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Lego latest retailer to leave troubled San Francisco Centre
- newsclues 3y agoProgressives result in social regression is sad but funny.
- the_third_wave 3y agoIt isn't funny, just sad. Another thing it is is 'predictable' since the same thing has happened and continues to happen elsewhere where similar 'progressive' policies are enacted.
- adamrezich 3y agothankfully it's not too hard to avoid, at least in the US—all one needs to do is find someplace to live where it gets cold in the winters, while avoiding highly-concentrated population centers.
- ehvatum 3y agoLest we not forget, there is Detroit
- adamrezich 3y agolike I said, while avoiding highly-concentrated population centers... the population density of Detroit is over 500x of that where I live. our country is huge—why restrict oneself to living in extremely dense population concentrations?
- ehvatum 3y agoThere is no shortage of small towns in cold places that have been devastated by meth and fentanyl where crime is hopelessly rampant. In review, your two glib panaceas of moving somewhere cold or moving somewhere less dense are hopelessly inadequate.
- adamrezich 3y agoafter living in the greater Seattle area for a few years, visiting San Francisco in 2016, visiting my wife's family in northern Idaho, and living in South Dakota for most of my life, I would much rather live in either of the two latter places than either of the two former places, when it comes to crime. and general societal cohesion. and lack of poop on the ground. by a longshot. not even close.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- newsclues 3y agoSorry you can't laugh at progressive ideas leading to regression.
- the_third_wave 3y agoThose "progressive ideals" have long since ceased to be progressive, ever since the "progressives" gained more or less permanent power in those places. Progressives should not remain in power for too long since they are not capable of recognising a local optimum and keeping those policies which have been shown to work. Conservatives should not remain in power for too long since they are not capable of recognising the need for change when external or internal factors have made the traditional way of doing things obsolete or counterproductive. What is needed is a balance between the two, a form of checks an balances on ideology.
- User23 3y agoAre we really still pretending this is because of the pandemic?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lupusreal 3y ago[dead]
- oicu812 3y agoBecause of shoplifting or just consumers don't want to risk street crime to shop there?
- sottol 3y agoMaybe because it sells better online?
- User23 3y agoThat and the two proposals GP offered are all compatible. Real life is complex and macro social trends can have multiple contributing causes.
- bcrosby95 3y agoIt's lego though. Our kids love toy stores. They've seen stuff on screens all their life, you mean there used to be stores, as big as a Target, full of ONLY TOYS!? Maybe parents don't like taking their kids to them though?
- goda90 3y agoLast night I watched the "San Francisco Streets" video from Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.[0] He interviews drug users, a social media anti-drug "influencer", a police officer, a band of retail thieves and car "splashers", an HIV-positive trans woman who is only off the street because of the SRO program, and various other residents of The Tenderloin[1] It was very interesting. Andrew shares some of his and other's takes on why it's the way it is. [0]https://youtu.be/URfCwT3UQy4?si=5UaMusK3QwCLV46y https://youtu.be/URfCwT3UQy4?si=5UaMusK3QwCLV46y [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco
- melenaboija 3y agoI watched it too few days ago and I wondered if it is as bad as it looks in the video. I have been there a couple of times in the past before the pandemic and it did not look worst than any other big downtown in USA to me (another interesting topic for an European living in the USA btw), in the video… holly it looks bad. Is it that the video is made in a sensationalist way or is it as bad as it seems to be?
- tticvs 3y agoIt's obviously biased because he goes to the worst areas and he only interviews "interesting" people. But it's pretty obvious he's not cherrypicking from weeks of footage across the whole city. It's really very bad in certain areas.
