San Francisco’s “bad luck loop” has claimed its latest victim after the doors closed on a pioneering vegan restaurant in the city’s crime-ridden Mission District.
Gracias Madre has clients like the Duchess of Sussex, Natalie Portman and Liam Hemsworth at its West Hollywood branch.
But it shares its Golden Gate City neighborhood with an open-air drug market and hundreds of homeless people.
“Living conditions in San Francisco have deteriorated, making running a small business nearly impossible,” read a note left on the door for customers.
“We have regulars and customers who have consistently said it’s just too dangerous to come here at night,” manager Joseph Donohue told CBS, “and I don’t blame them.”
Customers were told it was now “almost impossible” to run a small business in the city.
Manager Joseph Donohue says he “doesn’t blame” customers for leaving the restaurant in the city’s Mission District
A third of the city’s office space is now empty
Nordstrom this week became the latest big name to join the exodus as the company closed the doors of its flagship store in the city’s Westfield Center.
It joined dozens of others that have pulled the plug, including Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth and Office Depot.
Meanwhile, remaining stores like Target must lock all of their inventory behind glass to deter shoplifters.
Gracias Madre opened in 2009 and serves “traditional Mexican cuisine made from scratch using local, organic, plant-based ingredients,” according to its website.
But a large building next door has been derelict for a decade, in a city where a third of the office space is now vacant.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed, a decline of more than 50 percent.
And of the 203 retailers that opened in the city’s Union Square area in 2019, only 107 are still in operation, a 47 percent decline in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.
“Our mission has always been to honor the mothers who give so much to serve, care for and live in hope for their families, especially those in Mexico,” the statement said we left the customer.
The dirt and squalor at the intersection of Jones Street and Eddy Street in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco
It is estimated that more than 4,000 people sleep on the city’s streets every night
A map shows the major companies that have left or announced plans to leave San Francisco in recent months. Retailers like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth and Office Depot are among those involved in the mass exodus
“It has been an honor to work for their generosity and sacrifice all these years.”
Donohue blamed the “economy” and “state of the mission” for its closure.
“It’s just a little shady in the area, the streets aren’t cleaned regularly,” he told SFGate.
“It’s almost like it’s a forgotten side of the city.”
“This area would be great if the city paid attention to what they were doing.”
He said it was difficult for people to park nearby and it was “a little too dangerous” to visit the restaurant after dark.
“Because there was no parking space for your car and when you parked your car you didn’t know if there was going to be a break-in or not.”
“So a lot of customers said they wouldn’t come at night,” he added.
Over in her Lower Haight district, restaurant owner Zahra Saleh has temporarily closed her business, saying she feels “hurt” after too many break-ins and shoplifting in her area.
“My Lower Haight is sinking into a sea of lawlessness,” wrote the owner of Café International.
Land Use Commissioner Alex Ludlum suggested organizing “Doom and Squalor” tours for visitors, but existing tours can’t escape the misery
An analysis of official figures and other research shows San Francisco could potentially lose hundreds of millions of dollars due to business exodus and failure to recover from Covid
“And ship captains and politicians argue and blame each other while small businesses suffer.”
City land use commissioner Alex Ludlum resigned this week with a scathing letter to Democratic Mayor London Breed after he was criticized for promoting a “doom and misery” tourist walk through the city’s run-down neighborhoods.
“I regret that my attempt to draw attention to the deplorable street conditions and rampant crime in my neighborhood was misconstrued as a mockery of suffering people,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
“As long as open-air drug markets continue their daily operations, we will continue to witness the misery of suffering addicts, the retreat of pedestrians and office workers, the continued closure of small businesses, and the stagnation of our rich cultural life.”