The recent history of San Francisco's failures as a city can be told in the number of grocery stores that have closed for reasons beyond their control in the past few years. In 2022 I wrote about a grocery store that was closed because of a rat infestation. This rather disgusting problem wasn't the result of any failure on the store's part. It was caused by "the birdseed lady" a local resident who had taken to dumping pounds of birdseed on the sidewalk and streets in the area, allegedly to feed the pigeons. 

Birdseed lady didn't realize (or care) that rats can also eat birdseed. In fact she repeatedly dumped food outside empty shops where there was no one to clean up the mess, ensuring the rats would take up residence. This went on for years and the city did nothing because you can't stop people in SF from acting crazy, you just have to get used to it.

In 2023 a brand new Whole Foods market, one of the largest in the city, announced it would need to close because of street conditions. The company statement was anodyne but we eventually learned some of the details.

People threatened employees with guns, knives and sticks. They flung food, screamed, fought and tried to defecate on the floor, according to records of 568 emergency calls over 13 months, many depicting scenes of mayhem.

“Male w/machete is back,” the report on one 911 call states. “Another security guard was just assaulted,” another says. A man with a four-inch knife attacked several security guards, then sprayed store employees with foam from a fire extinguisher, according to a third.

In September, a 30-year-old man died in the bathroom from an overdose of fentanyl, a highly potent opioid, and methamphetamine.

They made 568 emergency calls in 13 months and the city did nothing. Because, again, in SF you can't stop deranged homeless people from stealing or acting crazy. You just have to get used to it.

Meanwhile Safeway brand stores were making every effort to stop the flood of thefts and nothing seemed to be working. Local officials begged the store in Fillmore not to close and for a while they kept trying but last December they had had enough.

Safeway announced on Tuesday that it would close its Webster Street supermarket on Feb. 7, a blow to San Francisco’s Fillmore and Japantown neighborhoods that have pushed to convince the grocery chain to keep the struggling store open...

The company said it was “proud” of its 40-year history in the Fillmore but that the decision to close the store was made “due to ongoing concerns about associate and customer safety, as well as persistent issues with theft.”

Once again, the company was a bit vague but we eventually learned what was happening.

One Gardaworld private security guard, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimated the store loses roughly $7,000 a day to shoplifters.

That works out to about $210,000 per month or $2.5 million per year. What did the city do? Not much really. Safeway was on its own. 

Smaller markets didn't fare much better. I wrote about one that closed in 2024 after 35 years in business. The owner in that case didn't bother with the corporate speak.

In addition to inflation-fueled bills and declining foot traffic, the small grocery and deli has suffered from “rampant” crime, including near-daily shoplifting and three break-ins in the past couple years, Pesusic said. He blamed city officials for the increased crime, slamming law enforcement and city leaders for being unresponsive and overly permissive.

“Our family business is going down the tubes because the idiots in City Hall can’t protect us,” Pesusic told the Chronicle.

With all of that in mind, I wasn't surprised to read another story yesterday about another market closing. You'll never guess why.

The Market — a luxury grocer on the ground floor of the old Twitter building — is closing Friday, and its owner is blaming everything but the kitchen sink.  

“The landlord did nothing but support us, but we finally looked at what was happening, and we were losing a gazillion dollars every month and made a decision,” said The Market owner and developer Chris Foley...

“Mayor Breed allowed meth addicts and homeless to take over the streets and it didn’t seem that her administration really cared, and I’m sorry to say that,” Foley said...

“Nobody gave a f***,” Foley said, adding that the grocer’s hot bar was forced to close after too many people came off the street and used their hands to dig out items from the steam pans.

Nobody gave a you-know-what. Are you seeing a pattern here? And of course it's not just the markets that are struggling. Drug stores and retailers like Target have also been hit with the same problems. The city's largest mall became a ghost town.

But I came across this opinion piece today describing why SF doesn't open more grocery stores to make up for the ones it is losing. In fact, there was a plan to open a Whole Foods just about a mile from the Safeway that just closed in December. But it never happened. Why? Because Whole Foods wasn't unionized. The unions found a way to kill the project.

In 2020, the board, led by former Supervisor Catherine Stefani (now a member of the state Assembly), delayed the opening of the Whole Foods in City Center Plaza. They did this by upholding an appeal under the California Environmental Quality Act, which seeks to protect the state’s natural habitats from pollution and degradation through an extensive planning and review process.  

The city’s planning commission initially approved a CEQA exemption for the Whole Foods, but two San Francisco residents and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union filed an appeal, citing concerns that car trips by shoppers and idling trucks would harm the environment. This was just the latest example of CEQA being weaponized by special interests; in this case, labor organizers who wanted to strike a blow against the anti-union owner of Whole Foods, Amazon...

In the case of the missing Whole Foods, complaints made during the public comment period argued that the store should not be opened because of Amazon’s poor labor practices. Though the Board of Supervisors noted that labor practices could not be used to uphold the CEQA appeal, they unanimously agreed to put the project on ice.

This is why people in SF can't have nice things. The special interest groups for the homeless make sure the police don't make arrests often enough to matter. And even if they did make arrests the city's judges and defense attorneys would put the thieves right back on the streets. And then you also have the unions that make sure no one can offer to sell food without unionizing and thereby undermine their racket. The people trying to just get along and make a living are left with fewer and fewer options. This is apparently what progress looks like.