‘The dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically’: Nordstrom is bailing on a flagship store that’s 35 years old : https://archive.is/ozsZh
I fail to understand how this is different from organized rings of train robbers in the old, old west. Maybe we need modern day cowboys now (per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law)? Most likely we'll have security drones, like Boston Dynamics's robot dog.
Edit to say that having people hounded by security drones sounds like a terrible state of affairs. Having businesses robbed by organized gangs does as well. I think UBI and rent control or rent subsidies with high taxes on the wealthiest is a better solution in the short-term. For the long-term, philosophies that advocate for less materialism seem preferable (no need to rob if you're happy with less money etc.).
Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs. These gangs aren't shoplifters, and calling them such is extremely misleading.
> Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs.
I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way.
I'm all for providing better services and support (not to mention a better structured economy) for those who are poor. I also believe "the punishment should fit the crime", and stealing low-dollar goods should result in commensurate punishment. I'm not for allowing the poor to steal with no consequences just because they can't afford stuff.
> I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way.
But what is the alternative? Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. You can beg and try to get enough together to buy something, but it's not really a good alternative either, especially since it's not guaranteed. So at what point would someone be in their right to steal food to survive? Is it never okay, meaning they'll have to starve in the worst case?
Naturally these problems should be solved long before anyone comes to the place of having to steal - but that's not the world we live in. And I'm strictly talking about absolute necessities, nothing beyond that. But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
> Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run.
Can we please be real about what we're talking about? This isn't early 19th century Paris from Les Miserables. On the contrary, SF has some of the best public services for the destitute of any place in the country. There are tons of places around the city where one can get free food.
> But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
My main concern is not about "a bit of money in the store owners pockets". It's abou signaling that the rules simply do not apply, that laws can be picked and chosen based on how you feel about the perpetrator.
Again, I said the punishment should fit the crime:
1. The person should be arrested, and basically be given the equivalent of "We'll show you how to access services in SF so you don't need to steal in the future. If you're not caught stealing in the next X months, your record will be cleared".
2. For further infractions, they should be given escalating warnings and escalating penalties.
But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs; different causes, different solutions. Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading.
> But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs
Correct and irrelevant: they are both forms of theft.
> different causes, different solutions.
Different motivations is more accurate. There also isn’t a “solution” per se, but suppression tactics do exist if you have both a PD and a DA worth a damn.
> Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading.
I didn’t. I pointed out the obvious: theft is theft. This is a commonality between “shoplifting” and “smash and grab”. The first term downplays the violence against the storeowners by people taking their stuff (cuz it could be worse, armed robbery is also a form of theft so as much as I detest softening euphemisms, the distinction isn’t useless) and the other paints a more violent and organized picture of people taking their stuff, but ultimately the act that both describe is theft.
Either way, they are criminal activities that ought to be suppressed. We shouldn’t be tolerant to thieves.
Please stop trying to make flamewars happen in a forum specifically moderated to not have them.
You have literally everywhere else on the internet to argue left vs right, some people want to have a different style of debate and come here for it (since it is designed for that different kind of debate).
EDIT: To be clear, that different style of debate is trying to understand and solve problems rather than just lay blame for political points.
EDIT2: Please focus on the constructive part of your statements. I think it’s fine you want to hire more police, that was not the rule breaking part of your argument (the entire argument had to follow the rules). The mostly unrelated attacks on straw men political parties and specific politicians are the problem.
EDIT3: I agree that more police officers may be part of the solution. I think they are not, however, a panacea and we should spend more time thinking about the aspirations of what we want downtown SF to be more than thinking about how to remove people we do not like from it.
Both fair points, and realistically I’m not even really a fan of UBI given that it’ll be captured by landlords as increased rent. The real point I’m making is that these things are not actually at odds and they shouldn’t be portrayed as such.
The question you should be asking is if this is actually a shoplifting problem vs. a massive decline in SF’s willingness to shop in person.
I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.
This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.
to add - the scapegoat here is also particularly useful to take attention away from consumer changes that would effect to operate expensive retail properties.
Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word.
That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).
>And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.
It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.
I think retail locations ebb and flow and it's hard to parse through other factors. I suppose I'm a data point by keeping my location and Nordstrom as a constant over time with neighborhood as a variable.
25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles.
