broke down the minute taxpayers realized the city was planning an event to celebrate $1.7 million in state funds that local politicians had secured for the lone 150-square-foot structure. That’s enough to purchase a single-family home in San Francisco — with multiple bathrooms.

Even more confounding was the explanation that the tiny bathroom would take two to three years to install because of the city’s labyrinthine permitting and building process. City leaders quickly canceled their potty party, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California took back the funds.

Read the rest here.

You know that you have lost it when even the New York Times is roasting your city for its dysfunctional moonbat government that can't build a single seater public relief station with a budget of more than a million and half and spends another half million on designer trash bins that run $12k a pop. (They decided not to go ahead with that one either.)

How San Francisco Became a Failed City

I'm not even going to try and excerpt this one. Rarely have I read such a damning indictment of the lunatic left, and coming from someone who is certainly left of center in their own right. Read it in its entirety here.

Big companies are taking big hits in San Francisco real estate

Cloudera exited its downtown San Francisco office early last year with plans to sublease the space and move its employees south to the software company’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

But the pandemic left the company with nobody to take over the office, forcing it to take a substantial real estate write-down.

At DoorDash’s nearby former headquarters, a tenant defaulted on rent a month into lockdown, resulting in lost income for the food delivery company, which was doubling as a landlord.

Airbnb said in its earnings report on Thursday that it took a $113 million impairment in the first quarter “related to office space in San Francisco that we deemed no longer necessary.”

Combined, those three companies have recorded nearly $200 million in real estate impairments in the past year after Covid-19 turned the Bay Area office market into a dead zone. That dollar figure swells to almost $1 billion when adding in lease-related write-downs from large tech employers Salesforce, Dropbox, Uber, PayPal and Zendesk.

While software and internet companies continued their stratospheric ascent in 2020, the plush offices they call home sat dormant, leaving San Francisco’s commercial real estate market with an unfamiliar supply glut. Much of the financial fallout was borne by the very tech companies that led a decade-plus bull market and expansion spree, snapping up massive amounts of space at record prices and often subleasing out full floors to start-ups and out-of-town businesses that were seeking a Bay Area outpost.

Read the rest here.

Still trying to make satire redundant

San Francisco (who else?) has banned smoking by private citizens in their own homes (apartments). However, they did write in an exception... for weed. Yep. You can be fined $1000 for lighting up in your own home, unless it's a joint. 

From here.

People are fleeing San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO – Social media influencer Sarah Tripp and her husband, Robbie Tripp, moved to San Francisco in 2016 brimming with optimism.

“We thought, here’s a city full of opportunities and connections where you go to work hard and succeed,” says Tripp, 27, founder of the lifestyle blog Sassy Red Lipstick.

But after a year-long hunt for suitable housing in San Francisco only turned up “places for $1 million that looked like rundown shacks and needed a remodel,” the couple packed up and moved to Phoenix.

They went from paying San Francisco rents of $2,500 for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment that was far from shopping and other amenities, to purchasing a newly constructed 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom home where they’ll raise their newly arrived baby boy.

“It was cool to be living near all those high-tech startups,” Tripp says of her time in the Bay Area. “But you quickly saw that if you weren’t part of that, you’d be pushed out. It’s just sad.”

For the better part of two decades, the Bay Area has been a magnet for newcomers lured by a modern-day technology Gold Rush. But increasingly only those who have struck it rich can afford to stay.

Once a bohemian mecca that welcomed the Beat poets and '60s hippies, San Francisco now lays claim to the most expensive housing in the West, with a median home price of $1.4 million. There's also $5 a gallon gas, private schools priced like universities and chic restaurants that cost nearly double the national average.

Earlier this year, the San Francisco Bay Area was second only to New York – and ahead of Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago – when it came to people leaving major U.S. cities. More than 28,190 departed in the second quarter of 2019, almost double 2017's rate, according to a regular Migration Report from real estate brokerage Redfin.

Read the rest here.

If you ever wondered where is the best place to get away with murder...

It's San Francisco. But only if your an illegal alien with a lengthy criminal record who has been previously deported five times. Excuse me while I go throw up.

San Francisco may double down on its illegal alien "sanctuary" policy

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is set to vote Tuesday on an ordinance tightening the city’s sanctuary city law. Introduced by Supervisor John Avalos, the measure would prohibit local law enforcement from responding, except in very limited cases, to requests from federal immigration officials for an inmate’s personal information or release date. Supporters say that the change is necessary following findings earlier this year that police violated the sanctuary city law by releasing San Francisco resident Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno to federal immigration agents. Critics say that local agencies should have greater latitude to cooperate with federal authorities. We discuss the proposed legislation and how it might impact the city’s immigration policies.

Listen to the rest here.

San Francisco on the Eve of the Great Earthquake and Fire

A drive down a major street in San Francisco April 16th 1906. Fantastic film footage. I am guessing the camera was mounted on the front of trolley car. Ignore the title claiming 1900. It's wrong.

Air Disaster in San Francisco

At least two killed and 100 injured or missing. Prayers for all concerned.

