Why No One Went To Union Square On Black Friday
Fentanyl didn’t kill Downtown San Francisco. It killed people, but prior to the Pandemic, no one seemed to mind. They’d just walk over the bodies on their way to the office. Some people complained while others felt the juxtaposition of prosperity and poverty was what made urban life exhilarating.
The Hondurans that the Chronicle wrote that cringey piece about also didn’t really make a dent in San Francisco’s economic dominance. If you take your head out of your ass for about 10 seconds, it’s not hard to see what’s hurting San Francisco’s capitalist ambitions. Modernity is murdering it. The same modernity San Francisco has chased since the sixties has come back to haunt it.
Being cutting edge can cut both ways, and technology has rendered central cities, and their brick and mortar-based business districts obsolete. San Francisco’s refusal to adapt to this Amazon.com dominated future will continue to deteriorate it along with every shopping center in America. No matter how many cops you put outside of Macy’s, no one wants to fucking go to Macy’s in the first place.
And honestly, no one really ever has. How do I know? Well, now people are presented with alternatives, and they’re choosing those alternatives. Being the only option doesn’t mean people like something. It just means it’s the only option.
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What San Francisco needs is a complete revisioning of what Downtown is and can be. Life is what makes a place vibrant. Matt Haney and a few others have proposed turning vacant office space into housing. This, in my opinion, is a step in the right direction. Instead of trying to turn Union Square into a military base that sells designer clothes to millionaires a few blocks from where designer drugs are killing people that are for some reason deemed expendable, maybe provide services to those suffering and get them housed. You can also incentivize small businesses to come downtown with tax breaks and lower monthly rents. These businesses ideally would reflect the needs of the residents, not the wants of people visiting from outside areas.
That’s not to say I don’t see any nostalgic value in the giant Christmas tree surrounded by shops in the Union Square of yesteryear. I do. Union Square is a fun place to people watch. Most of you might not remember this, but there used to be a giant Borders Books in Union Square. It was hella big and had more shit than the bookstores near where I lived. I would take BART from the East Bay and hang out in the Manga section for hours. I liked it a lot, but a police-state won’t bring it back.
Honestly, if I saw cops with guns everywhere, I probably wouldn’t have hung out there in the first place.
But back to my point… If you want San Francisco to prosper, you have to let go of the past and embrace the future. I know it’s scary, but it’s actually incredibly exciting! We get to choose the future of the city, and we can make it a lot better for all of us. Not just the people who can currently afford it, but for everyone.
And that’s what San Francisco says it’s all about… right?
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Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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