On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy."
Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.
Stores with no nearby workers won’t spontaneously fail. But the situation is symptomatic of a precarious labor/housing equilibrium. In this precarious system, stores are likely to be toppled by external forces (Covid), and have farther to fall afterwards.
Other cities, with more robust labor/housing equilibriums, are bouncing back from the pandemic just fine.
Never ending stream of suckers that has not realized that it doesn't work out yet. Like Uber drivers that are selling their car at a loss one mile at a time.
Some might be living in rent controlled flats though.
Not entirely fictitious. Cowboys and ranch hands at times also worked as mercenaries or deputized law enforcers in 19th-century organized conflicts not unlike the urban gang wars we occasionally see today. The best known example is probably the Lincoln County War, which involved 15 murders and probably a few hundred participants at various levels.
San Francisco, that we'll known expanse of American western wilderness is completely without infrastructure, which is why we routinely have battles between native americans and settlers on the Haight. And why there are routine gunfights between ranchers and farmers in North Beach.
Reality is less popular than romanticized ideals, and always has been. Sir Humphrey Appleby famously quipped "All government funding is symbolic." And to paraphrase: "Funds aren't distributed to government programs based on need, utility or expected benefits, but on what politicians think will convince the electorate they're spending government funds appropriately."
Maybe you need better wealth redistribution, higher taxes, better schools, better gun control, it's different from back then because now there are rights, institutions.. the fact that someone in US on this place, that is supposed to be like a place where you find people with a certain brain power, to me it's sign of a certain decadence if the people with supposedly brain of a country say that the answer to modern crime is modern robots cowboys, it's one of those situations where one doesn't know if it has to cry or to laugh
Enforcing the law is necessary but not sufficient. In order for luxury retailers to succeed in a particular area they have to present a safe and comfortable experience to affluent shoppers. Having a bunch of Dalek like security robots roaming the store isn't compatible with that experience.
Why would any company operate a store in San Francisco when there are no deterrents to shoplifting and the criminals aren't even prosecuted? Additionally, this is not isolated to San Francisco as Oakland and Los Angeles are just as bad if not worse. California reaps what it sows.
Asks someone who doesn't live in SF and accepts their news uncritically from cable outlets (and their web sites) with a vested interest in driving outrage driven online engagement.
EDIT: People who are up voting this comment: NO! It's a snarky comment in opposition to the prevailing wisdom. It's intended to be downvoted.
2ND EDIT: thank you for downvoting. I can now rest easy knowing I'm a misunderstood genius amongst a sea of profane luddites. (Though truth to tell, most people here when they're not being snarky seem reasonably intelligent.)
What a strange reply. You are clearly oblivious to the problems in San Francisco and Oakland. I suggest you go to YouTube to see videos of people, that live in San Francisco, pointing out all of the closed stores and businesses.
Same as anywhere: write off theft and make bank off the rich people. The idea that SF is somehow unique is asinine. If i were to guess they want the public to foot the bill for cops to just shoot shoplifters.
Asinine is thinking what's happening in San Francisco is the same everywhere. I suggest you visit YouTube and view the video's documenting all of the closed stores and businesses.
> the latest retailer to capitulate to rising crime and lower foot traffic.
Nordstrom also bailed on the entirety of the Canadian market. Was that also due to crime in SF?
It's difficult to communicate and explain the enormous secular and systemic rippling shifts in economic conditions that have followed the pandemic and the shift to work from home, particularly and extraordinarily pronounced in SF for various reasons much more so than other places in the world.
A much easier story to solely blame localized crime. It is doubtful this is the real cause.
doubtful? Have you see the crime in SF? Walgreens has to have nearly everything locked up.
You are right though. It's not just the crime. It's because the current government isn't willing to prosecute criminals that are stealing from these businesses.
SF is starting to resemble Detroit, which has nearly no grocery stores in the city limits because of rampant crime.
I lived in Toledo for four years so visited Detroit often during that time, and I lived in the Bay Area for a few years as well. I just can’t see anyone saying SF is like Detroit without some huge distortions going on.
Lived, sorry, typo, for 2 years. I’m pretty familiar with market street. Heck, I worked right next to the Caltrain station for a year, that area isn’t the nicest.