This is one of the more disturbing things I have read

Two weeks ago, after Pope Benedict XVI had announced to the world that he would be resigning the office of Peter as of February 28th, I put the Pope’s picture, that usually hangs in the rectory, in the church. A handful of people told me that they would rather it not be there. They explained that the feeling was while he was Pope, as well as his time as a Cardinal, Pope Benedict had made hurtful and hateful statements regarding the LGBT Community and thus, his picture should not be placed on the altar of MHR. I was also warned, many parishioners would walk out of Sunday Mass if the picture was not removed. I spoke with a close priest friend of mine, and even though both of us were saddened by this, the wisest course, I felt, was to remove the Pope’s picture.

Read the rest here.

This is a parish that urgently needs to be suppressed and a priest who needs to be assigned to some duty where he can do no harm until he has demonstrated a reasonable level of comprehension and submission to the doctrine of the church from which he draws his salary.

On the list of things for which we should be thankful...

San Francisco has passed, albeit narrowly, the Weiner ban.

Does San Francisco have any limits? Maybe...

San Francisco may be getting ready to shed its image as a city where anything goes, including clothing.

City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city's famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area.

Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet [sic] or plaza" or while using public transit.

Read the rest here.

Sorry, even my generally libertarian sensibilities have limits. No one gets to bare their all anywhere they might be seen by little kids. That this is even remotely controversial is beyond creepy.

The San Francisco Chapter of the Democratic Party at Prayer is Throwing a Fit

That alleged snub referenced in an earlier post of the Episcopal Bishop of California (really SF) by the Roman Catholics at the installation of their new archbishop is still generating all kinds of commentary. Some of which is just off the scale idiocy (see this comment by an ex-TEO bishop). Personally I think the whole thing was an honest screw up. I would prefer to think that he really was snubbed, because frankly he deserved to be. But I just don't see the Catholics being that in your face in expressing their displeasure.

In any case here is a memo to "bishop" Andrus in the form of an old expression I picked up in the Navy. I am cleaning this up a bit since the original was a little salty. But here's the gist ...

One does not urinate on the welcome mat and then expect to be received as an honored guest.

MCJ has been keeping tabs on this business. Read the last four or five posts if you are not sure what the stink is all about.

Persona Non Grata

As some may already be aware, on October 1st Bishop (sic) Marc Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California based in San Francisco issued an open letter that was widely regarded as a calculated slap in the face to the incoming Roman Catholic Archbishop of the city by the bay.  Read it here.  Now according to claims by the Episcopal Church (see here and here) Bishop Andrus was snubbed when he arrived for today's installation mass for Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

One might wonder if this portends a new era in ecumenism.

HT: Dr. Tighe

The Ochlophobist Dissents

Not surprisingly our favorite Catholic-Marxist took a different view than your humble blogger of the Pontifical High Mass celebrated by the newly minted Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who is to be installed in San Francisco later this week. And I have to admit his main point was not unreasonable. The venue for this event reeked of elitism. I will be more impressed if he does this at least occasionally in his new cathedral where people won't be hit up for thousands of dollars to get in.

Some of the complaints though seemed a tad nitpicky. OK so there were some moments when it looked like not everyone knew by heart the exact rubrics of the liturgy. Come on! How long has it been since Roman Catholic clergy were trained in the traditional liturgical rites of their church? How many priests much less bishops have ever participated in or even witnessed a solemn high mass from the throne?

I didn't see anything that looked like it was being done horribly wrong. And in fact it reminded me of hierarchical liturgies celebrated at my former parish in Merced. It's not an everyday occurrence. The bishop usually brought a subdeacon to serve as the discreet master of ceremonies who made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be at the time they were supposed to be there.

Solemn High Mass By The New Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco

This bodes well for the most liberal diocese in the country. On the other hand there are some people in San Francisco who should be afraid, very afraid.

HT: Rorate

Newly Appointed Archbishop Of San Francisco Is Arrested For Drunk Driving

Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, San Francisco's Roman Catholic archbishop-elect who was arrested early Monday for driving under the influence in San Diego, apologized, saying he felt "shame for the disgrace I have brought upon the church and myself."

Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, who last month was named the next archbishop of San Francisco, was arrested early Saturday morning, according to police. Authorities stopped him at a checkpoint near the San Diego State University campus, the AP reported.

Cordileone, a San Diego native, was released on $2,500 bail about 11 hours after his release, a San Diego detective told Reuters. He had been booked on a misdemeanor DUI charge after he was stopped at a police checkpoint and failed a field sobriety test.

Read the rest here.
HT: Blog reader M.M.

San Francisco Catholics Get A Jolt

Pope Benedict XVI sent tremors through a city known for sitting on an earthquake fault line when he today appointed Salvatore Cordileone, 56, as the new head of the San Francisco Archdiocese. Cordileone is currently the head of the diocese of Oakland and has a reputation as one of the more conservative Roman Catholic bishops in the United States. As the bishop of Oakland he has been a staunch champion of Roman Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy and tradition including the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. He was also a vocal supporter of Proposition 8 and has characterized homosexual marriage as being of demonic origin.

The new archbishop, who is known for running a tight ship in matters of church discipline, will be taking the helm in one of the most culturally and politically left leaning cities in the United States. That liberalism has on multiple occasions manifested itself at the parish level in San Francisco with a widespread tolerance of doctrinal dissent.

It goes without saying that the reaction in San Francisco has been less than enthusiastic and in some cases downright chilly.

If I believed in karma I would say the man must have done something especially horrible in a previous life to deserve such a podvig. May God support him in his new assignment.