“Progressive Paradise”

Chaos erupted in the Mission District of San Francisco, where more than 100 people, mostly minors, were arrested at the annual ‘Dolores Hill Bomb’ skateboarding event.

Hundreds took over Dolores Street to ride their skateboards – or anything with wheels – down a huge hill near Dolores Street.

Officers described the event as unpermitted, non-sanctioned and one that has previously taken over streets and caused mass property damage.

Another wonderful day in the utopian city!

Chaos erupted in the Mission District of San Francisco
Over 100 ppl arrested at the annual Dolores Hill Bomb skateboarding event

If they're put in jail, the gov pays the cost. If they're not prosecuted, the public pays for the damage! pic.twitter.com/gm7L46KFla

— Ronald Kelly (@RonK3l) July 10, 2023

I moved to San Francisco in 1984. My husband and I loved our city for many years, but we sold our home and moved 70 miles away to Healdsburg, California, in November 2021. We had been spending time there during the pandemic, going back and forth to the city, and it sealed the deal for us: We wanted to move permanently.

Seriously? pic.twitter.com/0l0OdmZJyq

— Ontario Proud (@ontarioisproud) July 7, 2023

City officials blame truancy and zero interest from police for ‘kids doing these really awful things’

Baseball-wielding gangs of children are mugging mothers and nannies on the school run in the latest crime wave to hit San Francisco.

Last week Noe Valley, also known as “stroller valley” because of the growing population of young families, endured 11 phone robberies that are believed to have been carried out by the same gang who are targeting women picking up children from school.

San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming.

SAN FRANCISCO — On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon here, a driverless car jammed itself between a lane of traffic and a painted red curb for several minutes. The Waymo vehicle parked itself diagonally, its rear sticking into the travel lane, as it waited for three passengers to hop in.

Homeless people have been pictured slumped over in the streets of Seattle and openly shooting up drugs, after the city’s officials chose not to make public drug use illegal.

Earlier this month, the Seattle City Council voted not to pass legislation that would have allowed the City Attorney’s Office to prosecute public drug use cases.

The move would have brought Seattle into compliance with the state’s new drug possession law, which makes the crime a gross misdemeanor.

Coming to a Toronto near you!

The air outside the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall smelled like pot when Chuck Mahone and his girlfriend took a walking tour of downtown in late May. The streets were dirty. Homeless people used drugs openly and relieved themselves under blankets.

Inside, unruly teens roamed the mall – Mahone wondered where their parents were. Retail staffers were so focused on security that they had little time for real customers.

“Ugh. Westfield should be shuttered,” Mahone wrote in a Google review. “It’s time as an energetic center of fine retail in SF is long passed. Dated, understaffed. A haven for homeless and disruptive youth.”

Progressive drug policies have led to fentanyl use soaring, with violence rising too

Aman dressed in dirty rags emerges from “fentanyl island”, watched as he shuffles past by Seneca Scott, an Oakland native who rarely travels to this strip of blighted wasteland underneath an underpass without a Smith & Wesson at his hip.

“We don’t have rule of law in Oakland right now,” Scott says as he tours a city that is perhaps America’s most left wing, but is littered with drug encampments which have become a breeding ground for violent crime.

A photo plastered on the empty windows shows it as it used to be: a colorful branch of Gap surrounded by crowds of cheerful tourists and not a drug addict or scrap of litter in sight.

Today, San Francisco’s once bustling Union Square and downtown area is a shadow of its former self: rows of empty stores, sparse crowds even on peak weekend shopping days and nearby hotels – including a huge Hilton – unable to cover their mortgage payments.

The historic Flood Building, a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, stands largely empty: Gap has gone along with nearly every other business in the property with the exception of a tired branch of Dr. Martens and an Urban Outfitters store offering 70 per cent discounts.

On Wednesday, ABC’s Good Morning America continued to highlight how dire things had gotten for downtown San Francisco, California as yet another major retailer, the Westville Mall was closing due to losing 45 percent of the shops it housed. But despite admitting that San Francisco was becoming a “zombie city” and the area around the mall and downtown were too unsafe for their crew, they refused to mention that the city’s purely liberal policies were the source of the problem.

After years of disorder and misgovernance, the City of Roses is taking steps to reverse its decline.

In the summer of 2020, Portland, Oregon, became the poster child for American urban disaster zones. During the day, tens of thousands of citizens protested peacefully against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But everything changed after dark. Nonviolent demonstrators with jobs, school assignments, and kids to raise went home; hundreds of anarchists swarmed in to take their place and waged a low-grade insurgency against the city. They fought pitched battles with the cops—throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, buckets of excrement, and even Molotov cocktails. They attacked coffeehouses, immigrant-owned restaurants, mom-and-pop retail stores, banks, museums, churches, bus stops, and the Multnomah County Democratic Party headquarters with baseball bats, crowbars, and hammers. Most were military-age white males wearing all-black clothing and hiding their faces. The violence kept up, night after night, week after week, and month after month, into the winter, long after the rest of America had calmed down. My city had become the most politically violent place in the country, and I got worried e-mails from people I knew around the world—even in the Middle East!—asking me if I was okay and why on earth this was happening.

They may be talking about “getting sober” but I doubt it will happen.

While local and national media outlets frequently report on food deserts, particularly in cities that lack sufficient grocery stores, there is one major shortage that goes largely unnoticed by the press: pharmacies.

“Pharmacy deserts” pose a real threat, particularly for vulnerable populations. This is something I’ve seen firsthand. Last year, the Rite Aid in my neighborhood in Riverside, California, closed down and was boarded up for good. It came as no surprise, as it had been repeatedly robbed. A few months ago, it reopened as a shoe store.

MORE … With new anti-theft stores, companies are stepping in where governments are missing

San Francisco’s struggling downtown has been dealt another blow as Westfield has stopped making mortgage payments on its massive mall due to crime and tanking sales.

The firm has defaulted on the $558million loan and is handing it back to the lender, which will appoint a receiver. The mall will remain open for now.

The decision was sparked by the decision from Nordstrom, the mall’s anchor tenant, to close in August.