No it’s not. Many of the people complaining about people pooping on the street happens in the area between the Caltrain station and the convention center, not market. It’s not like we didn’t walk to market often enough for lunch.
I’ve seen burned out neighborhoods in Detroit, places that look like war zones. SF just has a large number of homeless in comparison, most of whom get there via the greyhound bus station.
>Many of the people complaining about people pooping on the street happens in the area between the Caltrain station and the convention center, not market.
Your definition of "many" differs from that of the rest of us. I lived in that exact area for years. As I said, there is no comparison whatsoever between there and the problem parts of Market Street in terms of homeless (whether defecating or not) or other things, like public drug use. To claim otherwise is a blatant lie.
>I’ve seen burned out neighborhoods in Detroit, places that look like war zones.
I have only visited Detroit once, years ago, so cannot personally make a current comparison between the two. SF has not (yet) reached the point where (as I remember seeing) entire blocks are completely burned down and empty, but that's hardly a high standard to meet. The people here who are making the Detroit comparisons aren't saying otherwise; they are warning that we may see a similar civic collapse, in kind if not necessarily in scale.
>SF just has a large number of homeless in comparison, most of whom get there via the greyhound bus station.
Ah yes, the old claim that "[insert city here] gives bus tickets to their homeless to go to San Francisco". Maybe this happened in the past, but 87% of surveyed homeless have lived in SF for more than one year, and 35% for ten or more years. <https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/22/san-francisco-homeless-peo...>
They don’t have to give them bus tickets, tickets are cheap enough on their own, or open tickets are given easy enough. If you have ever ridden greyhound for a long distance journey, you’ll notice they pick up a bunch at each prison, and these people get off at SF, LA, Portland, or Seattle. No surprise, good weather, you won’t die if you live outside.
Self reporting surveys are useless as data. You can ask a guy doing heroin if he has ever done drugs and he’ll say no. It’s like, sure, what else are they going to say?
Whole Foods just broke ground in the Western Addition, Lucky opened a new store in the Bayview, and a whole new local grocery chain called Luke's just sprang into existence in the last year.
To the point argued by the OP in this comment thread, Flagship Whole Foods /claims/ they shut down because of safety reasons. It looks better for leadership if the reasons they have to shut down are outside of their control, rather than things they should have been reasonably able to predict and thus look bad on them, like that opening a high end grocery store in a largely office district during the middle of a pandemic when no one was there is going to the area lead to issues getting people there.
This is the truth. Mid market has always been sketchy. Nobody lives or hangs out in downtown SF. Downtown is for the “bridge and tunnel” crowd. Like why would you ever put it here and not in one of the neighborhoods (ex Sunset, Richmond, Glen Park, Soma).
That being said the 5th street area losing Nordstrom is a big blow. Things there have certainly gotten worse recently as it has started more and more resemble Market street on the other side of Seventh.
Downtown Detroit had large department stores too. They all closed. This was the beginning of the spiral downward. If things continue, SF will look like Detroit in 10 years.
As a luxury department store, Nordstrom was feeling a lot of pressure from both online retail and from big-box retailers even before the pandemic. It's a tough business to be in.
It’s typical of people who don’t live in SF to completely downplay the situation there as “propaganda” because it puts their favorite tribe under scrutiny.
Stores can be shut down in one place for a specific reason while another place for a completely different reason. Nordstrom is located in probably the most expensive real estate in San Francisco, while the conditions just outside the stores are deteriorating. If this was just broader systemic problems, why is their massive store in San Jose still continuing? Clearly that should also be closing considering the fact that San Jose is also as expensive as San Francisco in terms of real estate?
> San Jose is also as expensive as San Francisco in terms of real estate?
Maybe for residential real estate. I have a hard time imagining that it's anywhere close to the same in the commercial sector; there's dramatically more supply in SJ.
The Crexi market overview for San Jose appears to extend far beyond San Jose and well into the Peninsula:
> Major San Jose/Santa Clara County employers include Google, Apple, Facebook, the County of Santa Clara, and Stanford University.
Mountain View and Palo Alto are both seeing a lot of demand for office space from Google and Facebook, respectively, and I suspect that's driving up the average. San Jose itself isn't seeing so much of that.
>It’s typical of people who don’t live in SF to completely downplay the situation there as “propaganda” because it puts their favorite tribe under scrutiny.
