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Is San Francisco Dying?
Without serious intervention, the city of San Francisco may be doomed.
“Imagine this scenario: It’s 12:30 am and your dog woke you up because it needs to go to the bathroom,” began the blistering Twitter thread on April 8, 2023. “You walk outside and sleepily shuffle down the street in your slippers.”
“Suddenly you spot a man, half naked with a comforter draped over him, stumbling out of the park toward you: What do you do?” asked longtime San Francisco resident Michelle Tandler.
“This was me last night,” Ms. Tandler added, unnecessarily. “And this is me most nights. At night, weird men who are clearly not mentally sound are wandering around my apartment.”
Michelle Tandler is far from the only progressive in San Francisco to have their party faith tested amid a crime wave unlike anything the City by the Bay has seen in recent history.
The trend isn’t new: “San Francisco’s vaunted tolerance dims amid brazen crimes,” reported Olga R. Rodriguez and Janie Har for the Associated Press on December 12, 2021.
“Just steps from the Opera House and Symphony Hall, drug dealers carry translucent bags filled with crystal-like rocks or stand outside the public library’s main branch, flashing wads of cash while peddling heroin and methamphetamine,” wrote Rodriguez and Har.