The San Francisco Chronicle has a long, long article about the city’s demise: “Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks.” And it looks really bad. The numbers are grim …

I am not sure whether the people who run cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis understand how close their cities are to circling the drain. The good times are gone. If you can’t reasonably guarantee the safety of your citizens and visitors, and if anyone who enters your city is exposed to people shooting up and using the street as a toilet, it is over for your city.

[I must admit that I’ve never been fond of the city, not even as a California native, not even when visiting it in the same time period as John did. I never saw the charm and largely concluded that it must have been riding on a long-ago rep for decades. There’s no disguising the truth now — it’s literally a s***hole, and it’s being abandoned by its own people. Progressive governance finally forced reality to intrude on the fantasy, and John’s right that San Francisco is only the beginning. — Ed]