This feels pretty unnecessarily pointed while simultaneously kind of at odds with the point you're arguing in the next paragraph. It's not like San Jose isn't also a strong dem city. Shouldn't the apparent success you're pointing out in SJ while they struggle in SF indicate that the issue is specific to SF rather than a "tribal" concern?
Right, the point I was trying to make is that success or failures happen regardless of who’s in power. But they don’t get discussed as such. Criticism of SF often pulls plenty of people to defend or even dismiss the actual reality because for some, accepting reality also means accepting flaws in their beliefs.
Every time I see an article like this, I look for SF-native comments.
One of my clients is administratively based in SF, but is never there. They moved to LA awhile back, and they directly cite crime, homelessness, general urban decay, and the “ridiculousness of tech bros” [0] as the deciding factor in their physical relocation.
“lower foot traffic” would cover work from home, no? Also I’ve been to this store and the area around it is nasty to the point that I no longer take my children there. Yes, retail is having a hard time in general but my goodness just go walk down that street - do it.
It was nasty before the pandemic. I’ve frequented the metreon imax for probably two decades, as well as conferences at the Moscone center. The more people became obsessed with the world in their phones, the less they cared what was going on physically around them. We aren’t entitled to nice things, people worked very hard to build and maintain them. Collectively we accepted the decay, and now we have nothing
Nordstrom was there for the tourists. But SF tourism hasn't recovered as well as conventional group-think imagined.
When a tier 1 operation like Nordstrom bails it rings out like artillery fire for all the lesser operations. We're officially well past "didn't want that company anyway," aren't we?
The store may or may not be telling the truth. Either way, it's undeniable that SF has changed dramatically over the last several years, with dramatic upswing in property crime and complete unwillingness on the part of law enforcement to fight it.
I think I good question we can ask, are any major brands building new stores in San Francisco? That would be a good indicator of whether or not brands see the market as too-risky or that Nordstrom is using a convenient scapegoat.
I’m asking here the locals here, I haven’t been to the city in over 20 years so I haven’t the slightest idea.
Not SF, but similar problem Seattle just got a Uniglo downtown (ironically in the old Macy’s/Bon Marche building). After losing more than a few brands this year (eg Nike), having a new one pop up was notable.
Even if they're lying, SF seems to be in denial about the wasteland it's becoming. Everyone's got a list of things they blame, but no one seems to have a list of changes they're willing to make to correct it.
Surely most of us have seen videos of mobs of youths shoplifting/looting stores in broad daylight. This isn't individuals shoplifiting covertly or even breaking in under cover of darkness. It appears to be a new and more openly lawless kind of theft, and those involved are surely aware that the risk is minimal?
And the footage spreading on social media will be likely be encouraging copycat groups to do the same, or escalate to even more brazen activity.
(What's hard to tell, as somebody not in the affected areas, is how widespread this kind of crime is. Social media will always spread the most shocking footage to a large audience, but it can often be falsely labelled, potentally old footage from elsewhere, dishonestly edited, shared by people with agendas, etc)
Also... I'm pretty sure seattle is their flagship store. Not sure why people are saying it's the tiny store in SF. Up in seattle talk about Nordstrom is how they're sort of failing to effectively compete in the modern retail environment (amazon, dollar tree, walmart, costco, etc.)
I always thought their niche was high touch service / moderately high price, bit peeps around town have mentioned they've been trying new models.
I'm sure crime doesn't help, but Nordstroms has been struggling since assuming debt for expansion in the 90s.
Yea, Nordstrom is supposed to be their high-touch high end, and Nordstrom Rack is supposed to still be high quality, but less high-touch. And they're trying to figure out the right mix without diluting brand.
To be clear, if you read the article no one from Nordstrom says anything remotely close to that. They're closing the store because it's losing money, and it's losing money cause there's no foot traffic. The spokesman for Westfield the owner of the mall comes close when describing a "unsafe conditions" in the area.
That being said, if you read the transcript of the earnings call from four days ago they're also shuttering stores in Canada. They also do see unusually high levels of 'shrinkage' and theft, but within the levels that had been accounted for in their internal financial models. In the earnings call crime did come up but in the context of the mob smash and grab at the Topanga location in Los Angeles, and to his credit the CEO was more concerned about the safety of staff and shoppers, rather than property loss during this episode of organized looting.
