Suggested Song: Theme Song from Dune (performed live by composer Hans Zimmer)
Suggested Drink: Resurrection Beer, from Brewers Art.
I think back, back to a time before Queen Liz was embalmed and Roe was interred and Brittney was freed and the 7 letters “chatgpt” were nothing more than a typo, back to when I was last in San Francisco. It was a different city then.
These past 2 years have taken a toll on the grande dame of foggy enchantment. Techies have fled and downtown has hollowed. The most prized real estate has flipped from Victorian flats in the Mission to tent spaces along Ellis or Van Ness. Fentanyl has bled out of the Tenderloin, leaving its lethal stain across even the toniest of neighborhoods. And the Tenderloin, a conflict zone in the best of times, has become biblical in its desolation; Old Testament desolation.
It is against this backdrop that I will spend these 2 autumn weeks in the city I love; one that nurtured a career and afforded a home and helped shape 3 rascally Magill kids. Despite my 13 years in la très belle Provence, it still lures me back. L’amoureux I can never quite quit.
Dispatch #1: All Quiet on the Western Front
The mercury was climbing through the 70s as Stella and I stepped into the downtown metro train this morning. In another hour it would hit 85 under full sun. October in San Francisco; always a lock to be gorgeous.
The news out of San Francisco has been gloomy of late, and for fair reason. A full third of the downtown office space sits vacant. Drug-related deaths are averaging over 2 per day. Videos abound of tent cities and boarded-up storefronts. Would we emerge from the Union Square Station to a dystopian scene from Escape from New York, menacing gangs and baby-clutching moms and roving packs of feral dogs? I envisioned an urban wasteland running the length of Market Street, pulsing to the mix of boomboxes and street evangelists exhorting the end of times, standing on the hulks of still-smoldering MUNI buses, bullhorns in hand.
But no, quiet was the word. No gangs or dogs or endless tent cities, no Snake Plissken. My concern turned to bigger worries than carnage. It was the quiet.
Stella and I walked through the regal Westfield Mall. There was a scurry of first-shift staff rushing to their shops for the opening hour, but about 50% of the stores have shuttered, including the anchor tenant, Nordstrom. Clean and tidy, but lots of quiet.
We passed by the cable car turnaround, where a trolley was being boarded by a group of tourists, Starbucks in hand. But, the long lines that typically snake up Powell Street were missing, as were the buskers and jugglers and pervasive panhandlers. Soiled and aggressive? No, just calm and quiet.
Union Square district, San Francisco
Union Square was the same. There were some notable closures, but many of the major chains circling the plaza were still operating. What caught our attention was the absence of sidewalk banter and bustle. The calm and quiet.
Navigating the sidewalks in Chinatown and North Beach is usually a bob and weave through tourist herds, but we seemed to own the pavement that morning. The counter stools at Mario’s Bohemian Cafe stood empty and the book stacks at City Lights unattended; great for us, not so good for them. Even the Condor and strip clubs along Broadway were shuttered until more promising evening hours, an ominous sign for the reliably unruly 24/7 Baghdad by the Bay.
First impressions from an indomitable romantic? No San Francisco apocalypse, at least along our trek on this lovely fall day, but a deeply unsettling level of empty quiet. Everyone we chatted with – the waitress at Mario’s and security guard in Chinatown and salesman at Ray-Ban’s (a Stella suggestion) – shared the same sentiment: we need the tourists back, we need more feet on the street, we can only last so long.
Ending on a note of hope I will submit this: the salivary splendor of Mario’s meatball sandwich on focaccia bread remains very much at its peak. And I always welcome a stool and glass of house red along its storied counter.
Meatball sandwich from Mario’s Bohemian Cafe, San Francisco (one bite missing).
My second dispatch from San Francisco is a stark change in tone from the first communique. That initial immersion was colored in an quiet and calm. A downtown serene and dare I say unexpectedly clean. This experience, not so much. Not nearly so much at all. Onward!
Dispatch #2: Into the Heart of Darkness
My band used to play at a bar called the Blue Lamp on Geary Street back in the day, working out songs for our 1996 album Eskimo in the Sun. It was colorful. Think the Lower East Side, NYC or SoHo, London. By this I mean artists and musicians and the odd banker wandering down from the Financial District. Barflies and Bukowskies and those comfortable with the unpredictable. The neighborhood purveyors of illicit fun and fantasy would stop at the Blue Lamp as they made their rounds, checking the evening interest and taking the pulse. The pulse of the Tenderloin.
The Blue Lamp is long since closed, but further down Geary Street sits the Ha-Ra Club. When Danny Garcia asked me for an interview for his upcoming rock documentary, I thought the Ha-Ra would be the perfect venue. It provided the setting for my 2020 rock drama, Last Night at the Ha-Ra, and has the vintage dive bar feel tailor-made for a film centered on the retro fuzz/grunge music scene, circa 1980s. So to the Ha-Ra we went, Bill and his top-flight production crew (featuring Jess Magill/Cinematography and Direction, and Stella Magill/Audio and Makeup).
Getting a soundcheck by Stella at the Ha-Ra.
A brisk walk through some mean streets is enjoyed getting from the Civic Center metro stop to the Ha-Ra, through the dark heart of the Tenderloin, 2023 edition. Addicts in full view inhaling fentanyl over small squares of heated tinfoil, unconcerned by (or oblivious to) pedestrians like us or passing SFPD cruisers. Sidewalks over-spilling with filthy tents competing for small squares of concrete real estate. Men and woman old and young nodded out, leaning back, folded over, or laid out flat. Sandpaper gravel voices barking nonsense to no one. The composite of smells and sights and sounds most foul can be overwhelming.
