Not a fan of National Review since Buckley died. Not a fan of San Fran since the 80's. A great city was killed by the left. Its corpse is decomposing in the sun. What some mistake for signs of life is the activity of the vermin that come to scavenge a carcass. The writer nails it.
[nationalreview.com]

Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women — junkies, winos, the dispossessed — passed out in the vestibules of empty storefronts on otherwise busy streets. Encampments of tents sprout in every shadowy corner: under highway overpasses, down alleys. Streets are peppered with used syringes. Strolling the sidewalks, you smell the faint malodorous traces of human excrement and soiled clothing. Crowded thoroughfares such as Market Street, even in the light of midday, stage a carnival of indecipherable outbursts and drug-induced thrashings about which the police seem to do nothing.

This for a place where the rent office space, at a minimum, is $80/ft. This is 30% more than NYC, which was the by word for ridiculously priced housing. SF now has that crown. This is the result of 1980's legislation that prevented the needed high rises to be built to provide the office space that would make SF future health possible.

The repeal of laws preventing public defecation is but icing on the cake. The syringes in the streets ... a degenerate confetti.

The number of small tech start ups is down by over 50%. This is a clear sign that the spark is gone. The art and music scenes have been also obliterated by the cost of ... well ... everything.

The sad part is that this scene is playing out in Seattle, NYC, Chicago and elsewhere. The result of the desire by the left to legislate utopia when it should have focused on improving infrastructure.

Will there be a second 'American' century?