So yeah, click-baity article, but Nordstrom never actually said what the article implies.
This thing that I have no personal experience with is completely like this other thing I have no personal experience with and is unlike this third thing I do have personal experience with because someone I don't know but has financial motivations to lie to me has said so.
Malls have been on the decline for decades. The two malls closest to me put a "no unattended minors" policy in place. When I was a teenager, you just...went to the mall. Mall management is choking off a huge source of foot traffic to avoid the hassle of telling kids to stop fucking around.
The closest mall to me has lost two of its anchor stores. One of the malls near my old apartment in Chicago had a theater, an axe throwing venue...and some offices to fill some of the dozens of vacant retail locations. It's been in a downward spiral for years. Loss of visitors has led to more loss of visitors, shoplifting aside.
And what happens when the "legitimate" foot traffic goes away? The shops are empty. Not just from shoppers, but from staff. I wanted to buy a dress shirt a couple weeks ago at my local Macy's. I walked around the floor for nearly 15 minutes and couldn't find a single employee. There was one at a single checkout in a back corner. And so why is it a surprise that when shoppers disappear, staff is cut, and the shoplifting rate goes up? It seems obvious to me.
These big stores should have fewer locations that are smaller and more well-maintained. Spread themselves less thin and whole-ass the stores that they can actually afford to staff and secure.
There certainly are more malls in downtown Chicago than are sustainable (900 N Michigan, Water Tower Place, Northbridge, Block 37, Roosevelt Collection). Water Tower Place probably should stop being a mall since it's probably the most bleak and it's basically across the street from the much nicer 900 N Michigan...Block 37 should put a grocery store in the basement (ok, I'm biased since that would be very convenient for me...)
Their stock is down 33 percent over the past month and 75% over the past 5 years and this location is in a shopping mall - not exactly something that's been performing well. Therefore clearly store closures that were announced in may are entirely because of issues with the location? It's obviously a factor in the decision but I don't think it's a good idea to take a corporate executive's stated reason for shutting down stores/factories/etc as gospel. Remember a few months ago layoffs were happening almost like it was a fad? Once people started laying folks off it provided cover for everyone else? Interesting how all the retailers also announced their closures all at once.
Seems luxury retail is dying more so to cheaper competition from fast-fashion such as Zara, to individualized fashion online from Etsy, to hypebeast brands that seems to target younger demographics, to rising commercial real-estate rents and failure of shopping malls, to competition from delivery services, an an aging target audience (I don't know any millennials or younger who shop at Nordstrom). Retail theft is a drop in the bucket of their cash flow.
Even the article mentions that "San Francisco has been in the midst of what some call a doom spiral, with office buildings and businesses still empty in the post-pandemic landscape." If you're working from home, no reason to make the commute to stop downtown at retailers. The major downtown retailers thrived in the pre-WWII age when people lived close to urban centers, white flight and suburbanization killed the department stores which were the Amazons of their age, in recent decades, this trend has been reversing as people moved into cities, but after the pandemic, if you get to work from home, there's not much to bring you into the city, especially in places like SF with skyrocketing housing prices.
I am certain they are having a hard time getting customers in the younger demographics. For instance they rebranded their rewards program to “Nordy Club” in a ham fisted attempt to be hip. Just one telling example and I am sure they wasted millions on it.
That place lost a dramatic amount of foot traffic. But all these things have been a long time coming. Many big employers were already moving out of SF when the pandemic hit. PG&E and Bank of America were already out. Citi and McKesson are both going. And all the tech companies, of course. SF is a pretty parochial city and has attempted to keep local homeowner taxes as low as possible by extracting it from employers through payroll and gross revenue taxes. But ultimately the city as it was financially shaped was only possible through the employers.
Unfortunately, SF locals do not see the link between things like a gross receipts tax and Friends of the Urban Forest losing funding so we're here.
But I think it's overall a good thing. I'm not pro-austerity: we should spend on things. But now SF will be forced to spend on things that return.
While malls are declining nationwide, you can't deny the general safety of the area around this specific Nordstrom is an issue.
When I walked out of the rear entrance of Nordstrom towards Mission St, I immediately smelled urine and saw five homeless person laying on the ground, Nobody else was on the street.
