If You Don’t Want San Francisco To Change, Support Its Small Businesses

Store shop or business office is permanently closed, bankrupt business as a result of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic’s economic toll. Blurred motion of person wearing mask passing by closed sign on locked rustic blue front door.

I was scrolling through Facebook a couple of days ago, and noticed an article Kelly O’Grady had written about the need to support Mission Comics, and I began thinking about the common complaints San Franciscans have about this city. If you frequent social media, which, if you’re reading this, you likely do, you know that people consistently criticize San Francisco’s rapid gentrification and decline in legitimately unique neighborhoods and the small businesses that call them home. There is an obvious way to combat these unwanted changes: support the businesses you like.

When I was younger, the Mission District felt like an artistic teenager’s bedroom that also happened to be located in a thriving varrio.

Are you sick of yoga studios with brick walls filled with well-educated people who aren’t from here that want to live in a West Coast equivalent of Lena Dunham’s hit show Girls? If so, stop shopping on Amazon and actually support the shit you like.

When I was younger, the Mission District felt like an artistic teenager’s bedroom that also happened to be located in a thriving varrio. There were shops dedicated to voodoo, there were feminist bookstores, communist cafes, and a plethora of other niche shit to satisfy your craving for urban novelty. These stores were around because people were buying shit from them. If you want them to stay around, buy shit from them.

I have always had a bit of a love affair with Borderlands Books and City Lights. City Lights is still thriving in its original location, and I still like visiting there even though it’s undeniably pretentious. Borderlands moved, and, at many points, came close to going out of business.

I have visited Borderlands numerous times, but do you want to know something absolutely shameful? Do you know how many books I had purchased from there during my many years of perusing its shelves? One. I had only purchased one fucking book and I had probably been to that store as many times as Bill Clinton had been on private planes with Jeffrey Epstein.

This is America. We’re Americans. We vote with our dollars. Everything else is pageantry, politics and shit-posting.

I have spent a lot of money buying shit from Amazon while simultaneously complaining about big tech and its negative influence on my life and the place I call home. There’s a word for that: Hypocrisy. I was being a hypocrite. All of us are hypocrites in one way or another, but there are extents to the hypocrisy and there are subtle ways where we can become less hypocritical.

This is America. We’re Americans. We vote with our dollars. Everything else is pageantry, politics and shit-posting. If you want to help, buy things. If you really want to help, reach out to the business owner and formulate a plan to help the business thrive. I’ll help. Stuart will probably help too. We’re here to help. I care about this city because I’m stupid. Let my stupidity be of service.

Save and support all of the places and people you love, at least try to, because if you don’t, all you have left is nostalgia and pointless posts on social media platforms about what could’ve been. Try to be what could’ve been and it could very well be.

Just something to think about…

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