- melenaboija 3y agoBut robberies in stores and bipping (seen in the next one he made) does not seem to be happening in bad areas, is that right? What he is showing does not seem to be a threat for personal safety to me but I think it definitely shows some cracks in the system.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoI stayed in a hostel in SF a few years ago and this guy showed me video he shot of a crazy guy on the corner in some busy street in SF, pulls out a gun and starts firing at people. Next to him. I'd call that a threat to personal safety. I don't have any other second hand accounts of violence but I imagine there would be some between the gangs, police, homeless and residents. Frustrations boiling over leads eventually to assaults
- quux 3y agohttps://archive.is/oRN7T https://archive.is/oRN7T
- sybercecurity 3y agoNot directly related to the article, but single focus retail is disappearing from suburban/mixed areas as well. This trend has been going on for a decade at least. If you visit any growing area where new housing is being built, the "commercial/retail area" that is added is almost exclusively restaurants with some service business (dry cleaning, hair styling, etc.). Maybe one or two small niche retailers, but nothing like the nostalgic small towns they try to evoke. Even without theft, specialized retail is fading.
- fourseventy 3y agoThe hordes of drugged out zombies and gangs of smash and grab looters arent helping though
- francisofascii 3y agoI wonder if the purpose of this store in a downtown location like this is more about promoting the brand for all the tourists that walk or ride by, rather than actually selling Legos.
- prepend 3y agoI live in a pretty boring upscale suburban area about 30 minutes outside a US top10 metro area. We have tons of single focus retail and the LEGO store does bonkers business. In the past 10 years there’s been an explosion in single focus retail as developers have built these sort of outdoor mall/fake main street retail hubs that only have stuff like lulu lemon and lego and Sephora and stuff. I haven’t seen a department store built in years. These shopping districts are extremely packed all the time with wealthy yuppies and spawn and whatnot. Of course, the private and city cops would probably execute you (or put you on a bus to somewhere) if you littered, much less did drugs, or pooped, or brandished a weapon. Shoplifting a stick of gum would probably result in swat team activation.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoDrug users, homeless need to be put in shelters and if they come back to the streets, need to be put in madhouses. It is not fair to the rest of polite descent people of sf to face these situations because some folks can't get their life in order.
- panzagl 3y agoAnd the Union Workhouses? Are they still in operation?
- Hugsun 3y agoWhat are the leading theories explaining why some cities become filled with homeless people while the issue seems manageable in others? I'm especially thinking about the difference between European cities and US ones where the difference in scale of the issue is notable.
- xattt 3y agoMy best guess is that with the legalization of weed, dealers who used to sell it were pushed to sell harder drugs. These harder drugs come with more significant effects in destabilizing mental health.
- yostrovs 3y agoObviously it is policies and San Francisco has stuck to the policies against all evidence to them not working. Moreover, the politicians that put in place those policies get reelected and elected to higher offices. The governor of California is the former mayor of San Francisco under whom the situation has turned "dire," as many have attested.
- erulabs 3y agoOnly my opinion, but it’s all about the opiates. The few European cities that I know of that have had a similar scale homeless situation also had a similar situation re: healthcare and pharmaceutical industry - they’re all in Switzerland. The Swiss “solved” the issue by cracking down on pain killer issuance (like we did in the US) but also by sealing their borders off to drug smuggling to a degree that is impossible in the US. Zurich ~10 years ago looked a lot more like San Francisco than you’d think. As long as the scary part of any city is where you go to buy, use, and not be arrested for using, that’s where the scary part of the city will be - it’s a self sustaining sadness loop. As far as I know there is no fix besides removing access to the drugs, and for better or worse, that’s not possible in the US. The only “solution” is police crackdowns, which doesn’t cure addiction. The real “freedom is slavery” argument isn’t too many choices in the grocery store: it’s the ability to choose heroin a couple times when you’re sad and stupid and young.
- tiahura 3y agoDemocrat local government is the top predictor of urban disfunction.
- ramesh31 3y agoTurns out that DS9 episode was actually a documentary: https://youtu.be/ZOjG8Ditub8?t=159 https://youtu.be/ZOjG8Ditub8?t=159
- amelius 3y agoYes, capitalism cannot exist without a strong government.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoYou actually don't. You just need enough money to pay for security and bribes, then you can operate in any environment.
- amelius 3y agoThat's a very bad version of capitalism you'd end up with.
- r00fus 3y agoIt always confused me when growing up playing Alpha Centauri (SMAC) where Capitalism as a governance model had such bad morale costs and only decent combo is if you had massive police spending. So I did some research and found out that the US has so many prisons and incarceration spending was incredibly higher than in other country - so was enlightened: the game did model things realistically.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]