I used to walk around this area everyday to go to work before the pandemic. It was a busy area with a lot of tech workers, tourists, and conference attendees. It's not the same anymore.
* Even post-covid it appears they are getting less customers coming in and buying stuff.
* Due to deteriorating economic conditions more young people are willing to loot the store(s) than in the past. Almost like it's some form of revenge against the current system.
* California, by vote, has softened their position on looting and shoplifting.
We can pretend to be sad about it, but we have all collectively "voted" in many ways to end many forms of retail shopping. You can blame it on local SF politics, but really SF is just 5-10 years ahead of other metro areas. Often what happens in California's largest cities spreads to the rest of the country over time. This means both good and bad trends.
I am not going to apply morality or a political slant to it, but we should evaluate what we want our cities to be like. If city living means high prices, high rate of property crimes and hollowed out empty commercial real estate, who would want to live there?
Looks like the company is trying to cash out and just looking for excuses, months ago they liquidated all their assets in Canada, even stores’ shelves and furniture were on sale.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadYou may also try an archive.today mirror ie..
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Edit to say that having people hounded by security drones sounds like a terrible state of affairs. Having businesses robbed by organized gangs does as well. I think UBI and rent control or rent subsidies with high taxes on the wealthiest is a better solution in the short-term. For the long-term, philosophies that advocate for less materialism seem preferable (no need to rob if you're happy with less money etc.).
I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way.
I'm all for providing better services and support (not to mention a better structured economy) for those who are poor. I also believe "the punishment should fit the crime", and stealing low-dollar goods should result in commensurate punishment. I'm not for allowing the poor to steal with no consequences just because they can't afford stuff.
But what is the alternative? Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. You can beg and try to get enough together to buy something, but it's not really a good alternative either, especially since it's not guaranteed. So at what point would someone be in their right to steal food to survive? Is it never okay, meaning they'll have to starve in the worst case?
Naturally these problems should be solved long before anyone comes to the place of having to steal - but that's not the world we live in. And I'm strictly talking about absolute necessities, nothing beyond that. But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
Can we please be real about what we're talking about? This isn't early 19th century Paris from Les Miserables. On the contrary, SF has some of the best public services for the destitute of any place in the country. There are tons of places around the city where one can get free food.
> But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
My main concern is not about "a bit of money in the store owners pockets". It's abou signaling that the rules simply do not apply, that laws can be picked and chosen based on how you feel about the perpetrator.
Again, I said the punishment should fit the crime:
1. The person should be arrested, and basically be given the equivalent of "We'll show you how to access services in SF so you don't need to steal in the future. If you're not caught stealing in the next X months, your record will be cleared".
2. For further infractions, they should be given escalating warnings and escalating penalties.
Correct and irrelevant: they are both forms of theft.
> different causes, different solutions.
Different motivations is more accurate. There also isn’t a “solution” per se, but suppression tactics do exist if you have both a PD and a DA worth a damn.
> Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading.
I didn’t. I pointed out the obvious: theft is theft. This is a commonality between “shoplifting” and “smash and grab”. The first term downplays the violence against the storeowners by people taking their stuff (cuz it could be worse, armed robbery is also a form of theft so as much as I detest softening euphemisms, the distinction isn’t useless) and the other paints a more violent and organized picture of people taking their stuff, but ultimately the act that both describe is theft.
Either way, they are criminal activities that ought to be suppressed. We shouldn’t be tolerant to thieves.
Remember the Fed has stated they have no responsibility to protect you.
Inb4 yeah both sides of the political parties are to blame for restrictions.
Your point is not amplified by doing that.
You have literally everywhere else on the internet to argue left vs right, some people want to have a different style of debate and come here for it (since it is designed for that different kind of debate).
EDIT: To be clear, that different style of debate is trying to understand and solve problems rather than just lay blame for political points.
EDIT2: Please focus on the constructive part of your statements. I think it’s fine you want to hire more police, that was not the rule breaking part of your argument (the entire argument had to follow the rules). The mostly unrelated attacks on straw men political parties and specific politicians are the problem.
EDIT3: I agree that more police officers may be part of the solution. I think they are not, however, a panacea and we should spend more time thinking about the aspirations of what we want downtown SF to be more than thinking about how to remove people we do not like from it.
