In San Francisco, a Troubled Year at a Whole Foods Market Reflects a City's Woes

[brooklynite]

New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, with pandemic lockdowns in the rearview mirror, Whole Foods Market made a bet on a gritty San Francisco neighborhood. The high-end supermarket chain opened a giant flagship store in a part of the city that is home to both tech companies like Twitter and open-air drug dealing.

But the store was soon confronted head-on with many of the problems plaguing the area. 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.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. tl;dr:

Tourists are still showing up, the neighborhoods are thriving, real estate developers are nervous because tech workers work at home, people conflate seeing poverty and being uncomfortable with danger, QUICK MORE COPS AND ALSO THE NATIONAL GUARD BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE USING PUBLICLY.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. Wow. What a shame. I compliment the company for trying to provide a different venue for

shoppers though.

I imagine that Whole Foods never anticipated this sort of issue when they opened the store's doors. We have a Whole Foods over in a part of STLMO, on the way to Downtown, and it's in a somewhat shifty area, but it's still there, it's surrounded by a few run-down properties but go a block or so all around the Whole Foods, it's surrounded by huge homes/rehabs all around it, so I hope that they continue to survive and thrive.

I like having a different choice store available (somewhat close to me too), in case I get a hunkering for something different. That's the one thing a lot of these old city interiors lost, is a lot of retailers moved out 20-30-40 years ago, and with the rehab of a lot of city interiors, they're moving back.

[erronis]

4. Archived version of this article.

https://archive.ph/tfor9

It's a very sad story. If you can get to the comments section there are a lot of people concurring with the problem. Many differences on the cause and not too many solutions.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

5. Big parts of San Francisco are still completely fine.

But other big parts are not fine. We should fight back against misperceptions that the city is a basket case, but we also need to be honest about where well-intentioned social policies aren't working.