This is not a war zone, not a Mariupol or Gaza City. Those are perilous places for all: the wolves and sheep and guardians in between. The Tenderloin doesn’t feel threatening as much as disorderly, desolate, and sad. Violent crime is mostly shared amongst thieves; those with little victimizing those with nothing. One is advised to watch the watch and wallet as pickpocketing is common, as is the Tenderloin mainstay of vice in its many splendors. And all of that is not new for this part of the city. What’s new is its concentration. And what’s new is fentanyl.
Takashi Murakami, on exhibit at SF’s Asian Art Museum, edge of the Tenderloin.
No one aspired to be destitute on these soiled streets. When young and still innocent, no one imagined themselves curled up in a passed-out ball, pants down in their own waste when dreaming about life’s possibilities. I saw preppy women and men in trendy, clean clothes huddled in Tenderloin doorways, shoulder to shoulder with the toothless and ragged. What were they thinking, okay, this is the last time?
I think of my own amazing children, full of promise and mercifully resistant to the call of the mad. And I think of the parents of those lost souls who’ve heeded the call. The words that surely fill their sleepless hours: what happened to my beautiful baby? I’m not fearful walking through the Tenderloin, I’m heartbroken.
We must be humble in the face of these challenges, resolute to real solutions, but compassionate. We can agree that everyone deserves to feel safe on their streets, protected from harassment and the assault of extreme filth and disorder. No one should be stepping over prone, possibly dead, bodies or dodging anything worse than dogshit on their way to school or work. Jess lives in the Tenderloin, which makes it even more immediate and concerning. But let us remain human and not surrender our hearts to the darkness of the jungle.
I won’t leave this dispatch on brighter note, that would feel needlessly dishonest. After this second deep dive into the Magic Kingdom I can encourage a visit, but for now avoid the Tenderloin.
My first 2 dispatches from this San Francisco sojourn centered on neighborhoods familiar to visitors and highlighted often when the city’s condition is chronicled: the greater Downtown (surprisingly unsoiled) and the Tenderloin (unsurprisingly defiled). For this final dispatch I’m taking a wider city view, beyond the tourists maps and zones-of-the-moment. Blocks from the epicenters and out to where families have lived generation after generation, veiled in fog and happily immune to the ephemeral extremes of the city’s moment-to moment fortunes. Or are they?
Dispatch #3: Across the Universe
San Francisco is one of the world’s great walking cities. It’s small and intimate and lined with colorful, historic architecture. Settled by waves of immigrants, one passes through ethnic villages where Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Irish, Russians, Vietnamese and others recreated American versions of home, either pushed by escape or pulled by promise. Its hills offer stunning views east, west, north, and south. Cable cars rumble the ground and tribal aromas tease the nose, challenging any effort at a respectable cross-town pace. A quick taco here and a coffee-to-go there. Damn, those bbq pork buns look good. If you love having the senses tantalized then you must surrender; the sirens of sight, sound, taste and smell are calling.
A lunch of mole enchiladas at Buena Vida Cantina, Folsom Street.
A number of engagements last Thursday provided an excuse to cross the city on foot, through neighborhoods beyond the standard doom loop spotlight. A former colleague and I got caught up over a morning coffee at the Ferry Building, followed by a noontime visit to INSEAD’s Innovation Hub in SOMA. And later that afternoon, after a delicious lunch at Buena Vida Cantina, I met an old friend for coffee and a charcuterie plate at the Atlas Cafe in the Mission. No Ubers were called or metros taken.
Bill’s Thursday ramble through San Francisco.
I bid adieu to Leah in the early evening, hoping to catch a 48 bus coming up 24th Street, which would ferry me back west of Twin Peaks and close to home. But the bus was running late, the street all a-twinkle, and Energizer Bunny inside charged and curious. Would the noisy intersection at 24th and Mission Street be dirtier than remembered, missing its Mexican street vendors and feeling more hostile? No. Would the sidewalks of Noe Valley be void of baby strollers and moms in Lululemon, chai lattes in hand? No. As I made the steep climb over Twin Peaks and descended into West Portal I noticed the same thing, … no dystopian collapse out here in the Avenues, no massive tent cities, nothing that would signal impending urban collapse.
My heroic hike that day merited a glass of wine, so I pulled up a stool at the Que Syrah wine bar near home, where I’ve known the owners Stephanie and Keith since opening day some 15 years back. Their take on neighborhood conditions largely mirrored those I’d been hearing all week from long-time locals in different parts of the city. Awareness of an uptick in homelessness; but an uptick, not a wave. Concern with a rise in nonviolent crime; but no sense of anarchy or violent lawlessness. Real problems that required creative solutions, but a hope that they would be found. No one is packing up just yet.
The problems downtown are different than those in the Tenderloin are different than those in the residential neighborhoods. Ofena is an upscale Italian restaurant that just opened behind our home, and a family-run organic grocery store has replaced Ambassador Toys (my kids LOVED that store) near Que Syrah on West Portal Avenue. Old Navy and Nordstrom have pulled out of downtown, but IKEA is opening a new showroom there. Some startups have moved on but many entrepreneurs are finding their ways back, missing the creative energy and investment capital that no other region on the planet is close to matching. According to comprehensive.io over 20% of all AI-related job postings at the moment are in San Francisco proper (it sums to 50% if Silicon Valley is thrown in) and OpenAI just signed a lease for nearly a half-million square feet of space in the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood. Very promising.
The Bay Bridge at night, by Jess Magill
I sit at SFO’s International Terminal now, waiting for my long flight back to Europe. I knew I’d finish this series of dispatches on a hopeful note. I can’t help myself, just too much love for and faith in the City by the Bay. You should plan a visit. The lines are small, prices lowered, and locals eager to entertain. Where to go? Give me shout, I’m always happy to play the effervescent guide. I left my heart….
Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence
BILL MAGILL 