I'm a fan of UBI, but you may also want to do a web search or two before saying UBI should be 'U'.
> Police department budget up 4.4% since 2019, despite SF officials making bold promises to defund
https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen...
The police budgets are as bloated as ever, and they remain as useless as ever.
I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.
This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.
Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word.
That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).
It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.
25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles.
On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy."
Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.
What changed in the last few years though?
Other cities, with more robust labor/housing equilibriums, are bouncing back from the pandemic just fine.
Some might be living in rent controlled flats though.
Cowboys were animal herders, not police officers.
You're probably thinking of the romanticized "Lone Ranger" image of the cowboy as seen in Western movies. This is almost entirely fictitious.
EDIT: People who are up voting this comment: NO! It's a snarky comment in opposition to the prevailing wisdom. It's intended to be downvoted.
2ND EDIT: thank you for downvoting. I can now rest easy knowing I'm a misunderstood genius amongst a sea of profane luddites. (Though truth to tell, most people here when they're not being snarky seem reasonably intelligent.)
Nordstrom also bailed on the entirety of the Canadian market. Was that also due to crime in SF?
It's difficult to communicate and explain the enormous secular and systemic rippling shifts in economic conditions that have followed the pandemic and the shift to work from home, particularly and extraordinarily pronounced in SF for various reasons much more so than other places in the world.
A much easier story to solely blame localized crime. It is doubtful this is the real cause.
You are right though. It's not just the crime. It's because the current government isn't willing to prosecute criminals that are stealing from these businesses.
SF is starting to resemble Detroit, which has nearly no grocery stores in the city limits because of rampant crime.
Ways you can tell that someone has never been to either San Francisco nor Detroit: a case in point.
Reply-guys being reply-guys.
I’ve seen burned out neighborhoods in Detroit, places that look like war zones. SF just has a large number of homeless in comparison, most of whom get there via the greyhound bus station.
Your definition of "many" differs from that of the rest of us. I lived in that exact area for years. As I said, there is no comparison whatsoever between there and the problem parts of Market Street in terms of homeless (whether defecating or not) or other things, like public drug use. To claim otherwise is a blatant lie.
>I’ve seen burned out neighborhoods in Detroit, places that look like war zones.
I have only visited Detroit once, years ago, so cannot personally make a current comparison between the two. SF has not (yet) reached the point where (as I remember seeing) entire blocks are completely burned down and empty, but that's hardly a high standard to meet. The people here who are making the Detroit comparisons aren't saying otherwise; they are warning that we may see a similar civic collapse, in kind if not necessarily in scale.
>SF just has a large number of homeless in comparison, most of whom get there via the greyhound bus station.
Ah yes, the old claim that "[insert city here] gives bus tickets to their homeless to go to San Francisco". Maybe this happened in the past, but 87% of surveyed homeless have lived in SF for more than one year, and 35% for ten or more years. <https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/22/san-francisco-homeless-peo...>
Self reporting surveys are useless as data. You can ask a guy doing heroin if he has ever done drugs and he’ll say no. It’s like, sure, what else are they going to say?
https://abc7.com/amp/whole-foods-san-francisco-store-closing...
That being said the 5th street area losing Nordstrom is a big blow. Things there have certainly gotten worse recently as it has started more and more resemble Market street on the other side of Seventh.
Can't prosecute the voters if you want to be reelected.
Stores can be shut down in one place for a specific reason while another place for a completely different reason. Nordstrom is located in probably the most expensive real estate in San Francisco, while the conditions just outside the stores are deteriorating. If this was just broader systemic problems, why is their massive store in San Jose still continuing? Clearly that should also be closing considering the fact that San Jose is also as expensive as San Francisco in terms of real estate?
Maybe for residential real estate. I have a hard time imagining that it's anywhere close to the same in the commercial sector; there's dramatically more supply in SJ.
https://www.crexi.com/insights/the-san-francisco-commercial-...
San Jose Average retail rent /sqft: $39.60
https://www.crexi.com/insights/the-san-jose-commercial-real-...
> Major San Jose/Santa Clara County employers include Google, Apple, Facebook, the County of Santa Clara, and Stanford University.
Mountain View and Palo Alto are both seeing a lot of demand for office space from Google and Facebook, respectively, and I suspect that's driving up the average. San Jose itself isn't seeing so much of that.
This feels pretty unnecessarily pointed while simultaneously kind of at odds with the point you're arguing in the next paragraph. It's not like San Jose isn't also a strong dem city. Shouldn't the apparent success you're pointing out in SJ while they struggle in SF indicate that the issue is specific to SF rather than a "tribal" concern?
One of my clients is administratively based in SF, but is never there. They moved to LA awhile back, and they directly cite crime, homelessness, general urban decay, and the “ridiculousness of tech bros” [0] as the deciding factor in their physical relocation.
[0] a paraphrased quote.
Yes, it is. And it's not getting easier is it?
Nordstrom was there for the tourists. But SF tourism hasn't recovered as well as conventional group-think imagined.
When a tier 1 operation like Nordstrom bails it rings out like artillery fire for all the lesser operations. We're officially well past "didn't want that company anyway," aren't we?
I’m asking here the locals here, I haven’t been to the city in over 20 years so I haven’t the slightest idea.
And the footage spreading on social media will be likely be encouraging copycat groups to do the same, or escalate to even more brazen activity.
(What's hard to tell, as somebody not in the affected areas, is how widespread this kind of crime is. Social media will always spread the most shocking footage to a large audience, but it can often be falsely labelled, potentally old footage from elsewhere, dishonestly edited, shared by people with agendas, etc)
I always thought their niche was high touch service / moderately high price, bit peeps around town have mentioned they've been trying new models.
I'm sure crime doesn't help, but Nordstroms has been struggling since assuming debt for expansion in the 90s.
That being said, if you read the transcript of the earnings call from four days ago they're also shuttering stores in Canada. They also do see unusually high levels of 'shrinkage' and theft, but within the levels that had been accounted for in their internal financial models. In the earnings call crime did come up but in the context of the mob smash and grab at the Topanga location in Los Angeles, and to his credit the CEO was more concerned about the safety of staff and shoppers, rather than property loss during this episode of organized looting.
So yeah, click-baity article, but Nordstrom never actually said what the article implies.
Ignorance becomes you.
The closest mall to me has lost two of its anchor stores. One of the malls near my old apartment in Chicago had a theater, an axe throwing venue...and some offices to fill some of the dozens of vacant retail locations. It's been in a downward spiral for years. Loss of visitors has led to more loss of visitors, shoplifting aside.
And what happens when the "legitimate" foot traffic goes away? The shops are empty. Not just from shoppers, but from staff. I wanted to buy a dress shirt a couple weeks ago at my local Macy's. I walked around the floor for nearly 15 minutes and couldn't find a single employee. There was one at a single checkout in a back corner. And so why is it a surprise that when shoppers disappear, staff is cut, and the shoplifting rate goes up? It seems obvious to me.
These big stores should have fewer locations that are smaller and more well-maintained. Spread themselves less thin and whole-ass the stores that they can actually afford to staff and secure.
Even the article mentions that "San Francisco has been in the midst of what some call a doom spiral, with office buildings and businesses still empty in the post-pandemic landscape." If you're working from home, no reason to make the commute to stop downtown at retailers. The major downtown retailers thrived in the pre-WWII age when people lived close to urban centers, white flight and suburbanization killed the department stores which were the Amazons of their age, in recent decades, this trend has been reversing as people moved into cities, but after the pandemic, if you get to work from home, there's not much to bring you into the city, especially in places like SF with skyrocketing housing prices.
Unfortunately, SF locals do not see the link between things like a gross receipts tax and Friends of the Urban Forest losing funding so we're here.
But I think it's overall a good thing. I'm not pro-austerity: we should spend on things. But now SF will be forced to spend on things that return.
When I walked out of the rear entrance of Nordstrom towards Mission St, I immediately smelled urine and saw five homeless person laying on the ground, Nobody else was on the street.
I used to walk around this area everyday to go to work before the pandemic. It was a busy area with a lot of tech workers, tourists, and conference attendees. It's not the same anymore.
I am not going to apply morality or a political slant to it, but we should evaluate what we want our cities to be like. If city living means high prices, high rate of property crimes and hollowed out empty commercial real estate, who would want to live there?